Good afternoon, I want to thank you for share your knowledge and for your time. Can you please help me with some information about Demple lacroix, how to serve him, with Saint represents him, colors or wherever you can share. Thank you again
Hi there,
So, the Lakwa family is deep, wide, and full of Gede that may or may not appear in the broader regleman of the religion. It's not unusual for there to be Gede specific to a lakou or lineage, or even a region.
I'm not familiar with the this particular Gede. Did autocorrect maybe butcher the name?
All Gede are different and want different things. Piman is a good basic Gede drink, but not all Gede will accept it (and even get offended if offered!) Most Gede will accept black, white, and purple, but that can also vary. There are lots of different saints for Gede as well. Gede service depends on where you are from and how you have been taught.
If the name was reflected incorrectly, feel free to send another message and I'll see if I can help more.
Yet another Sunday gone by with not a single word written in Neon 🥺 I will finish this story. By the grace of the gods lmao!
Meanwhile, since I,haven't updated on this blog in two weeks, have another random snippet of Alastor and his mother from The Devil's Forked Path:
~
In the early hours right before sunrise Alastor's mother woke him and ushered him outdoors. There was the tire swing. There was the mound nearby where Alastor's father had buried the bird, that clearing of earth free from grass where Alastor had spent countless hours scuffing his feet; grass was growing back.
"Mama," he said. "What are we doing?"
That early morning sweetness clung to everything; that humidity that didn't suffocate yet, that aura of blue previous to dawn that whispered with bugs in trees and the scuffing of nearby wildlife.
They knelt in the dirt near that tire swing and she beckoned him close. Near to her again, he was able to see how her eyes gleamed with unfallen tears as she reached to a pack at her side and took out some items.
"A lesson for you this morning," she whispered. "A lesson about Gede. About Mother Mary, and Gedeon in tandem, because they watch over us both at once. Take this," she handed Alastor a stick.
"Draw in the dirt. A crossroads."
Still sleepy, Alastor sat with his bare feet digging into the earth beneath him and did as she asked. When the crossroads was complete, she placed a little white candle in the center and lit it reverently, giving Alastor a cigarillo to offer to the god, and placed her own offering there next to the candle of a small glass which contained rum.
Gede.
An invisible guardian, an enigma of chaotic energy who smiles with unhinged grace and protects with the same zeal. A figure, his mother once told him, who appears physically as a well dressed man in a suit and a top hat, carrying a scythe.
"Greet him with respect," his mother reminded him gently.
"Bonjou, Gede," he murmured.
"Bonjou," he mother echoed, laughing a little.
He cast her a look of nervousness and she said, "Oh Al, our Gedeon has a sense of humor. There are no wrong prayers with him. You should ask him for protection."
If Alastor shut his eyes he could nearly vividly imagine it, this spirit with a boisterous laugh and and a wildness who would scoop you in long arms or cut you down with his scythe just as eagerly any way; that perhaps Gede's laughter fell onto the wind and cut like a weapon and made the candle flicker oh so slightly in the humid air while Alastor's mother was muttering her own prayer in her native language.
Alastor's prayer was silent. It was in his heart, in his mind; it filled his blood with a simmering of longing that he could not comprehend. He longed for that wildness for himself. He longed for that ease of laughter, and imagined that if the god would speak with him, it would be with a suave carefree grace, that Gede's heart and soul was like a drum beat of dance and song and language.
Perhaps Gedeon liked jazz music.
Alastor thought that might be so.
"Mwen Cheri. Listen to me. Listen to the songs in mass today. And if they get too much, listen for the protection of our Gedeon. Remember to hail Mary with respect today. Please? Honor your father today. Do as you're told. Endure it with grace. Because mother Mary watches just as Gede."
Don't stumble, Alastor, he thought, don't fall to your stuttering and forget the ritual of it.
But he'd much prefer, instead of keeping a straight back, feeling restrained in this church mass full of incense and guilt, to dig his toes into the earth and run his hands over the rough bark in the trees and forget the whisperings of Mary, the Saints, and Christ. He'd not enjoy that tang of sour wine which represented blood.
The body of Christ.
The laughter of Gede.
The protection of Mary, full of grace.
"I understand mama. Don't cry."
By the time he had gone back to bed, and morning sun had lit the tops of the trees outside with a magical orange light, his lesson about Gede had seemed like a strange dream.
Have you ever tried Haitian spicy peanut butter? Well, this one tastes like it was especially made for Gede 🥵 I asked my peanut butter lady for spice and she sure enough delivered! I’m sure most people are scratching their heads at spicy peanut butter (with scotch bonnets specifically) but wait till you try some. You’d wonder why have’ e been eating that sweet stuff all your life. ・・・ #growninhaiti #casava #wayal #peanutbutter #mamba #gede #spiceoflife #organic #haiti #ayiti #feedthespirits #buylocal #artisanal https://www.instagram.com/p/CV25G5uFYny/?utm_medium=tumblr
A man who is said to be possessed with the Gede spirit performs a ritual at the National Cemetery during ceremonies honouring the Haitian Voodoo spirit of Baron Samdi and Gede on the Day of the Dead in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Credit: AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery
I will never understand why my divinities appear to me as celebrities in my dreams but here we have LaKeith Stanfield as Kweku Ananse from Akan religion in Ghana. In Haitian Vodou, Ananse is known as Gede Zariyen, the Gede spider.
In the dream, I was wandering in a line of unknown people…from my aunt’s house, through her basement to where we ended up at a train station in the basement of a mall. Individually, people passed through the turnstile and standing at the turnstile were three people – I intuitively recognized LaKeith as Ananse, asked him, he confirmed and asked if I was walking through. I took a deep breath and was submerged under water, which felt like tar. I took one final breath (more like a grunt) and was transported to the other side of the water (anba dlo, in Haitian Kreyol) to the land of the ancestors… The rest is my business.
Now, this is, evidently, an older drawing. But little did I know, at the time of drawing this, that it was the beginning of the situation I’m now in.
You see, I am a vodouisant. Or voodooist, if you prefer. And this right here, is my patron Lwa. Baron Samedi. He’s more than just a patron to me, though. But that’s possibly something I might wanna talk about at a later point, since this is about the drawing. I decided to finally upload this, after having seen many posts about him, so I thought that I’d share this old piece.
In Voodoo, you don’t pick what Lwa you wish to work with. The Lwa picks you. I didn’t even pick Voodoo. I was kind of just thrown into it. So Voodoo picked me. And in turn, the Lwa I currently work with picked me. And how he picked me? Well, might post about that later. But gods be damned, he scared the shit out of me, and I had no idea what had just happened, haha.
Anyway. I just wanted to finally post this drawing, because I’m still awfully fond of it, though I’ve made many pieces featuring this guy since then. I’ve, naturally, evolved my drawing techniques since then.
To think that it took me 4 years to actually kick myself in the butt hard enough to upload it. I need to get better at just uploading my drawings and cosplays when I have them, in stead of procrastinating XD
