|
Legba nan
bayé-a (x3)
Se ou ki pote drapo se ou k ap pare soléy pou lwa-yo |
Legba is at the
gate (x3)
It is you who carries the flag It is you who shields the spirits from the sun |
The first time I opened Maya Deren's Divine Horseman it opened to the passage,
"The cosmic abyss is both womb and tomb"(102). It had relevance to a research
paper I was writing at the time on Newgrange and the Irish Triple Goddess. Newgrange
is a megalithic structure built in the valley of the Boyne River during the
late Bronze Age; it is situated so that on the Winter Solstice a shaft of light
penetrates the passage through a lintel box and illuminates the central chamber.
It is a macro-religious structure designed to capture this moment when the return
of light signals the beginning of the solar year. This re?birth of the sun on
the back of Kephra emerging from a journey through the underworld cave of night,
or Koré/Persephone returning from Hades to her mother Demeter. It is also Eshu
Elegba crossing back through of the mirror out of the underworld of Ghede, to
be once again the virile fire of the sun returned ? only to grow old and pass
again through the smoky glass portal of Carrefour. This is the crossroads of
the year when the light and dark are at opposition, yet shifting in their eternal
cycle of transition; crossing the threshold where divinity reveals itself for
a moment in a blinding flash, the descent of áshe.
Like the Triple Goddess who has been on the decline since the Iron Age, Ghede
represents a shadow that Western culture would like to banish. Ghede the phallus,
Grand Bois the night tree, and Baron Samedi the cemetery cross(roads), are a
trinity of sex, magick, and death, represented as the Patron Trinity of Magickians.
Our fear of the inexplicable qualities of these experiences keeps us from understanding
the transition represented in the crossroads, much less the mirror's reflection
of our shadows.
Works consulted
Deren, Maya. Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. Kingston: Documentext, 1970.
Mabus, Jesse L. "Brugh
na Boyne and the Irish Triple Goddess." Olympia: TESC, 1998.
Rara La Bel Fraicheur de l'Anglade. Legba nan bayé-a in McAlister, Elizabeth
(ed.). Angels in the Mirror: Vodou Music of Haiti. Roslyn: Ellipsis Arts,
1997.