ABSTRACT
The altar's banner, its intricately adorned plumed objects, and the satin dossal typically hung behind are intended to impress visually, as well as to evoke and invoke ancestral forces. The altar's principal function is to be the embodiment and engine of the lodge's potencia. The Efori Enongo banner depicts the advent or "birth of the Abakua in Africa." The embroidered landscape arrests the dramatic moment in which the Efo princess, Sikan, unwittingly captured a strange, fish-like creature in her water gourd at the bank of the Oddan River. The banner's landscape paints a geographical "space" transformed into sacred "place." The embroidered image depicts the mystical ecology of the secret's origin, as imagined, remembered, and recreated by generations of Cuba's Abakua. A metonymic magical logic links the sound, all the figures of the discovery event, and the drum that would embody and reproduce the Voice/ekue, including Sikan, Tanze, and the palm, the goat, Iyamba and the ceiba.
