step away from the voodoo

Before Samhain, I felt called to make a spirit bottle for Marie Laveau, the legendary New Orleans voodoo priestess from the 1800’s. One of the highlights of my last visit to New Orleans was seeking out her tomb. Power radiated from it, perhaps because of the vast array of offerings that had been left, making it a breathtaking altar. As I worked on the bottle, I felt I needed to know more about her, so ordered what books I could find online, all of them used and at a good price.

When I opened the first one that came, Voodoo Dreams, my mouth fell open and a shiver ran up my spine. Written inside the front cover, in the handwriting I know so well, was my mother’s name. Having trouble believing my own eyes, I called my mother and asked her if she had ever read a book on Marie Laveau. She answered immediately; “The Voodoo queen? Oh yes, I’ve always been interested in Voodoo!” This was news to me. She proceeded to tell me about a business trip she had taken years ago to New Orleans and how someone at the conference took her around the city and she met all sorts of people into Voodoo. My mother’s stories are always fantastical and embellished. When my son and I saw Big Fish, my son recognized his grandmother in the character of the father with the impossibly tall tales. Nevertheless, this all was confirmation that this book was indeed, once my mother’s.

What to make of all of this? The refrain that continues to go thru my head is “Step Away from the Voodoo”. In another lifetime, another setting, I may have taken this as evidence I needed to immerse myself in Voodoo, that this meant I needed to become a full-fledged practitioner. The fact or the fancy is, in another lifetime I was a full-fledged practitioner. I know it well, it comes easily to my imagination and resonates in my bones.

The first piece of magic I consciously did in this lifetime connects back to my past. In adolescence my sister and I were being bullied by a girl every day on the bus. We took out every book on magic and Voodoo we could get from the library. We culled what information we could get, and did our first spell. We made a poppet, and feeling it was too violent to put in pins, we simply buried it in the garbage on the day the trash was to be taken away. The next day, Cathy Oakly was not on the bus. We eventually heard she’d run away from home, a home, that no doubt, given her behavior towards us, had made her feel like garbage. She was gone, and we never saw her again. This was so disturbing to me that I completely blocked it out of my memory, using my incredible power of disassociation, a power that was much utilized in my childhood. The memory only resurfaced after my Reclaiming initiation, where I received the name Oak. In the aftermath, my sister reminded me of Cathy, and the lightening shock of this memory returned.

Voodoo has beauty and breadth as a tradition. In so many ways, it has more substance than this odd strand of magic and practice I’ve been initiated into called Feri. Feri is a strange hodge-podge of magical traditions, including Voodoo. In both Voodoo and Anderson Feri, there is no prohibition against hexing, of using magic to thwart or hurt those who are seen as enemies. How and why I ended up being initiated into this, I’m still trying to make sense of. As I make this bottle for Marie, I honor the power of magic and mull on what seems to be part of this lifetime’s work, stepping away from the power to hurt, and staying strongly and mightily in the power to heal. I know I need to step away from the Voodoo, and I'm distancing myself from what Thorn's called "the Luciferian aspects of Feri".

That spell in high school showed me the power of hexing, a power I know I've used in other times with horrific percision. This lifetime, I've sworn off vengeance magic, something my clairvoyent bodyworker applauds. She continues to counsel me that I have to trust my ability not to strike, but to not give up the practice of hissing. Honing my ability to hiss, while laying down the striking, is a challenge I'm up for. The spirit bottle is almost done. Many thanks to Marie Laveau, who through the veils shines brightly, illuminating for me my work as a priestess.