Calabash
Cosmic Gourd of the womb
For the Calabash (Crescentia cujete)
–
I abolish the calendar,
so that I can bleed with the cycle of the cosmos.
I abolish hours, minutes, seconds, days and years
so that I can feed the great mother under this bush
soaked with my blood.
I.
I wait in hope for you.
I squat under the calabash tree,
taking up residence with a congregation of grandmothers and grandfathers
whose voices rise,
my prayers lodged in my throat,
ascending
like a stairway to the heavens –
intermingling technologies
crossing etheric boundaries and songlines.
I place my body on the ground,
releasing tears and fears.
My body, a mass of particles and waves
out of sync with time,
and thus, in this world with even moons and months, twelve –
I am out of connection with you.
II.
(dis)ease has festered in my womb, and I am beginning to clear
blockages
to receive you, dear one.
I abolish the calendar,
so that I can bleed with the cycle of the cosmos.
I abolish hours, minutes, seconds, days and years
so that I can feed the great mother under this bush and tree
soaked with my blood.
I make fertility medicine and beat sounds into the gourd,
echoes of life returning to my soul
when your alien and phallic blossoms fall.
On evenings, I make mandalas,
portals and medicine to connect back to you.
In Yoruba cosmology
the world is two distinct yet inseparable realms:
Aye (this world) +
Orun (otherworld the spirit world);
the orishas in the upper hemisphere
hold order.
Maferefun Obatalá, Èṣù-Ẹlẹ́gbára, Oyá and Ochún,
great mothers and great fathers
looking down in longing for elemental exchange.
And, I below,
with the living,
shadowing under this holy tree,
laying my supplication and hucha deep into Pachamama
asking for a revival,
for a reversal of blood.
Within this holy vessel,
within this broken body.
III.
May the veil thin
and may this blood that is stagnant and invalid
find a way to course through the womb, flesh and marrow.
May the container of secrets give rise to divine feminine force,
may the mysteries and traumas of past generations evaporate with your
becoming.
I close my eyes and watch you grow
inside me, next to me
and away from me,
creating a life of your own
with blood no longer sunken, heavy,
& inbred.
I have negotiated freedom
within the songlines,
within the mother lines,
going back for generations under the stars.
Upon the soil where we women-mothers and grandmothers
shake in union,
where our voices tremble with truth, no longer
in denial.
Here we dance by the 13 moon.
The following are some resources that have guided me on the path to explore the sacred nature of the calabash:
The Calabash, a Cultural and Cosmological Constant
Evolutionary anthropologists have confirmed that the calabash, Lagenaria siceraria, has been cultivated in West Africa for at least four thousand years, more than enough time for it to carve out its place as the cultural object par excellence. Waterproof and lightweight, its hardened and hollowed-out shell is used to create everything from rattles to receptacles to ritual regalia.
Modupe, Baba Yagabe Onilu
Calabash is the embodiment of Women’s Mystical Power, the ability to control physical and spiritual forces, to create life through procreation and the sustenance of life.
The Vagina is the 3rd dimensional portal to Mother Earth. In order for all souls to have a physical experience here on this planet, they must come through her divine portal.
The Calabash seeds driving across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to the Americas, then root and grew wild in the New World.
Llewellyns Herbal Almanac Cookbook Collection
According to the griots, Osayin collected all the medicinal herbs of the forest as well as the knowledge of how to use them. As a spiritual herbalist, he tucked all of his botanicals and knowledge into a guiro, or calabash. There were numerous other orishas with helpful characterises to the business of the world, but Osayin wanted to keep the knowledge of herbs out of their reach–high up in a tree, hidden in a calabash.
In Yoruba, the Calabash shape is taken to represent heaven and earth with an extended meaning representing the entire universe. Within the Calabash there is a mystical zone in the form of an alternate universe or the entrance to another World, and Orisha - Vodun - Spirit immortals and practitioners can travel between these two worlds. The "marriage" of these two substances was a sexual metaphor for the union of semen and menstrual blood to create life.