It’s bad enough that the so-called “expert” in the recent Brooklyn nonsense makes claims that “birds are not typically decapitated” when you’re making a sacrifice… or implying that the offering of fish and birds wrapped in blue cloth and dumped off a bridge was actually intended for Oshun… I can get over stuff like this because there’s only so much someone can learn from books or from second-hand sources.
What really frustrates me is the comment that, “If you make a sacrifice, you sacrifice the whole animal. The only time you cut the animal is if you’re going to eat it.” I hear more or less the same thing from the various experts, supporters, and even self-proclaimed practitioners. When I first got into the religion, I had read that same line, myself, and I believed it… up until I had actually participated in some sacrifices. Drummings and other communal events, sure, they birds might be eaten. But for sacrifices done as part of cleanings or ebo, which I imagine happens a lot more often, are they eaten? No. They are sacrificed to the orisha and they are disposed of in (hopefully) a respectful way.
Instead of being honest about it, it gets compared to Kosher practices, butcher shops, or countless other “acceptable” practices. Why do we have to hide behind the sugar-coated lie of, “Well, we almost always eat the animals. Only rarely does it get left out in a park, beach, cemetery, or other area like they report in the news….” It’s nonsense.
We need more people from within the community to speak up when there are news stories about our practices. We need more real people. We need normal folks that just happen to also be in the religion. These are the ones who need to engage the media and educate. All of it shouldn’t be left to the college professors, New Agers, and reporters who want to just sum things up by reading about it on Wikipedia.
Every time the media reports about sacrifices being found, the community seems to distance themselves from it. We take the stance of, “It wasn’t us. That must have been done by some troubled teens.” Or we try to blame it on psychos, Satanists, or just people who think they know what they are doing but don’t. I get that. And sometimes that’s totally justified. But why does it always have to be like that? Why isn’t there every anyone raising their hand and being, like, “Hey, guys. Sorry. My bad.”
Stop worrying so much about looking like the bad guy and being accepted. Some people are never going to like the idea that the religion sacrifices animals — whether they are cooked and eaten immediately afterward or not. They don’t like it. Fine. Who cares? Explain what we’re doing. Explain why. And when you find someone who isn’t just trying to take some grand-standing moral-high-road view about it, try to figure out how we can do what we need to in this religion without being seen in such a bad light by everyone else.
It starts small. When my close friends found out I was in this religion and that I’d been involved in animal sacrifices, they were generally appalled at first. Totally normal. But I explained why, that it wasn’t a routine thing, and that even though it’s part of the practice, it isn’t something that is enjoyed or taken lightly. Most people didn’t really have an issue with it after that.
Out of sight, out of mind. Until someone stumbles upon the remains, it’s there and it isn’t hurting anyone. It’s something that gets done but most people have no clue that it’s there. That’s how it should be. When you leave an offering or ebo, keep that in mind. Take extra time to make sure it remains undisturbed and unnoticed. If people stop finding the stuff, there isn’t a need to sugar-coat the situation or distance ourselves from it. If the remains are found and it gains some attention, do what you can to take responsibility for it. That doesn’t mean you have to go to the cops and announce you’re turning yourself in for illegal dumping, but at the very least you should use the attention the religion is getting to help educate the public on what the offering meant and try to learn from it so the next one doesn’t cause such a — literal and figurative — stink in your community.
