Magda, thanks for posting this story, I loved it.

I think any religion is invalidated where it becomes driven by greed, and unfortunately, the Christian religion seems particularly prone.

Really cool you did not lose sight of those spritual ancestral roots.

I too got interested in Yoruba, but in Cuba.

There, they experienced attempted suppression of it firstly by their Roman Catholic oppressors (who first took the people there from Africa), and then early communist aetheism, which appeared after the Cuban Revolution, but which has since died out.

The result is the Yoruban religion now practiced by most Cubans (At least those I met), it is called “Santeria”.

All of the Orishas are there in all their glory, celebrated in shrines in peoples houses, often multiple spirits, in multiple rooms, depending on who lives there.

The shrines are made to look vaguely Roman Catholic, so RC adherents not versed in Yoruba don’t immediately see that the shrine is actually Yoruban, though they have no fears of suppression now, it is all out in the open, but stll disguised by tradition.

Everyone wears a coloured stone bracelet, to show which spirit they have been assigned by their Yoruban Iyabo (priest), after their initiation which includes dressing all in white for a year.

I still have an Ellegua bracelet that I bought in Cuba, but now broken, unfortunately, in a jar here at home in UK, that I hope to repair one day.

I love that the Yoruban religion is so entwined with Music, and have found that with an increasing awareness of it, participating in it becomes a kind of meditative experience with huge personal benefits.

Apologies I still have not come along to your instagram forum, there is a residual account on my devices (my daughter!), that needs to be removed to give me access, but now I really have to come along!

She loves your music too btw, I pointed her at one of your youtube videos.