Encyclopedia of the Known Universe Vol I (excerpt 18 – appendix to “h” entry on history)
The stories that humans tell are similar, with variations, as though we have been telling the same story since the beginning.
We have done our best to describe the phenomena of our existence so that we can properly identify it and venerate it.
The Consortium of Human History is an organization based on the planet Earth, and though the general consensus on the planet is that humans are the only advanced civilization of beings in the known universe, the Consortium has served as the official representatives of Earth to all other advanced alien species in the known universe.
For this reason, the story of humanity that has filtered across the universe is the story that has been told by the Consortium. The Consortium tells the story of modern day humanity as the children of the first sentient civilization to inhabit Earth, the First People, and it is the belief of the Consortium that all tales of religion and superstition that modern humans tell can be attributed to the First People, who appeared as gods and monsters to early humans.
The Consortium is well aware of the sacred feminine power that emanated out of Africa and proliferated around the globe. There are extensive writings within their annals about seemingly divine females who possess abilities beyond the normal wonder of femininity; women capable of mind reading or manipulating water.
One such feminine power described in their works is the Ìyàmi Àjẹ́, of Yoruba origin in Nigeria. The Aje was created with great cosmological power by the orisha Oshun after she was ignored by the male orisha at the creation of the world. When the male orisha failed in their attempt to create the world as Olodumare, the creator of all things, requested, they realized that Oshun was necessary and they could not succeed without her.
The Consortium notes that the Aje has counterparts in many other cultures, and they are careful to highlight a connection to the Alia, which originally manifested in the eastern section of the African continent, and derives its moniker from the Holy Roman Empire. The Consortium managed to extract DNA samples from people in the past who were identified by others to be the Alia or a person of lesser powers known as Aliarum, as well as Iyami Aje, her Ògbóni or offspring, and Oṣó, her husband. The Consortium believes that all of these individuals trace their lineage to the first people, a common mother with extraordinary abilities that she passed down to her progeny. The Consortium notes that they are aware that not every offspring of this extraordinary first mother displays abilities, and they have yet to determine what causes the manifestation of these abilities.
Even though the Ifa and Yoruba religions have proliferated around the globe, they are viewed as primitive by some who associate them with African cultures that are not generally respected on Earth. Traces of the religions can be seen in practices throughout the continents of the Americas and has influenced religious traditions such as Voodoo and Santeria.
– Issue 1 of 3 – The Aje Returns
The mother of Maria Moreno, Isabel, is not a witch, contrary to popular belief among those who know her. Those who call her friend, say she is a witch jokingly when she calls them over the phone just as they are talking about her or when she knows the word on the tip of their tongues when they are unable to retrieve it (she does this in Spanish, English, Portuguese, and several Central and South American indigenous languages). Those who don’t know her well hurl the word like an epithet when they notice her when she believes herself to be alone and she does something extraordinary like lift something that should be too heavy or disappear completely in a split second.
Maria’s mother is not well. Isabel has been racked with guilt over the fracturing of her relationship with her daughter, and maybe it was the mountains of regrets that she threw herself down constantly; or maybe she is bipolar just like her Tia Susana who had surprisingly outlived all of her siblings and still lives in Cuba, and her dramatic shifts in mood were exacerbated by the falling out with her daughter; or maybe still, she was touched by the devil like some believe and she was a bride of Satan himself.
Isabel retreated to the woods after she had Maria committed in her teens for her steadfast delusions of an alien encounter in her youth. Maria became obsessed with the world she said she had visited.
“They were pretty black people and they had real fast spaceships Mami, and they lived in these pyramids. Their plants were red! Mami it was real, it was.”
Maria insisted and she even tried to show Isabel the spot where she had met the man and boarded his ship before they blasted off to his home planet. But Isabel was frightened of her daughters story. It sounded like a scary story her mother had told her when she was young, about the Dudu Aje, dark skinned and practitioners of dark magic, actual witches, who wanted to eat little girls like Isabel to reclaim the magic of the African ancestry that she claimed through her father’s family.
“Don’t get mixed up in that basura,” her mother warned as she crossed herself and then the young Isabel. “It is a blasphemy to our faith and it courts the devil. The aje are the devil’s wives.”
Isabel would always believe that and she still hates herself to this day. It may be another reason for her erratic behavior, her living in the run down shack in the woods and hardly ever bathing. Isabel has been at odds with her heritage, with the magics that fill her body and leak it’s seams, because of her mother’s prejudices.
“Use the evil eye your father taught you,” her mother explained, “and the Aje will smell that magic and come to eat you up. Divine something in the bones? The aje will know and gobble you up. You can have no superstitions because that smells like magic and it will make them come, all of them. They will rise from their graves, beautiful and so scary, black as night and reflecting the moon, the stars, all the night sky, and they will rip you apart. They will take what they want and discard the rest, because you are not like them.” She kept this part to a whisper. She loved Isabel’s father, he had worked hard to give then something in the poverty of their life in Cuba, but his dark skin and rough hair embarrassed her when she was with her family. Her family was definitely poor, but they were all very beautiful Spaniards with hair like silk and fair skin. She made Isabel’s father ashamed of his heritage as well and he never told her about her awesome power, her connection to the aje. So when it called to her, Isabel did not know how to process it and this may be yet another reason why she is currently unstable.
Isabel is well known in the Asheville woods that she haunts like a hermit. No one bother her, and she keeps to herself, because the world left her behind. Because she lost her footing in it and got confused, and now she is afraid that her daughter may have been right. Maria had been captured by the aje and returned for some reason, and now three of them are standing eerily in the woods, amongst thin branches and leaves like confetti. They are dressed all in white and they have hoods that obscure their faces, and Isabel notices that one has dark skin, one brown, and one fair.
She stands at the square next to her door that should be a window but it has no glass and she is panicking, breathing heavily and hugging herself. She had avoided them all these years, but now they were back to rip the black out of her.
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