Kúlítɔ Nùwíwá – Ancestor Festival
Today we are happy to announce the beginning of the 9-day Kúlítɔ Nùwíwá Ancestral Feast and Celebration! This celebration starts every year on the first Kúlítɔzangbe of the year. Kúlítɔzangbe is the 9th of the sacred 9-day cycle called the Gba Azan.
During this time, many activities are engaged in to show ancestral appreciation, veneration, and to also bring their power into your lives and families’ lives. One of the primary things during this time is to bring out the agan, or ancestral masquerade (depicted in the image above), of certain ancestors in one’s family. This is an annual time of remembrance, reflection, and empowerment to your own personal ancestors.
During this time we also engage in rituals of ancestral cleansing, elevation of various ancestors in need of such, and ancestral healing where needed. Part of this is done through a ritual called ikú joko which means to sit with the ancestors in the Yorùbá language. It is a ritual guided by properly trained ancestor priests to connect individuals and families directly with certain of their remote and sometimes not so remote ancestors. powerful ritual indeed! The ancestors literally “show up” during these powerful ceremonies.
During this time we also go over our personal mission statements where the ancestors are concerned and make corrections and adjustments where needed. This is in reference to those things that you commited to carrying out in relation to the ancestors when you wrote your personal mission statement. (Contact us about mission statements)
Sit around, tell and remember stories concerning your ancestors. Praise their names. People are encouraged to create mlanmlan (oríkì ìdílé in Yorùbá) for their family lineage. Mlanmlan are types of poetic sayings that characterize the attributes of certain ancestral individuals and of the lineage in general. They are passed along generationally and are improved upon with each generation.
This 9-day ritual time is as much about the social condition of our collective community as it is about direct and personal bloodlines. Additionally, this 9-day period is set to re-energize our connection to spirit, because without the ancestors we have little to no connection to the other worldS.
About Ancestor Worship and Veneration
The xexemedodo (heh-heh-meh-dough-dough), or spiritual science and cosmology of Kúlítɔ Nùwíwá (ancestral ceremonies), is a process of connecting to the invisible, as an intentional practice to locate yourself in the process of truly and honestly seeing others and to know the other within you. Ancestral ceremonies are cultural ritual tactics and methods related to cosmology, ontology, and epistemology to connect Afrikan humanity to spirit. They are rituals in which the local community and people call in spirit (i.e., Kúlítɔ – ancestors) to be the driver of activities or, said differently, allow spirit to be the generator of culture and knowledge production within the participatory and communal process. Ancestral ceremonies sustain joy, culture, and methods of survival and resurrection.
The intimate practice of ancestral ceremonies with self, spirit, and community helps to build internal power within people and within the internal relationships of people who are engaged in movements for collective healing, liberation, and Sovereignty. Ancestral ceremonies support individuals and communities to see each other beyond this material world, and assist individuals and communities to connect to ancestors as a source of wisdom and power. They humble us to truly actualize the reality that we are only servants to higher beings that are responsible for our being here.
Ancestral ceremonies are a dance with spirit, the soul’s way of interacting with the other worlds, the human psyche’s opportunity to develop a relationship with the symbols of this world and the spirits of the other.
Ancestral ceremonies have their own unique energies, spirits, and ancestors driving the relationships, expressions, and activities. People and community participating, facilitating, and invoking ancestral ceremonies determine the elements needed, time commitment, and values to make the ritual work. However, the following are very important as for base dos and donts:
– Only call upon your own blood ancestors maternally and paternally. Do not call on or pray to other’s ancestors
– Make sure that the entity you are calling and praying to is an actual ancestor. This is part of the spiritual science of ancestral worship. What we mean by this is, for example, someone may have passed a few decades ago, but they may currently be reincarnated on earth. This is one reason not only many ancestral prayers are not working, but they are actually causing harm in the lineage. We don’t give prayers to living humans. Thus, this is where involvement in the actual culture comes into play. One would get readings from qualified priests to see if these people are still in whatever other realm, or if they are indeed on this earth. This is crucial.
– Offer foods and items that they liked that did not bring them or others harm. For example, you don’t want to offer alcohol to an ancestor that alcohol caused problems for.
– Don’t call upon ancestors who were harmful to the family and the community. We do not need those spirits given an opening to come back and do the same things or worse than what they did when here before.
During times as this grand 9-day festival, food is offered generously. As 9 is the ancestral number, We suggest offering 9 plates of 9 different food items. Other instructions can be obtained through the email contact below.
– Don’t call upon ancestors who have not been properly healed who needed healing
Ultimately, this great ceremony is set to realign us with our familial destiny.
* A key to pronouncing Ajã and other related languages like Yorùbá, Ga, Igbo and the like is knowing how the vowels are pronounced. The following is a guide.
wékun asi – vowel
ǒ, ó, à, ɔ́, ɔ̀, á, ɛ̆, ɛ́, ɛ̀, è, é, í, ì, ĭ, ú, ù
Vowels like “ɔ” and “ɛ” are what are considered open vowels. They are often nasal. The “ɔ” (ọ in Yorùbá) is pronounced more like “aw” and the “ɛ” (ẹ in Yorùbá) is pronounced more like “eh” but from the back of the throat causing the open sound as the “a” in bat. “e” is pronounced “eh” and not like “ee” in the word “seen”. “u” is pronounced like the “oo” in “food”. “a” is pronounced like the “a” in “father”. “i” is pronounced like the “ee” in the word “seen”.
