#makaya

[dias-artistry]

Makaya Orream

I didn’t feel like shading her at all nor finishing the rest of the boat the perspective was killing me lol

[rockofeye]

Raising the Dead

I've been sitting with what I have learned and experienced this past Gede season and it feels strangely appropriate to write about that on a day given to Lazarus, the man who died and then lived again.

Gede and I have a long, LONG history. It was Gede who stood waiting for me to get myself to a fet and, as he put it, it was Gede who walked with me through my life (even when I didn't know it) and kept me alive to have the opportunity to step into the djevo. It is Gede who has been my foundation and Gede who has worked tirelessly in the background to help me consistently build myself back better than I was before; whether it was before kanzo or before maryaj or even better than I was last week.

Gede was the first lwa I encountered in Haiti, in the head of the houngan who would later become my husband, and that Gede has always been important to me. For quite awhile, I didn't understand and didn't look at the importance of the same Gede coming in the same head at very important times for me....but I get it now. S (my human husband) has a strong, STRONG relationship with his Gede and it was his Gede that gave me the opportunity to make the choice in Haiti before I entered the djevo: was I going to actually do all of it in the way it was intended, or was I going to shrink back and hold myself like and as an outsider?

I didn't totally understand that choice in the moment, but I did know that when Gede dragged me (kinda literally) into the middle of the temple during bat gè and demanded a gouyad out of me, the person who does not dance well at ALL. But, I had decided in the midst of my personal misery preparing for kanzo that I was all in and would do whatever was asked of me because, up until that point, my way of doing things was not helping me. That gouyad changed my life, honestly. The same Gede dragged me back for more gouyad after kanzo, and this time it was a literal dragging because I was very clear on the post kanzo instructions that I was not to interact with the dead for the period of my eprèv and I didn't know what to do. There is video of my sort of gesticulating wildly at my godfather and my friends as Gede took me by the arm, dragged me in front of the drums, and asked for a little more gouyad.

It was also that Gede who came to to my maryaj lwa and placed the rings I had bought for Gede on our fingers, and that same Gede who, when he comes down for his fets, has me running for him. He reminds people on the regular that I married him before I married the chwal/my human husband, and intercedes (without my asking) when other Gede start asking me for things and favors because it is he who takes care of me.

I also relate to Gede in a very different way than I sometimes see others relating to Gede. I find Gede to be very, very serious and I don't often get the dick joke kind of Gede that people most relate to. To me, Gede tells jokes to be able to say the things that people would otherwise be unable to hear, and I am a person who just gets confused by that, to be quite honest, because if I am going to hear hard things and someone is laughing about it, I get lost a bit...like why is it funny? That's not to say Gede has not done that; Gede in my husband's head is notorious for poking fun at me and at times exploiting the fact that, while I speak Kreyòl quite well at this point, I am not quite fluent enough for everything and particularly not for understanding the dialect that S's Gede will speak at times. It always comes with a blessing, even though I may not see it in the moment.

This year, I have been reminded just how close to me Gede always remains. That has been drastically underlined since S arrived in the US, and it has been kind of amusing to experience.

I work occasional overnight shifts at a side gig (because what houngan/manbo does not hustle for their lwa...), and more than once I have come home to find S not in our bed but sleeping in lwa room, which is not in and of itself weird. Vodouizan do that frequently as a devotion or to generate dreams or for any number of other reasons. It is, however, kind of strange to stick your head into the lwa room and see your husband laying on the floor like he is in the grave (arms crossed on his chest while he lays on his back) with a black moushwa over his face.

It's even stranger when your husband sits up and you realize it is your Husband who has come to see you and remarks that it is about time that you got back from work because he has been there waiting for you since before the sun came up. Having chats with Gede at 7AM after working all night is certainly a challenge but it is it's own blessing. He has detailed a lot of important stuff for both myself and my husband that needs to get done, and confirmed a lot of things that I had thought about before.

The confirmations are part of the lesson for me. I approach most things spiritual with a critical eye; I look to see if what I believe the lwa are telling me makes sense with what I already know, if it seems supportive of me versus undermining what the lwa have already put in place, and if it is going to harm me or other folks. Those are my basic guidelines for looking at what I hear or intuit, and even then my reaction is, unless it is something that has to be done immediately, I kind of put it on a shelf and just watch how things unfold.

It is absolutely wild to me to sit and chat with one of my lwa and have them declare the same things I have heard on my own and have not shared with others. To me, that reveals that my default is to sort of not believe what I am hearing and not give it the importance that it deserves. Like, Gede sat there and talked about one of my personal Gede whose name I have never spoken to another person--not even my husband--and spoke about them by name. He talked about other spiritual things that I had not brought up to anyone at all and just held to myself and my takeaway is that I need to trust what I hear more.

It reminded me of something I heard at Gede's fet at my spiritual mother's house. Ogou came to speak with his children, and I overheard something he told someone else: you can hear me in your head when I speak, so why do you wait to hear it from my mouth? Over the past decade my lwa have developed and refined me enough that I don't need to speak with them when they are in a head all that often. Sometimes it's useful to clarify something I am not understanding or in a very difficult situation, but by and large I hear them quite clearly, understand what they are saying, and have the tools to communicate with them. The first thing my mother taught me was how to pray and use my table, and I consistently do not give that the importance that it really holds.

The other side is that I sometimes don't pay attention enough to how they speak, in that after a decade of them telling me things, the way they speak has become more streamlined and requires very few grand gestures. Before it was them pulling out all the stops and sending very in-depth and detailed dreams. Now it is the things that occur to me when I sit and pray, or that occur to me when I am sort of contemplating a situation that I or someone else has been struggling with. They certainly do still send dreams when they want to underline something, but it has become much more of a ingrained process. In a way, it's been a manifestation of one of my most long term prayers: I want there to be no distance between myself and my lwa, and I do not want to be able to find the border where they begin and I end because I want them so enmeshed in my life and me so enmeshed in them that I move with them easily and fluidly.

And so it is.

This past season of a reinvigorated death has also got me rolling around with my ancestors again in a different-than-usual way. I have always had a complicated relationship with my ancestors because my relationship with my family is complicated, but they have gotten louder and louder, and that means it's time to take a deep breath and dig back in. In the last year, I uncovered a big giant gaping wound that has led to some of the problems my family currently experiences. Not a generational curse, really, but the reverberations of a massive tragedy that my ancestors were involved in that has never been addressed. Looking at what has happened in one branch of my family since that tragedy, and it's absolutely clear that the damage from that has radically changed the descendants. I don't even think most of my living family from that side have any knowledge of what happened; it took a lot of careful reading for me to get it.

I also visited the grave of a family member I was close to in life and that reawakened him. Standing in front of his grave and feeling his shock that I had come after being away for so long was kind of a shock to my system, and he's come to speak with me since and outline what he really needs.

The bottom line that my ancestors have highlighted is that my family is unwell because my ancestors are unhealed and problems have gone on for generations unaddressed. This has created a poison well of sorts, and here we are. Through probably a mix of accident and ancestral wrangling, I am the only living member of my family who hears (or knows they are hearing) the ancestors and so they have been clear that it is my responsibility to do the work to change things so that there is peace moving backwards in time and peace moving forward.

I am not exactly thrilled about this. It's not a surprise because I have been told this before and purposefully ignored it. However, life circumstances have changed and I am no longer in a space where I can ignore it. When I look at the scope of what must be done, I kind of look at my ancestors and ask where my staff is and how I am going to get paid for this, because it is A LOT.

I know the answer to those questions (I am the staff and the pay comes later), so I guess it's off to work I go? I don't know. I have a lot of personal background working with difficult ancestors, but I am going to be fumbling through how I address the ancestral weight of mass tragedy. People don't write books about that kind of ancestral veneration, but maybe that's also part of this work because I can't be the only one dealing with ancestral mess on a grand scale. Just another opportunity for personal growth and development, I guess.... These moments get tiring as I get older.

Now we are solidly in Makaya season, which closes out our year and dictates what our new year will be like. It is not gentle or nurturing; it is the expectation of rapid change and assertive (an understatement) presence of spirit. In common culture, this is the time of year that commemorates the divine taking on flesh, and in Vodou that is one of the most spiritually hot and spiritually significant events in our day-to-day. The lwa come into heads to bring us direct change, deliverance, healing, and hope. With the mess that the world is today, we need that and particularly the focus of healing and hope. Makaya's healing is not gentle and not without it's own kind of suffering; after all, the poto mitan is on fire and the Petwo lwa arrive screaming.

May the heat of the flames burn away all that I do not need and all that holds me back, and may the leaves and medicine find their way to the parts of me that need healing and wholeness. May I hold onto the hope that comes from the fire, because what is burned away will bear new life. May the soil be rich and may I be receptive.

[oipteaapdoce]

I’m not sure why it took me so long, but finally in January 2009, I flew over to Haiti <3.  I had always wanted to go since 80′, but lack of funds, or lack of guts, or both deleyed it :D.  The trip was amazing, the people were amazing, the beaches were amazing, the ceremonies were amazing, the markets were amazing, tje food was awesome, the cemeteries were amazing (I’ve always thought the various Barons are pretty wonderful), and even the “bus” lol, trip through the mountains was amazing!

Most folks go for the Asson and initiation route.  However, I was more interested in Makaya ;).  I have been a practitioner of Western magics since 89, so the workings which included some spellwork elements were definitely up my alley.  Also, Makaya includes the more fierce and firey (how I perceived things anyways) Lwa whom I love.  Well actually includes the other Lwa as well, but does focus on some of the Lwa which seem to be less emphasized or even left out in other areas.  

Haiti is an interesting place, there were many Bokors, who also had the Asson, and most definitely practiced both.  I also got to visit a couple of cemeteries including the giant amazing one in Port Au Prince!  I loved how there were folks who just spend the day there, with the fires going, doing the work and the honourings.

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#makaya #vodou #voodoo #vodun #voudon #haitianvodou #magick #occult #baronsamedhi #legba #kalfou #tijeanpetro #gede #erzulidantor #bokor 

[livnpixels]

Kaya

[innervoiceart]

[lescientifique]

La saison Makaya dans la plus pure Tradition du vodou haïtien

La Saison Makaya dans la civilisation bantoue (kikongo) débute le 21 décembre de chaque année et prend fin le 6 janvier de la nouvelle année. Cette journée du 21 décembre coïncide avec le solstice d’hiver qui marque la renaissance du soleil. Elle correspond a la nuit la plus longue de l’année contrairement au solstice d’été du 21 juin qui est à la journée la plus longue de l’année. Il est…

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[mambo-marie-laveau-voodoo]

Fête vaudou #makaya 😘merci à tous pour vos participation 🙏 https://store-e-voodoo.net #magie #magique #initiation #mystique #sorcellerie #vaudou #rituel #rituelvaudou #pacte #mariage #vaudou #initiation #mystique #sorcellerie #benediction #degagement #rituel #occulte #marielaveau #mambomarielaveau #storeevoodoonet #evoodoonet https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm7bYchDiBq/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[haitilegends]

Haitian American Chamber of Commerce Inc on LinkedIn: Tropical Expo 2022: Makaya at Esplanade Park in FT Lauderdale on May

Tropical Expo 2022 at Esplanade Park on May 14, 2022 !!! #TropicalExpo2022 #EsplanadePark #MakayaChocolat...