Mrs. Rosa Caveira

A Pomba Gira from the Himalaya

Mrs. Rosa Caveira is an only mystery. Entity little known, has reputation of wonderful healer and unquiet aspect. In the popular images, ironically is difficult to find in Brazil, it shows a half skull body and half human being covered with layer and tunic.
In the traditional ways is said that she is the “wife” of Mr. João Caveira, Exu of the “Old Guard” of the cemetery, right arm of Omulu Orisà and Head of the Line of the Caveiras, a group of servers very loyal and applied.
In colloquy to the foot of congá, with some brothers of faith who also circulate for the ways of some religions of origin bantu (Kimbanda, Cangerê, Cabula), I heard that Mrs. Rosa Caveira Skull Rose) is legend and a protagonist of innumerable histories.

One of them counts that Rosa was born in the East. Seventh son of a simple family of the field, since early learned with her parents the arts of the cure, therefore they were famous shamans healer. Her dead grandmother was her first guide spiritual.
In dreams, the beloved soul of ancestral teaches and advised the granddaughter. Rosa was a privileged girl. To the nineteen years she knew one shaman much older. They had gotten passionate themselves and married. It then very started an intense period of attendance spiritual to the citizens of their village and the outskirts.
Her life occurred full of merits and blessings. Rose would die after her husband, tasting the most needed pleasure of a dedicated existence.

Another legend is about the secret of her name…
Around of a little house where her family lived a wild garden of roses existed. In the end of the pregnancy, her mother did not have time to ask for helps the local obstetrician and the girl was born there same.
From there the name: Rose.
Why Caveira (Skull)?
In certain regions of the East, over all in India, Tibet and Butão, some shamans and yogis uses the skull of human being as a ritual globet.
The Skull, thus used, is not related with black magic or any black magic art.In the Tibetan Buddhism the Lamas uses a skull as a glass. Also they make a small drum with two halves of skull. In India it is called Damaru and the Skull of Kapala.When I knew the legend of Rosa Caveira, immediately I perceived the connection with the traditions yogis and Tibetans. In my imagination I “saw” the great master seated in one high mountain, holding a skull in deep of meditation.
It would be Rosa Caveira Tibetan?
It can be that the legend has if Occidentalized and the original vegetal, that could be the flower of lotus, if has transformed into a rose.
In this case her name would be Pema in Tibetan. In Sanskrit, her name spiritual would be Kapalapadma (Lotus Caveira ou Skull Lotus).
In the Buddhist and magical tradition of the Tibet, Mongolia and the outskirts, exist many histories and legends with the same characteristics of mentioned here.
The fact is that as Brazilian Pomba Gira, in the day-by-day of the Kimbanda Temples, Rosa Caveira is a little different of her sisters. It did not firm herself as “woman of the life” or nomadic delinquent.
But if it perpetuated as powerful healer and bridge enters the diverse kingdoms of the astral.One another curiosity surrounds this Pomba Gira. Rosa Caveira works and vibrates in the cemetery…In some eastern traditions, the same ones mentioned above, certain group of adepts uses the cemetery for works spirituals of cure and transformation. They are called Kapalikas or carrying of the skulls!
The women of the group, beyond the skull carry one trident. Certain time I was walking with an Indian friend for the streets of the center of São Paulo.
Suddenly, ahead of a religious article store, it literally he was paralyzed!
A great red e statue of Pomba Gira was ahead of us. Naked, majestically, holding one trident and with a skull in the feet. Shivaji, my Indian friend, if bent the image at one's feet and said:
“Trishula Bad Kapala! What you it makes here”
Trishula Bad Kapala is the Mother of the Trident and the Skull, a feminine representation of the sacred one that can go up to around the cremation places.
It destroys the ghosts malignant and the demons eat the illusions human beings and rescue the souls of the hands of the beings of the darkness’s.
Her aspect can be “terrible”, but the light and the goodness emanate of her heart. Behind the morbid aspect of Rosa Caveira with certainty the same light shines. In her if we find the East and the Occident, the red and the white, the life and the death. I wait to have the humility of Shivaji and also always to bend me ahead of the sacred feminine.
Terrible or Sweet, what’s the matter?