Intro

[Altruistic]

Hello everyone, I'm new here just wanted to say hey. I’m from Uk, here to help others or to just offer and receive advice

 

[Robert Ramsay]

Welcome! What sort of magic are you into?

 

[Altruistic]

Thanks Robert! I’m mainly into ancestral work and love spell work. I also study and respect Afro-diasporic traditions like Palo Mayombe, Santería, and Ifá, along with broader occult practices. Always open to learning and sharing perspectives.

 

[Mh4419]

Welcome mate

 

[Altruistic]

Thank you @Mh4419

 

[Missterry]

Thanks Robert! I’m mainly into ancestral work and love spell work. I also study and respect Afro-diasporic traditions like Palo Mayombe, Santería, and Ifá, along with broader occult practices. Always open to learning and sharing perspectives.

Buen dia mpangui y nsala maleko. My Godmother is Cuban and my Godfather is Puerto Rican. They are both into the Afro-Cuban religions, it runs in their family for generations. Both my Godparents are Santeros. My Godmother is a Palera and my Godfather a Palero.

My Godparents got me into Palo Mayombe. I got cut into Palo a few years ago. Since both my Godparents are also Santeros, I thought about getting initiated into Ocha, but my Godfather said that I shouldn't get into Santeria these days. He said that these days Santeria is too "wari wari," as we say in Mayombe Kikongo. Wari wari means "gay." What he meant was that Santeria these days, has become too liberal, where you not only find transgenders and gay people, but it has become mixed with all sorts of gay stuff like chakras and karma and crystal healing and sage smuging. And so, I took my Godfather's advice and stayed away from Santeria.

Palo is unique mpangui, at least la rama Mayombe [there are 4 main ramas in Nkisi Malongo: Palo Monte, Palo Mayombe proper, Palo Briyumba, and Palo Kimbisa]. It's based on the old addage: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." And so the aethetics of Mayombe has never been "fixed" since the ancient Congo days of the pre-Slave-Trade era. Mayombe is still built upon dirt, sticks, bones, shells, blood, spirits, nature. No temples. No churches. No gilded statutes. No clean altars. No new age fluff. I like Palo because most of its old cultural practices over laps my own indigenous Asian cultural practices: ancester veneration and animism.

As you know, most of Palo is not ever written down, and so, don't trust everything you read and see about it on the internet and youtube. Palo and Ocha are whole entire cultures of entire ethnicities of Africans in Cuba, with its own dialect [Bozal/Kikongo for Palo and Cubanized Yoruba for Ocha], dance, music, art, cuisine, cultural practices/observances, and folk traditions. The best sources to learn things like Palo, Ocha, Ifa from are those old folks, those old school elders of an older generation who were born and raised by their slave grandperents in their traditional African culture/religion, and who are too old to know anything about youtube, google, self-published amazon books, subscribers, followers, etc, i.e: the Traditional sources, as opposed to the modern wari wari sources online who mistake the living ancient cultures of African slaves [Nkisi Malongo, Isese/Ocha, Ifa] for "systems of magic."

Welcome to the Forums. Nsambi.

 

[hollowglasd]

Welcome