Jump Up. Luisah Teish

priestess housed the initiate in a small room with a floor of pounded earth covered with palm mats. The mats were covered with immaculate white cloth. During my visit, the initiate was covered in efun (white chalk) from head to toe—including his eyeballs! He was unfocused, spoke slowly, and said he had been dreaming nonstop for an eternity (although in actuality his nonstop dreaming lasted seven of the fourteen days).

      I sat quietly and listened to him talk about his dreams—dreams of being in the Ocean and on the bottom of the Ocean. He spoke of scales, gills, and fins, of movement and colors, and of the smell of salt. I painted pictures in my mind as he spoke. After I had been there awhile, I sneezed. A priestess entered the room carrying a broom made of an herb (I think it was SeaGrape). She promptly cleaned the initiate by sweeping the area around his head and down the outline of his body. Then she swept the corners and the center of the room and threw the broom out the back door of the little room. She informed me that my visit was over, but she invited me to attend the drumming ceremony that was to take place outside the next night.

      I arrived at the drumming ceremony late in the evening, my head was covered in a gele, a wrap made of white eyelet. I wore the traditional regalia for such a ceremony: white shoes, white dress, white purse. My driver proudly led me to a seat of honor that had been reserved for me. I sat quietly, determined to observe and remember every aspect of the ceremony.

      The ritual participants began to gather. As I recall, four drummers came carrying small tub-like drums similar to the East Indian tabla but producing a distinctly different sound. The drummers were followed by at least thirty shekere (hollowed-out gourds decorated with beads) players—all women—who began immediately to make rushing sounds like the hum of the Ocean with their instruments. The congregation, a cast of hundreds, made a circle around a swept-dirt center. Everyone's body had been painted with white chalk.

      After about half an hour, a priestess entered and blew white powder around the circle. She raised her arms as if lifting weights, then pulled them down sharply and leaned left and right as part of the invocation to the four directions. She was establishing the boundaries of sacred space. Once they were established, she let out a high-pitched call, and a procession began. The priestesses who had officiated over the initiation led the procession. They were dressed in red and white garments and hundreds of cowrie shells, the symbols of wealth. Instruments of divination were sewn on their clothes. The initiate was finely dressed in white cloth, and he walked unsteadily in the middle of the procession. The drums started, and the women began to display the initiate and to teach him to dance. I tried to watch the steps.

      Eventually, the first priestess walked over to me and blew a handful of white powder directly into my face. Unwillingly I began to tremble from the inside and tears rolled down my cheeks. I became aware of my driver tugging at my purse and shoes. “You must go and dance,” he said. I shook my head no in an attempt to clear my blurring vision. “Yes,” my driver said, “this thing is happening to you, and you must go and dance now.” I wanted to sit and observe, but the priestess returned and blew another handful of powder into my face. Then I whitened out (the opposite of blacking out, I suppose).

      I remember a resounding cry and a bolt of energy as if lightning had struck me in my spine. I still have no memory of moving from point A to point B, only of being there in the center of the circle, feeling my legs moving beneath me and my chest and hips gyrating. I heard my own voice above my head ask, “Who is that dancing?” I lifted my eyes to the night sky, then I saw and felt the Full Moon descending into my mouth, squeezing itself down my throat and into my belly.

      I became aware that I had been moved to an inner chamber, a place where life-sized figures made of white chalk were somehow painted or inlaid with gold. I looked around, trying to identify the sculptures. I recognized Shango, the God of Thunder, in male and female form, erect and pregnant. Before I could see much more the priestess grabbed my face and pushed my lips forward into a “fish mouth.” I knew what this meant, as this is the way I'd been taught to give medicine to babies. With my lips pursed in this manner it was almost impossible to reject the substance now being poured down my throat. Oh, but I tried. Water and leaves, little seashells and grit found their way into my belly.

      Then they removed my gele, and again there was a great cry. They called the name of the Thunder deity, because a few days before the women of a distant village had braided my hair in the style worn by devotees of Shango (He is my Father, by the way). I was washed from head to toe; they then smeared me with chalk and drew lines on my face and body. My crisp white eyelet clothing was now streaked with chalk and bits of green leaves. As I looked around me, people moved in the dark, their black faces covered in white chalk, their eyes fully opened, staring at me. I felt as if I were in a Fellini movie or a painted mime drama, and these people seemed to be hovering somewhere between the worlds.

      Then the priestesses began making predictions for me. Some of them were worrisome, some of them wonderful. All have proved to be true.

      As a result of all these rituals, I feel that my consciousness has been enhanced. My dreams are often prefaced with an image of me running through a house, chased by a great Ocean wave. At the point that I allow the wave to wash over me, my dreams for the night begin. I have found these dreams to be prophetic, symbolic, and instructive. I call them my Benin dreams.

      An Introduction to Winter Blue Mother Moon

      Night comes early in Winter. At Moonrise the Earth is quiet, and Nature sleeps beneath Her blanket of snow. She dreams of the coming of Spring, the return of the Sun, a time when She will blush and blossom and birds will sing in Her hair. Tomorrow. Soon. But tonight She embraces the stillness; tonight She exalts the Dark. In the Dreamtime the Blue Mother Moon illuminates the sky. Trees stand shamelessly naked, exposing their branches to the wind. The Moon's light casts deep shadows. Humans gaze at Her in wonder and take refuge in their homes.

      There, before the fireplace, we gather. Frosty clouds of breath escape from our mouths. Reverently we lay oak logs and strike a match in honor of the Sun. And comforted, we warm our hands as Blue Mother Moon smiles. We gather our family around us, embrace friends, and make peace with our enemies. We cook life-sustaining porridge and bake breads made of wheat, oats, and rye. Those who can afford it will flock to warm climates, to Florida or Jamaica, to bask in the Sun. The unfortunate ones, the homeless people, will wander in the streets. They will freeze, starve, and die, and Blue Mother Moon will cry for Her children.

      The truly fortunate, who possess a kind heart, will open their doors and their pockets. Soup kitchens will flourish, and the sad eyes of needy children will be brightened by holiday gifts sincerely given. Through mutual help we will survive the Winter.

      The Winter Solstice

      The symbols of Christmas—the Nativity scene, the tree with its lights, the gift giving, and nearly all the songs of the season—have their roots in the pre-Christian tradition of the Winter Solstice.

      The Wheel of the Year charts the movement of the Sun. The Winter Solstice (December 21) is the longest night and the shortest day of the year. Now, when the Sun is at its weakest point (in the astrological sign of Capricorn), humans turn inward to sleep and dream Gust as Demeter weeps for the lost Persephone). We make appeals to the Sun to return to us, to bring us through Winter's Darkness into the Light of Spring. We make these appeals in the symbolic language of myths and rituals by creating celebrations of Light that reflect our hopes and dreams. Some of these celebrations begin in the darkest part of Autumn, before the Solstice, and continue throughout the Winter season. From the point of the Solstice onward, the Sun increases in strength, and we declare that “He (the Son of the Sun) is born” from the virginal womb of the Great Dark Mother.

      Bring us through Winter's darkness into the light of Spring.

      The Sun represents the male God, and its death and rebirth on the Winter Solstice is seen as the death of the old solar year and the birth of the new, or the birth of the Divine Child, the Sun God of the new solar year. To the Egyptians he was Horus, the Divine child of Isis and Osiris; to the Greeks and Romans he was Apollo, son of Zeus and twin brother to Artemis, the Goddess of the Moon; to Norse and Anglo-Saxons