The Calabash of Òsain

Nothing in this tradition is consecrated without the leaf. And the leaf belongs to Òsain.

This volume sets three branches of that inheritance side by side: the Lukumí houses of Cuba, the Yorùbá record of Ifẹ̀, and the jêje-nagô terreiros of Bahia — with a Congo–Lukumí concordance drawn from the Cuban record. Five hundred and fourteen entries, each with its botanical identity, its owner òrìṣà, and the odù that governs it where the tradition names one.

They were never coordinated. Yet the same leaves keep surfacing under the same owners, doing the same work — four masculine and four feminine, four gún and four èrò, on both sides of the Atlantic. That convergence is the argument of this book.

Where a reading could not be established it is marked Unknown. What belongs in the mouth of the teacher has been left there.