#priestly things

[rockofeye]

Iliminasyon/oil lamp so hot that I set off the fire alarm. Doing it right and bringing in the new year in *style*!

[rockofeye]

Content content content

I have been chewing on what to write next here for awhile. Not because I don’t want to write, but more that there is so much I could write about. I realized that, even six months out, I am still really processing my kanzo experience in a lot of ways, and so a lot of that is still percolating.

Are there things you all want to see regarding vodou and my experience of it? I do really well with questions and ‘tell me about..’. I’ve also gained an awful lot of new followers in the past few months--do you have questions that you would like answered? What drew you to my Tumblr and what would you like to see?

[rockofeye]

This week: readings, helping break a jinx laid on a retail store, and planning out a rather large exorcism to clear a space of a nasty thing living under the floorboards. As you do.

[rockofeye]

Unexpected Friday night: meeting a longtime follower of your blog in the guise of your former teachers’ new student! Super cool (even if I am an awkward manchild at times)! @seekerphaedrus

[rockofeye]

Once upon a time about eight years ago, I went to a week-long pagan camping-ish event with a bunch of friends. It was fun for what it was, and I had a decent time running around with a group of weirdos among the tie-dye-kinda-goth-overwhelmingly straight event. When I was bored, a dear friend who has since passed away and I would wander through the huge vending area and kinda MST3K the experience (I can accept a lot of things, but I cannot accept crushed velvet capes).

There was this one vendor that didn’t really sell pagan-y things. He was a weird dude who sold random vintage stuff, and was completely out of place. I bought a few things from him--a glass-topped cane that belongs to one of my spirits, a necklace that got gifted to a friend, and these two hankies. I didn’t know why I was buying them, really, as I am not really a hanky person, and so they went in a box for quite awhile.

I figured they might be ancestor stuff--old hankies for all the old ladies? I don’t know. When I looked at them last year, they clearly weren’t for ancestors--one was a vintage Gucci hanky, and one was a translucent hand-painted French silk hanky. Nice, but not the taste of my family’s dead people. So, back in a box.

Cut to last week. My lovely lady Gede makes clear to me that she would like a silk hanky. She is a very fancy lady who like fancy things, and I like all my Gede to be happy and have nice things, so I started shopping around. She didn’t give me many parameters, except that a new one would just not do. So, I got to looking at all manner of silk hankies with all different shades and designs made up of purple/gray/black/silver.

Nothing was right, at all, and so I had basically tabled it out of frustration. She wasn’t being demanding about it, but I know better than to buy something that isn’t right (cut to the alcohol collection that has grown out of buying bottles that the spirits turn their noses up at).

I’ve also been slowly dragging things out of storage--a long task when you transport things by public transit and suitcase--and unpacked stuff I had brought home prior to Gede’s fete. Out popped the container the hankies lived in, and all of a sudden there was this very polite *cough* in the back of my head, and all of the pieces tumbled together.

The silk hanky went into a bowl of warm water with some mild detergent for a gentle wash, and she smiled serenely. It got carefully laid out to dry, and she preened. When I carefully folded it (thank you, Google) and presented it and placed it on Gede’s chair, she might have giggled, just a bit.

Gede--all of them--play the long game. My earliest memory is a Gede memory, and Madame Lakwa waited EIGHT DAMN YEARS for her hanky.

I say I’m lucky, but that’s really not true. I’m blessed, but hard work also pays off in dividends, and now I have a lady Gede who planted her hanky with me eight years ago to show for it.

[rockofeye]

Things I do for the spirits: go to Sephora, talk seriously to sales people about lipstick, and then come home and research lipstick for an hour online.

This is what it’s all about, folks. My glamorous life.

[rockofeye]

Novena for All Soul’s Day octave

A novena is a 9 day prayer cycle utilized in Catholicism as devotion to particular saints or causes. There are pre-written novenas for the octave/All Soul’s Day plus eight days, but I didn’t like any of them, so I wrote my own. The prayers used are prayers commonly used in vodou, and there are pieces I wrote specifically (so please don’t strip my attribution). I tweak a few traditional things for my own preferences.

Our Father

Hail Mary x3

Glory Be

Oh My Jesus

Zo li mache (specific song/prayer that talks about the bones walking)

Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9

Recitation:

We all die. Our deaths begin as the first gasp of breath in our newly born lungs.

We all die. When our feet first touch the ground in uncertain steps, the earth calls to our bones, foretelling the day we return to dust.

We all die. The shroud is tied tightly, our bones are dry and thirsty, but we still live yet.

We all die.

Day 1: Prayers for the newly dead*

Day 2: Prayers for the unnamed dead

Day 3: Prayers for the forgotten dead

Day 4: Prayers for the martyred dead--victims of colonialism (Native and Indigenous groups who lost life and land at the hands of colonialists)

Day 5: Prayers for the martyred dead--victims of police and state-sanctioned violence--people of color murdered by police and militarized law enforcement

Day 6: Prayers for the martyred dead--victims of hate crimes associated with gender or sexuality (LGBTQ+ victims of violent crime)

Day 7: Prayers for ancestral dead

Day 8: Prayers for lineage dead

Day 9: Prayers to the Bawons and Gede for care of the dead anba dlo and for personal concerns and gratitude (I suggest praying to the divinities who govern the dead in your own tradition--don’t open a can of worms for yourself without longer term planning and thinking.

Eternal rest grant unto them, oh lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of the divine rise in power.

Amen

*Pray as you feel led, and speak specific names if you have them or so desire.

[rockofeye]

Beginning at the End

I have been back in the US for three days and, if I am completely honest, I hate it. I don't necessarily want to be back in Haiti, but things were monumentally easier there. It was easier to maintain the sort of headspace that I need there and easier to explain my desire to sit in a chair and stare out at the world. I have physically been out of the djevo for just about two weeks, and, as a result, about two weeks into what my manmi calls my quarantine period. Immediately post-kanzo is a tenuous time, and so we have a lot of restrictions that keep us safe until we are a bit more stable. There are things I cannot eat, behaviors I cannot engage in, times of day/night that I cannot be out during, and even the way I sleep is pretty drastically altered for the moment. I didn't think much about what the post-kanzo period would be like. I figured life would go on and I would feel relatively normal, but boy was I wrong. I feel anything but what used to be normal because I am no longer the person I was pre-kanzo. A lot of things have shifted on the inside and I am not used to it yet. I was very protected in Haiti, and here I am largely on my own. I told my godfather the other night that I feel as if I am made of porcelain, and that's very true. Everything feels like it could crush me, and some things could if I am not careful. I am tired a lot and spend a lot of time doing nothing. My godfather cautions me not to do too much or get too tired, and I feel grateful that my quarantine period is enforced downtime. I can't imagine jumping back into life as usual right away. Of course, I have no idea what life as usual means anymore because the person who went into the djevo is not the person who came out. Kanzo is both an ending and a beginning. It is a death in a very real sense--who I was before died in the djevo and a new person walked out. It's like a huge restart button was pushed and the door firmly closed on who and what I was beforehand. There's no going back. It all tastes like ash. Significantly, I have very much shut the door on a female identity. I was baptized as an oungan, a male priest, and a large piece of my kanzo was literally purging female-ness from who I am. Significantly, I got my period in the djevo and was almost a week early with it, which never ever happens to me--I am always late. As I prepared to go into the djevo, I chatted with priests in my sosyete about my worry about menstruating while I was inside. A good friend and manbo noted that menstruation is a purging of sorts, and that perhaps I needed to purge things related to my gender. Certainly plenty of men menstruate, but there is no denying the significance for me in that context. I think my friend was right. And here I am. I have a new name, a new identity, a new course in life (though I don't yet know what it is), a new family, new responsibilities, and a new self to figure out. I have a LOT to process and write about, and I have a life to build back up. I am currently jobless and homeless (staying with generous friends), and I am largely a blank slate. I showed up in Haiti with nothing to call my own except a few boxes in storage and my spirits and divinities. I have a little more now, but I have a ton of work to do. I got lifted out of a hole and It’s my responsibility not to dig myself back in. Of all the things I have gained from kanzo so far, the first and foremost has been an incredible sense of gratitude for how the last month has unfolded. I didn't think I would make it, but I did.