Ways of asking

Tradition described: Palo Monte / Regla de Congo (Cuba)

Ways of asking

A palero does not consult a corpus; he or she asks the prenda, and the prenda answers through an instrument or through a person. Cabrera describes several ways, and the practitioner dictionaries in the owner's archive list them under adivinar: the vititi mensu, seeing with the mirror; the vititi nkobo, seeing with shells; the chamalongo; and the nfumbe itself, mounted on a practitioner in ceremony. Each is a way the dead one in the vessel is heard.

The chamalongo is the instrument of yes and no. In most houses it is four pieces of coconut shell, each with a pale inner face and a dark outer face, thrown on the ground before the prenda and read by how many land pale face up; some houses use thick sea shells, and one dictionary in the owner's archive insists that the Mayombe instrument is seven pieces, not four, and that four is a borrowing from the Lucumí obi — the coconut oracle of Regla de Ocha, whose five throws have names, Alafia, Etawa, Ejife, Okana and Oyekun. That resemblance is exactly why these pages do not give the Palo throws names or meanings: the readings of the chamalongo vary by house, are not the same as the obi's, and no scholarly source in hand sets out a table that could be published as “the” reading. The page that simulates the throw counts the faces and stops. The word chamalongo is also, in the same dictionary, a name for Lucero.

The vititi mensu — “to see with the eyes” — is a small round mirror set into the mouth of a horn, the mpaka, which is packed with the substances of the prenda and sealed; the tata gazes into it, and Cabrera's elders describe seeing in it what is asked about. It is not simulated here, because there is nothing a browser could honestly show. The fula is gunpowder: small piles set out and lit, the pattern of what burns and what does not answering the question put. And in ceremony the nfumbe may mount its perro de prenda and speak — the fullest answer, in the tradition's own terms, and the one furthest from anything a page can offer.

Not yet checked The description of the fula (gunpowder) rests on Cabrera, whose page reference has not yet been checked; the statement that the chamalongo pieces are seven rests on a single unattributed dictionary and is reported as its claim, not as fact.

Editorially reviewed against the sources named

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