'II

her. ''There were all the yuppies sitting there with their mouths · open, looking for God," she said. ''They are the kind of people who need something anyway, and he offe~ this to them. They're looking for peace and love and power. They're all nice people, and they really believe."

The anthropologist said she re­mains uncertain as to what those neo-lfa foUowe~ are leamin$, or should be learning, from Neimark.

"Phil's a revisionist," she said. "He wants to go back to the orig­inal religion, take the saints out. Santeria [ve~ions of lfa practiced ~ countries and cultures) is a slave religion. The slaves used it to rude their African gods from the Spanish and Cubans by substi­tuting Catholic saints. It spread from there.

"Phil has been ~g to learn about Y oruba religiOn, but what I've been trying to tell him is that the Yoruba have ~·even major subgroups and several marginal

. ones. They all place a different emphasis on different ~ods. So the babalawos arc doing different things in different places. And there arc no old babalawos left. Therefore, the !fa divination being done in Nigeria today is not the way it used to be done."

Ouest for purity "My pcrronal quest is to prac­

tice the religion in its original form," Neimark wrote in the monthly newsletter he sends to his "children." R.lther than become entangled in questions of authen­ticity, he advised his reade~ sim­ply to seck out a babalawo who demonstrates integrity, concern and a willingness to teach. "It's a matter of character, not dogma." hr c-.oncludcd.

While anthropologists argue the fine points of If a meaning-the validity or nonvalidity of slave­originated ve~ions, the value or lack thereof in revisionism, the questions of "we-ness and they­ness" that crop up when outside~ draw from a culture not their own-Neimark followers tend to dwell more on feelings and results.

Neimark's wife, Yassa, resisted !fa entirely during the first eight yea~ of their marriage. Three years ago, she asked her husband to take her for a reading. "I no­ticed that I was really defocused for the first time," she explained. "I was very confused. What should I do with my career? Should we have a baby? Should . we slay married?"

At the time she related this story, Yassa was pregnant with a child due in April. Neim.arlc has two offspring by a previous mar­riage, and the 30-year-old, Tanya, is an enthusiastic Ifa follower. "My 16-year-old son's mother won't let rum go ncar it," Neimark says ruefully.

During Yassa's read.in~, the babalawo (Neimark declines to di­vine for membe~ of his own fam­ily) revealed that Yassa had be­come so emotionally tied to her late grandmother that her own powers were restricted.

A poultry poultice "So we did a ceremony," she

said. "God. I was crying from that. I didn 't like having a chicken· rubbed over my body (to absorb the grandmother's spint). Out I knew it was the right thing to do.''

Armed with her warrio~. with her osain stationed at the door of her shop, Yassa saw business im­prove. "Within 48 hours of the ceremony, cvc~g staned lin­ing up for me,' she said. Yassa attended more ceremonies, until she reached a level at which she , could "crown" her orishas (they actually are given tiny crowns to wear) and become a priestess.

Meanwhile, Phil had gone to work on becoming a babalawo. He cut back on other activities and did more readings, more cer­emonies. Life in the Neimark household became vastly more .. African. One can almost hear Eshu chuckling and sec him puf­fing contentedJy on his cigar as Yassa now declares, "I Jove being

. the wife of a babaJawo. I'm very happy." .