Voodou All The Way: A Minor Autobiographical Sketch

"One person's superstitions are another

person's religion."   ~ Alfred Metraux

I love the Orishas

of Santaria - I truly do ...

And tho' I am not a Santero, and have no desire to be, I am blessed to have the Orisha Babalu Aye walking by  my side, and on a few occasion, the presence and communications of others of these Holy Spiritual Personalities.  

My Path, however, is decidedly of Voodou ...

Mwen Sèvi Lwa

(I Serve the Lwa)

Serving the Lwa who have chosen to accompany me in this lifetime is a nearly full time job.

Santaria's Orishas love the taste of certain meats, as well as being nourished by blood.  Voodou Lwa have much the same tastes, but will gladly accept Mange sec - bloodless offerings ...a good bargain for me, as a non-killer vegan.

The Lwa I know are incredibly rich in personality, having their unique personal desires, likes, dislikes, and boundries.  

Having lived with these factors for quite a few years now, there are times when my head "gets heavy" working to ensure I offer the right offerings, keep peace in the family, and attend the Lwa with utter love and absolute respect.

It's essential to understand that we do not use the Lwa.  We respectfully rely on their individual powerful helps in our Magicks and our lives.  They rely on us to feed, honor, venerate and obey them.  And we get the lighter part of the bargain.

A common rule-of-advice I consistently receive from the Lwa has three sides to it:

• Persevere - never give up when it is Important.
• Always Grow - never stop studying & learning.
• Patience - never make snap decisions on Matters of Importance, once I've decided to decide. By waiting three days, I will know what I can effectively be/do/have in the matter. 

These simple principles have helped keep me more on-course and purposeful countless times on my Journey.

It's obvious that different traditions can enhance each other.  Having a long background in Western Magick, including Witchcraft, has added enormously to my Voodou efforts as a Bokor.

When Jean-Baptist insisted on my becoming Catholic, I resisted, thinking that was taking the "different traditions" factor too far!   Yet having abided, and undergone that course, I am firmly aware that the experience has exponentially deepened my understanding and practice of both Voodou.

• According to photographer Lynne Warberg, who has documented Haitian Vodou for over a decade, a common saying on the island is that "Haitians are 70% Catholic, 30% Protestant, and 100% Vodou."

Another thing about me is that, when it comes to people, I am - in the most real sense - "color-blind" ...

My sibling brother enlightened me about how he and I grew up without racial prejudice. 

Evidentially, Mom (with many prejudices) and Dad (with fewer prejudices) made a kind of pact that they would consciously raise us as free of racial prejudice as is possible in this racist (and many other ist-factors as well) society.

In terms of folks of African descent, I remember being acutely aware, even at an early age, that humanity-destroying caricatures of blacks were rampant in entertainment, advertising, and product labeling.  

Yet I don't recall Mom or Dad specifically pointing any of this out to us.  How we learned to act, think and speak - as many children do - was by mimicking our parents and through the years, this extends out into our perception of the world around us, and ourselves in it.

This "color-blindness" attribute has definitely paved a smooth Water Road for my Voodou journey.

Of course, our family was not even fairly close to the (Leave it to Beaver) "Cleaver" family perfection ...

Mom - a brilliant homemaker - could change from sweet, kindly peaches & cream to being a s/mother/ing parent, and an often shrill, disrespectful friend.  

Dad -  of genius-level  intelligence (and superb at playing Devil's Advocate) - was a drunk.  

We were a typical, 1950s upscale seaside suburban family.  

But they were both musically-inclined, and that certainly extended down to my brother and me.

The reason I've introduced you to my family is that, Mom was, by nature, quite open to all Things Occult.  She gave me my first Ouija Board when I was ten or so.  She was always very interested in my work with Tarot, and in her twilight years, was particularly fascinated by my Western Magickal activities.

I think it was partly by Mom's influence that I was rather more mystical than most children at that time - making almost ordinary, my inclination toward telepathic communications with her and eventually other folks - and the fact that I was and remain able to have Visions.

• The difference between Visions and dreams is that you are awake rather than asleep.  And the senses not only of sight, but also those of smell, taste and touch are more substantial than in dreams, tho' less so than in ordinary consciousness.

We had discussed my participation in American Voodoo, and she wasn't shocked by it ... knowing full-well the power of films, books  and the news media to distort the religious activities and beliefs about which polite white society is ignorant and (often loudly) impolite about that ignorance.

I am, by nature, a "Saver" - my nursing career is one evidential facet of that, my times spent teaching on Magickal topics, My Hoodoo and now my Voodou Bokor Work are further examples of that facet of my "Saver" personality.  

The catch to this is in being aware of my propensity to become the Controller ... by which nothing and no one can be saved.  It took a mortal decision on the part of a loved one, to make absolutely clear to me, the depth and intricacy of patterns of Controller-ship woven into my everyday thoughts and actions.

I have been forgiven, and eventually forgave myself.  However I now remain a cautious Sentinel at the  door inside my head, marked "Control Room"... 

Beni Ou,

Dieudonne Bokor

Copyright © 2019, Dieudonne Bokor (aka W.A. Ryan)