Asojano Arará – Dance
Asojano is the Arará name for the god of illness, healing and the earth. In santería he is called Babalú Ayé; the Fon usually call him Sakpata, the Yoruba Sopona.
The deity
- Names: Wikipedia gives his Arará name as Asojano; EcuRed lists per temple, among others, Asoyín, Parará and Aluá (Matanzas), Daluá (Jovellanos) and Afrimaye (Perico).
- Domain: the earth, and smallpox and other infectious diseases.
- Saint: everywhere he is the San Lázaro with crutches and leprosy (17 December).
- Clothing and colour: he wears clothes of jute sacking; his colour is violet.
The dance
According to EcuRed, Babalú Ayé always arrives in the dance as a sick man: back bent, hands stiff, limping and weak, sometimes falling. With his aja he shoos the flies from his open wounds and sweeps the air clean of bad influences. The other dancers join in a circle, bent over and limping. In a Yoruba story, Sopona even stumbles when he tries to dance.
Sackcloth and raffia
In santería and Palo, sackcloth is used in rituals as a sign of his humility; he is also dressed in sackcloth with a raffia fringe, the mariwó.
In Cuba
Babalú Ayé is syncretised with Saint Lazarus and regarded as particularly miraculous. On 17 December, tens of thousands of devotees gather at the leprosarium church of San Lázaro in El Rincón, near Havana. See also the Babalú Ayé dance page.