Bakulu: To Die is not Enough
Today is the Catholic Feast of All Souls. Over a billion people around the world are celebrating their beloved dead, and assuredly many of them in tandem with other folk beliefs and practices, some by personal choice, others in syncretic colonial inheritance. How one’s ancestors are honored in Quimbanda varies from house to house, lineage to lineage, practitioner to practitioner. We all acknowledge the power of the Cruzeiro, the Cross of the Cemetery, around which the Souls gather, named and unnamed, dead and ancestor alike, where Omolu reigns and keeps watch. The Cruzeiro rejects no one, it is the place where all dead may be prayed for, regardless of the physical resting place of your beloved dead. Bakulu, the Kongo-Angola conception of ancestors, forms the foundation of our practice in Quimbanda de Angola. We first secure their blessings to proceed in our work, to stabilize the waters of the Great Ocean as we wade in to call out to our spirits. They provide strength, wisdom and ste...
