THE TEACHING OF THE KUMINA
The Living Word of the Rite — spoken to the initiate who will carry the pot. Nzo a Nkisi ya Ngudi a Nkama — the House of the Nkisi of the Mother of the Hundred. The voiced companion to the Method.
Lesson One — The Opening Word
Listen, my child. Come in, and sit on the low stool, and let the door stand a little open behind you, for the white sun is going down and we begin at the hour we begin. Put down what you carried in your hands. You will need them empty tonight, because before this teaching is done I will ask you to carry a pot, and a pot is not carried with full hands.
You have come to learn the rite. Good. But hear me first, before any word of the rite: this is not a class, and I am not selling you a secret. I am an elder of the Kanda, and you are one of those who will one day carry what I carry. So I will not lecture you. I will hand you a thing, the way a thing is handed in our house — koko-a-koko, hand to hand, down the rope of the lineage. And the first thing I hand you tonight is the name of the whole teaching, and the name of the house in which it is kept, and the frame on which the whole rite hangs — who stands at its head, by what right it stands at all, and the one thing it must never become.
Hear me well, you who would carry the pot. We begin at the beginning, which is a name.
The rest of the Teaching is kept in the House.
You have heard the door open. The whole of it — the ten lessons, the elevation, the communion, the inheritance, read aloud in full — is given to the members of the Nzo a Nkisi ya Ngudi a Nkama. Cross the threshold and keep listening, from $9 a month.
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