BABALÚ-AYÉ

Disease, healing / Obaluayê

Babalú-Ayé, whose name means father of the world, is the orisha of contagious diseases and of healing, carried to the Americas by the Atlantic slave trade. In Brazil, Candomblé names him Obaluaiê or Omulu and represents him covered with a straw tunic, the filá, which conceals a body marked by sores: a spirit of the earth and of the cemeteries, he is at once the one who sends epidemics, such as smallpox, and the one who heals. He is honoured with pipoca, corn popped without oil, and his colours are black, white and red. In Cuba, Santería venerates him under the name Babalú-Ayé, syncretised with Saint Lazarus, the beggar covered with sores and accompanied by dogs. Every 17 December, thousands of the faithful make a great pilgrimage to the sanctuary of El Rincón, near Havana, to fulfil promises and ask for health. He is represented as a humble old man, leaning on crutches, surrounded by dogs, dressed in jute cloth; his colours are purple and certain pale shades. Venerated on both sides of the Atlantic, he embodies a truth of the Afro-diasporic pantheons: the wound and the healing proceed from a single power, and the one who brings the scourge can also turn it away.