Caurí: The Word of the Saint

In the beginning, the sea goddess Yemayá gave birth to the world - all the people, animals and plants of this world, the gods and saints of the other world, and the means for the two realms to communicate: the sacred cowrie shells. So say thousands of years of tradition brought from Africa by enslaved Yoruba people to Cuba, where it merged with Catholicism to form the Lucumí religion, often called Santería.

This video documents Santería in all its complexity. It explains the pantheon of gods and goddesses, and the foods, clothes, animals, festivals, colors, numbers, songs, and dances associated with each. It also explains the incredibly intricate system that has been used for generations as the means for the saints to communicate with humans: dilogún. In dilogún, there are 16 cowrie shells (in Spanish, caurí), each of which has its own name, saint, and set of meanings. Furthermore, each shell has 101 positions that the reader must interpret, setting aside the 100 paths that do not matter to find the appropriate one. These messages explain what has happened and what may happen, thereby helping believers navigate periods of hardship.

This documentary disproves stereotypes about Santería by highlighting its beauty, tradition, and ways by which its priests and specialists act as the bridge between the saints and their devotees, using the tool of the sacred cowrie.

Caurí: The Word of the Saints
dir. Luis Acevedo Fals
Cuba, 1996, 27 minutes
Spanish with English subtitles

Bibliography
Barnet, Miguel. Afro-Cuban Religions. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2001.
Bascom, William R. Sixteen Cowries: Yoruba Divination from Africa to the New World. Bloomington, IN:     University of Indiana Press, 1980.
González-Whippler, Migene. Introduction to Seashell Divination. New York: Original Publications, 1992.
Mauge, Conrad E. Odú Ifá: Sacred Scriptures of Ifá. Mt. Vernon, NY: House of Providence, 1994.

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