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SEERS ON THE FRINGES
Bring On Witches
And Vodou Priests By Shashoua Artwork by Jude Papaloko
The blood that flows through my veins comes from the land of flying carpets and magic flutes. My father (a devout Jew) broke tradition on numerous occasions to read a palm or two, and his cousin was very accurate at reading tea leaves. And while some laugh at all this hocus pocus, I have always honored those who have kept alive the light of their inner mystic, despite popular critique. In my 39 years on this chaotic planet, I must have experienced over a hundred different readings from palmists, tarot card readers, clairvoyants and astrologers. I have dabbled. However, my research for this article went beyond my "normal" metaphysical boundaries, which is probably why, as I sit here waiting for the arrival of a vodou priest, I am shaking, just a little, in my boots.
I'm a vodou virgin, you see. All I know about it is the propaganda that goes along with the word. "Vodou" (or voodoo) conjures up images of dolls with pins stuck in them and chickens being slaughtered and, oh gosh, I'd better stop - I'm frightening myself as I sit here in the Jakmel Art Gallery Courtyard in Miami. I feel as if I'm in another world, while frenetic business people flurry past in their SUVs - the end of another business day. Most passersby are going home to have dinner with their families, or they're going to the gym, or they're getting ready to watch the latest episode of their favorite soap opera. But not I. Oh no. I'm waiting for a vodou priest to wake up my ancestors and act as a medium for their messages.
Jude Papaloko The Genius is the artist and vodou priest who lives and works here. He has a childish face and kind eyes. If not for a few white hairs that attempt to prove he's past puberty, he could be 17. He's nimble and elf-like with long, long black dreadlocks that flow down his back when they aren't stuffed into his hat. The Jakmel Art Gallery bursts with his art, which mainly depicts mystical images in the form of the Mother. He calls it "Trance Art" or "Transcendental Art," as his paintings are like a meditation that flows from within. They are very much part of his vodou way of life. Vodou, he tells me, is more than a religion in terms of how people perceive the word today. It's a lifestyle. It's a combination of Yoruba, the original African religion, combined with Catholicism and the Haitian culture. The vodou practitioner has an ultimate respect and love of nature and can use its power to heal or harm. It seems the Black Magic propaganda of the religion is just a way that the Western world has sought to undermine the African culture, but vodou (named by some guy who obviously understood very little about this very dignified way of life) is a nature-based religion that cultivates love, joy and peace. Doesn't that sound nice? |
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Of course you can do harm with vodou, just like you can do harm without it. Jude informs me that two steps are needed to become a vodou Priest. First, the Spirit must choose to enter you, and you must be attuned to the other worlds - the yonder realms that others can't access. Secondly, the vodou priest is initiated by the temple and is trained in the esoteric art. As a vodou priest, Jude is the head of his community here in Miami. People come to him for healing, spiritual cleansing, a spiritual forecast and sometimes just an informal chat. He doesn't hold services, but proclaims he has the power to help heal the world and to make a difference. Within vodou tradition, as with all ancient "pagan" religions, there is ultimate equality between all living things including men and women. Like the Chinese concept of yin and yang, feminine and masculine, good and bad, light and dark must be perfectly balanced. If there's too much good, it's actually bad in the grand scheme of things. For instance, if we look at Catholicism and the recent sex scandals, it is easy to see how trying to be pure and holy when you are also human can rear its head in a very ugly, harmful way. On the contrary, the law of vodou is based on nature - human nature as well as the greener kind. Haitian vodou, Cuban Santeria (aka La Regla de Ocha), Puerto Rico's Lucumi, Trinidad's Shango Baptist and Brazil's Condomble are all different names for this religion that combines the original African Yoruba religion with Christianity and the dominant culture of the Island.
But back to the courtyard. I'm here for a ceremony to call my ancestors. Jude leads me back to the vodou temple, a small structure to the west of the courtyard. It's a cool Miami night and the air is pregnant with expectation. My expectation. What is going to happen? Here I am alone with a vodou priest, a man who is sometimes a man and sometimes more than that. Perhaps, I ponder, he is a demigod, like the Sumerian Gilgamesh or Ancient-Greek Achilles. He is dressed in his priestly attire - a long, black caftan with gold trimmings and the traditional African headdress. He lights the candles: one red, one white and one blue. He then burns myrrh incense to cleanse the negative forces from the air, and he pours a libation of wine upon the temple floor to pay respects to the thirsty ancestors. Once he turns off the light, all is dark except for the gentle flicker of the candles, which light the pathway for my ancestors, I presume.
He begins to mumble in Creole and taps his bare foot upon the temple floor. He cleanses his face with holy water. He picks up a rattle and starts to shake it rhythmically while his chants get louder and louder. His head is in his hands and he dramatically flicks his head back and then picks up the holy water to wash my hands. Possessed, he stands up and speaks to me in Creole. Then he marches out and urges me to follow. He walks in a circle, pours water over the floor and marches back again. I come out of my demigod daydream, and Jude comes out of his trance. "I think I have some messages for you." We go to the bar in the courtyard. He opens a beer and pours me some wine.
"Who came?"
I ask. He says that no ancestors came, but instead the deity known as the Gede came. He says I am a very old and very strong spirit that needs to stop meandering through life and do what I came to do which is help people. Mmmm. I like meandering. He says I have a question in my heart that needs to be answered. He is wrong. I have 25 million questions in my heart that need answering. He says I am searching for something. Aren't we all? I ponder. He prescribes a spiritual cleansing ritual, which he can administer for me or I can do it myself in the ocean.
After I leave, I do some research on this Gede spirit. It seems that Baron Samedi is the Chief Gede, and the Gede family of spirits, approximately 30 all in all, are responsible for the dead, for cemeteries and for procreation. I have to admit that I'm obsessed with cemeteries and sex. The message was enigmatic, but every good oracle is. The most famous Greek Oracle is "Know Thyself" (often incorrectly attributed to Socrates), and what can be more open to interpretation than that? Know Thyself. How profound and how true. But how? How to know thyself? This is the question of all time. Perhaps it is the one in my heart that Jude heard. I leave feeling quite exhilarated and quite in tune with the netherworld and with my new invisible Gede guides.
My next stop is a visit with a self-proclaimed witch, John Yost. It's a polar opposite experience to that of the vodou priest. Meeting with John is like meeting with your favorite gossiping aunt. Another gorgeous looking human being, John has huge snake-like eyes and features that belong to another time. He must be a model witch. He wears a gypsy-like scarf around his head and his fingers and neck display many amulets.
According to John, he is from a long line of witches and can trace his family tree back to where some of his ancestors were hung and burned during medieval times. His willingness to speak to me is born out of wanting to dispel the myths that surround witches. Let's face it, the word "witch" implies Western-born vodou. It revolves around nature and through the power of intention, prayer, meditation and focus, the learned witch can make things happen. You can call it magic if you want, but it's a power that people are born with. Desire. Focus. Create. It almost sounds like a recent business seminar I attended.
In keeping with witch and author Raymond Buckland, the fathers of Christianity in medieval times could not tolerate such freedom or personal power. Under Christian law, sex was illegal on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, for 40 days prior to Easter, for three days prior to receiving communion and from the time of conception until 40 days after the birth. There were only about two months out of the year in which married couples could have sex. Those that followed witchcraft however, loved sex as both part of their religion and for enjoyment. Of course, the patriarchy could not put up with this any longer. Witchcraft stood for everything Christianity did not: matriarchy, joy, love, freedom and personal power. Witches prayed to both gods and goddesses, and overall it was an intensely female-dominated religion. No authoritarian society wants its people to have personal power, especially not the second sex for Christ's sake! Hence, finally the killing of the witches began and when all was said and done, some nine million witches, mainly women, were burned or hung during these times. It was a holocaust of the worst kind.
John is very passionate about witchcraft. It seems that if you believe in nature, talk to plants and are a free spirit, you are probably a witch. And if you develop your psychic abilities, you become a very powerful witch. All the spells are just rituals to help you focus on a desired outcome, and for John, all the psalms in the Bible are spells. A spell is a prayer - nothing more, nothing less, he asserts. Perhaps some herbs are used and some incense is burned. Perhaps there's chanting or music to evoke a meditational ambiance. But nonetheless, it is a prayer.
John's own experiences are whimsical. He constantly speaks to different pantheons of gods and goddesses. He says they all exist, but none of them themselves are the ultimate source. The ultimate source is pure creative energy. He is animated as he speaks. He informs me that he has helped the police solve crimes. He wants to use his power to help find pedophiles, a passionate mission of his. While I was there he did a reading for me. All in all, it was fairly vague with nothing too specific, but he did mention that I have the eye of Kali and that I'm extremely psychic and intuitive. He insinuates that I am a fellow witch, and I must admit I do feel like an old witch sometimes.
According to John, he's met with dozens of famous spirits, from Lucile Ball to Jesus Christ. He says Jesus is a great spirit who swears belligerently, enjoys a good drink and during his life on earth was a very skilled magus - a practitioner of magic. Interestingly, practicing magic does not make you a witch. Freemasons, many of whom pull a lot of the strings in government, are all magi. But they aren't witches. To be a witch is to follow the religion of Wicca, which is to believe in the cosmological perspective - the belief in the feminine creative forces and the vital life force that throbs through the stems of all vegetation. So witches tend to be very kind to plants.
When I come home, I look up the Hindu deity Kali, and I discover she is a Goddess representing both the creative and destructive forces of nature. Coincidentally, much like the Gede.
My next stop takes me to the Yoruba Priestess, Yeyefini Efunbolade, a name given to her as she was initiated into the priesthood. It means "Mother of Purity." Her journey has been an interesting one. Born in Panama by African-Panamanian parents, she never learned about her African roots as a child. When her family moved to New York, her awareness of her African heritage awoke. She spent many hours in the Schomberg Library absorbing everything she could about the past. She went to listen to Olatunji, a world-famous master drummer, and she remembers her body becoming possessed. She says she didn't know what was happening as her body moved and vibrated involuntarily. But at the tender age of 16, she was scared. Olatunji explained to her that this was the voice of her ancestors. Eventually, she left the city and became one of the many wives of King Oba Oseijeman Adefunmi, whose kingship began in the newly founded Oyotunji African Village in South Carolina. She mothered three African princesses during her 16-year stay in the village, all the while traveling independently as a Yoruba Priestess. A radiant woman today, Yeyefini has three lines on each side of her face that were etched into her golden-brown skin upon her initiation into the Yoruba priesthood.
I experience a reading with her, which is by far the most tangible. Her methods seem to include astrology, numerology and chanting, while her tools consist of shells, stones and bones. She shakes them and chants and then passes me two stones to shake and then she puts one each into both my hands. This ritual goes on for a couple of minutes.
She then adds up her numbers and begins her prophecy. If there's one thing that amazes me with these modern-day mystics it's their stream of consciousness, which flows like a river once they start talking. Yeyefini instructs me to write everything down and then to begin my reading. She says that I worry too much and this is causing acid in my stomach. I must be careful of my digestive system and sexual organs. She says that I must purchase some Bach Flower Rescue Remedy to stop the anxiety from having adverse effects on my body (which I did!) and to take an offering to the ocean every full moon, to cleanse away all my troubles. She says I am like a river and my current often changes direction (how true) and that I am ruled by Oshun Ana, the goddess of love and beauty. I mustn't let another woman sleep in my bed or wear my clothes as they could steal my mojo! I have the power of attraction. I can attract both good and bad, so I must use this power wisely. She says some people see me as an airhead but that I always end up shocking them with my insight. An insightful airhead. That's me, I guess. This year, anything creative and artistic will be good. Well, good then!
Finally, the research for this article took me to Omian aka "The Bringer of Light." A newer-age kind of psychic therapy, Omian talks simply of love. Sore foot? Broken heart? Love is the answer. And we're not talking the third-party kind, but instead love for the person you criticize the most - yourself. Knowing this was my last psychic trip, all I wanted to ensure was that when I went to commit all these awesome experiences to my PowerBook, writer's block wouldn't rear its ugly head to haunt me. Omian proceeded to stand above me and chant mystical sounds that emanated from her chest. She pressed my crown, third eye and heart chakras as her melodious chant filled the room. Anxiety and stress couldn't take it. They left immediately. And I remained, peaceful and centered. She finished her chant and said, "I have a message for you write from your heart and all will be well."
A diverse group of people visit psychics, from poets to priests to politicians. And people of note, such as Nancy Reagan. Marissa, a friend of mine from Greece, loves to dabble. She says, "It's a cultural phenomenon that attracts the dreamy creative spirit, rather than the analytical thinker." Marissa's own belief in metaphysics have most certainly been passed down through her family. When she has a problem, she calls her mother who chants a secret, silent prayer. While yawning and making the sign of the cross, she usurps her daughter's negative energy. Marissa swears that she instantly feels less anxious after her mom performs this ritual. Although Marissa has visited many psychics, she recalls the time she went to see a Buddhist energy doctor. She remembers distinctly that this man attracted a crowd of the most affluent kind, even though his gathering was in a Miami ghetto. The parking spaces were packed with Mercedes and BMWs. She met doctors and wealthy business people, all of whom had found some sense of peace by visiting the energy doctor. One woman told Marissa that he had cured her of obesity. Once grossly overweight, she was now slim and sylph-like. Another man had managed to wean himself of drugs with the doc's help, a much nicer alternative to a halfway house. As for Marissa, she wanted to motivate her sex drive. The healer placed his hands on her abdomen. Alas, his magic took a couple of months to make Marissa into the sex maniac she wanted to be, but from what she tells me, she is fine now. And there are many more fantastical stories to tell, but the truth is, most people keep this little habit under their hat. It's like the secret that everyone has, but no one shares.
In my opinion, it's appropriate that in this day and age, there is a resurgence of the mystic and ancient religions. With the rise of feminism and a recognition that no race is superior, the institutionalized religions just don't always satisfy the fringe soul. These are interesting times, when the human consciousness is shifting. And it's good. This is how human growth occurs. It's how we all evolve into better human beings. So bring on the witches, wizards and alchemists. Bring back the magic, the full-moon parties and the ancient reverence for the mystery of our somewhat perplexing, but ever-joyful existence.
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