woman was like an Oshun woman but more macho. Both were considered to be extraordinarily erotic.
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One of the celebrants was strikingly different. Compared to the classic simplicity of the priests, this one dressed out like something from Mardi Gras: red and white flapped breech-skirt, each flap with a symbolic emblem, and a full-sleeved shirt of silver foil. The head was completely covered by a mask, also of silver foil, and topped by a sea-blue head scarf. It looked like a fat snowman with a blue head, but it was the egungun, the dancing figure of the dead. According to tradition, no one was to know the identity, or even gender, of the person in the egungun costume, but the diminished population in the village made it merely a matter of counting heads to see who was absent, and from the size of the dancer you could tell it was a male.
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The sun had come out between rain storms and the midday heat bore down. A few of the villagers had gone barefoot, and I started without shoes, too, but quickly hopped into themthe sandy white soil was blistering. The processional rounds of the altars that we followed for the next couple of hours was a microcosm of the spiritual journey a new initiate makes. Just as a yaguo receives the various gods that will guide and protect his or her life, so we broiled under the sun paying homage to them.
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First, of course, was Elegba, as he is in every prayer, ritual, invocation or chantor gathering of Baptists. Elesin was back among us, whirling and singing praises in Yoruba, lobbing candy at the thatch-covered shrine next to the oil barrel drum. Next to the cone-shaped laterite head on the low wooden plank serving as altar were beer cans, gum wrappers, chicken feathers, dried blood and a goat's head. To some of my cohorts, it seemed completely non-holy, but that was probably the point.
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The Warriors were next, and now Yemonja took the lead, grinding her hips, opening her legs to the congas before Ogun and Ochosi, whose side by side temples spilled over with iron pots, chains, arrows, metal implements, even a toy rifle. She was
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