How many libations had I participated in by now without realizing I had no idea what to do next if the ancestors we called on actually responded? There was no going back. More thinking, more intellectualizing, more emptiness, more desire. I was uncomfortable and eager. I had read about Hoodoo and “roots” on plantations saving people’s lives and being used in resistance movements but it had been very easy to rationalize these realities without thinking of them as living. Before much time had passed, I was invited to participate in what would become my first divination. It was a divination within the IFA tradition of the Yoruba people. As the diviner began to sketch parts of my life from the past and what was to come, I felt totally confident that my ancestors embraced me in victory in that very moment even as I had vaguely acknowledged them for the first twenty-seven years of my life. It felt like I was figuring out who I was for the second time; my encounter with Black Studies was the first. This was another epistemology that could not be completely theorized or intellectualized, nor could it be explained by or explained away by white supremacy, it was unfiltered power. With the ancestors tangibly in one hand and me being in my conscious African mind in the other, all things became aligned. Knowing who you are and not simply who you wish to be—this is the gift of finding one’s spiritual destiny. Now that many years have passed, it is hard for me to imagine how I was making decisions about my life without a relationship to anything outside of the material world. Living one dimensionally is like being a mouse in a maze. Likewise, I found that me having been a devout revolutionary, standing on the work of our ancestors but not investigating the ways in which we have traditionally been able to speak directly to them, was like having a gun and not knowing how to shoot it. I engage the ancestors regularly now and with more sacred sensitivity because I know how to hear what they are saying back to me, which comes with a level of moral responsibility. This gift in our culture also comes with the gift of peace of mind and confidence in what is coming. I imagine the stories we have read of the unconscionable bravery of our people was coupled at most times with the confidence of having negotiated with ancestral powers ahead of time. I believe finding your destiny is simply allowing yourself to be revealed to yourself by the divine source. In the olden days and in the current days we call this process “divination.” All African spiritual systems use some form of divination. If we study our own culture long enough it will easily appear. Finding my destiny as a New Afrikan was definitely a process of first encountering myself as an African, and secondly being brave enough to live as an African. Politics, ancestors, and magic—magic being our free will and grave intentions to act—is an extraordinary combination for unchartered liberation. Maferefun Olodumare Maferefun Ori Maferefun Orisha Maferefun Egungun, Ase. By Any Means Necessary
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