Obatala incense sticks

How to Use It

Santería & Lucumí

• Peace offering: light a stick before his white shrine with a white candle and a little cotton, and ask him to cool arguments in the house.
• Clearing the head: burn it while resting a ball of cotton dusted with cascarilla on your head, asking him to quiet your thoughts and steady your judgement.
• Clean offerings: keep his space spotless, with no alcohol near it, and dispose of spent ash and flowers respectfully outdoors.

Folk Catholicism & Spiritism

• Our Lady of Mercy: devotees burn the incense before her image on 24 September and on Sundays, praying for those in prison or in trouble.
• Spiritual cleansing: smoke a white garment with the incense before wearing it to a misa espiritual or important meeting.

A Simple Working

• Cover a small table with a white cloth.
• Place a white candle, a glass of water and a ball of cotton on it.
• Dust the cotton lightly with cascarilla.
• Light the candle and one stick of Obatala incense.
• Touch the cotton to your forehead and ask for a calm head and a peaceful home.
• Leave the cotton on the table until the candle finishes, then keep it in a white cloth.

Pairs Well With

• Cascarilla: the white eggshell chalk sacred to him.
• White candle: his colour, for peace and clarity.
• Cocoa butter: a traditional white offering.
• Cotton balls: to cover and cool his offerings.

What You Receive

Obatala stick incense, a box of 6 hexagon packs with 20 sticks in each (120 sticks).

Origin & Lore

Obatala is the Yoruba Orisha of creation, clarity and the head (ori), father of many Orishas in Lucumí tradition. He is kept in white, honoured with white offerings such as cotton, cocoa butter, cascarilla (eggshell chalk), coconut and white flowers, and in Cuba he is syncretised with Our Lady of Mercy (la Virgen de las Mercedes), whose feast is 24 September.

Everything Obatala touches is white: his cloth, his cotton, his chalk and his calm. He is the elder of the Orishas, the sculptor who formed human bodies, and he asks for quiet and clean hands in return.

In one Yoruba story Obatala was given the task of shaping human bodies from clay. He drank palm wine while he worked and, unsteady, formed people with disabilities. When he sobered and saw what he had done, he swore off palm wine for good and became the protector of those he had shaped. This is why alcohol is kept away from him.