My First Ceremony

I'm alive!

Ceremony began later than expected on Saturday night. In the pictures you can see Matt and Trisha setting up their ceremonial offerings. I'm not sure that's what they call it, but seems like a fitting description. A multi colored bright red cloth was placed on the floor about 4 feet wide by 2.5 feet long. On that cloth were placed various trinkets. Matt's cloth with his ceremonial offerings were on the right, and Trisha's were on the left. There was pattern to the trinkets that were laid out, and everything had meaning. I asked them if they each had meaning and Trisha confirmed, but they never told me the significance. Some of the wooden items are percussion instruments.

The Bwiti music began. It took about 45 min to get the final music Bluetooth connection that took us through the entire night after discovering a flipped breaker and a couple of other setbacks. The music is comprised of several groups of contrasting voices in chant-like singing with various driving percussion instruments in the foreground. The Bwiti people dance to this music with a full body jiggle, a rapid shake; it's kind of like twirking but from the shoulders to the hips. The music is also very repetitive with the same phrases being repeated over and over. The music is the "driver" for the medicinal trance.

The candles were being lit around the room, and the electric lights were turned off. Matt, Trisha and Julie were wearing skirts tied around their waists over their normal clothes. Matt had put white powder on his hands and forearms and both Matt and Trisha had a 2 inch circle of orange pygmy paste on their foreheads. The pygmy paste can be made only by the elder, postmenopausal women of the Pygmy tribe. It is a blend of herbs that they place on the forehead to open the third eye, the seat of intuition, knowing and seeing in the spirit realm.

A mat was placed on the floor with a pillow, a set of sheets and a blanket. There was only one mat. Christy wasn't going to do the medicine tonight. Just me.

I sat in the corner of the sofa under a blanket intently watching their every move as they prepared everything. It seemed to take two hours. I sat there wondering how much water I should drink right now. Will it stay down? Make it better or worse? There were three large mop buckets ready for me, and Julie seemed to be in charge of that. Was I going to need three buckets? Julie made sure that at least one bucket was next to me at all times.

My bathroom was prepared with two candles and the nightlight was unplugged. Regular light will be really jolting to you after the medicine kicks in, Trisha said.

Once everything was set up and there was not a light on in the house, the four of us walked through the dark to the garage. The garage was 5 or 6 steps down, and I braced the handrail as my feet looked for each step in the dark. The only light was from the Akoeme torch. It was time for our cleansing, the smudging of each of us and the garage was the only safe place to avoid starting a fire. With the massive torch in one hand and a lighter in the other hand, they lit and smudged. Matt whipped the torch up and down with intense speed on the sides of our bodies, followed by the front and back. Sparks were flying everywhere and the whipping noise of the torch was audible. He smudged my head, my spirit solar plexus region, and sat the non-burning end of the torch on my sternum and had me hold it with my hand for a few seconds. Last but not least, I was instructed to lift my feet one at a time so he could smudge the bottom of my feet. Trisha and Julie also had their hands smudged, but I did not. Perhaps this was just for those who were serving.

We walked back up the stairs in the dark to the living room and everyone sat down on the furniture in normal conversational style. We were ready to begin.

To be continued...Weiterlesen