Babalawo and the Stream

I knew Babalawo, who knew the word, kept it safe. With it, he made the mysteries, became their father. Many years later he became known, and all the worlds would come, to ask Babalawo about mysteries. He would smile for he was gentle and tell them his stories. This is one of them.

Babalawo was once new, shone with it.
He dipped himself into a stream and tasting with bright flesh at last that cool flow beneath he leapt in. There he found a torrent instead of a stream and it raged with him in it.

Now in those days Babalawo was very strong. He knew the water, had traveled what seemed the whole of the world. He grasped the torrent and he flew with it.

Oh! He was so bright, so bold. His efforts sang upon the water, his great hands pure and golden. The sunlight seemed barely to touch him, as though he flew within that and the torrent too, flew as the world flies. Still as Sun, the world bent around him. Even your sight, you could not watch him for he would slip right through your vision throwing back great curves into space behind him.

He seemed so white.
So pure, was the shock. The first rock, jagged, took him like thunder that tore at his limbs. The second, it was cold, it took his face, cast it down. The third was dull, struck his arms. With them it took his strength.

Babalawo fell into in a dark place. Cushioned by blood spun webs, thick run from the places where he was torn, he fell and he fell until there was no more falling to be done.

Babalawo fell further and further down beneath the ground. He met a thing down there in the deep but it could not talk. Neither could Babalawo, for they were under the ground and it filled their mouths, so he talked in his head.

“What are you”?

“I am Baal Shem; I am master of the name. I make all that is, what it is. That is why I live here, under the earth where things grow.” Is what Babalawo heard.