Whisky and Voodoo
Feb. 25th, 2008 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
featherynscaleI've been reading The Haitian Vodou Handbook. I occasionally tell people that I know exactly as much about Afro-Caribbean religion as would fit in my left boot, and almost all of that boot-ful is about Santeria. So I know practically nothing at all about voodoo. But it's crushingly interesting, so I'm pursuing it.
So I'm reading and the author is saying that each practitioner "has" some spirits and it will be easy for them to work with those spirits, but if you don't "have" a spirit, then it will be hard for you to work with that spirit, or the spirit might ignore you entirely. Now, in Santeria, you have an orisha (or maybe two) who have your head, and that orisha is your sort of spiritual parent and chief ally, and the way to tell who rules your head is to get a divination done. I don't know if there's a similar trick to it in voodoo - the author sort of says, yes, you could have a divination to see what spirits you have, but most people don't have access to that, so you kind of just have to know. So I was pondering that before going to sleep last night.
Now, I'm a dreamer. I'm really good at it. So of course, I had a dream in which my grandfather came to visit me, and brought along a fairly forbidding, sinister-feeling person (I seem to be unable to remember any details about this person - my brain slides right over them). So, anyway. In this dream, my grandfather says he has something to tell me, but he tells me that he can't talk about it yet. We have to get away from the other person and he can tell me. So we climb up this ladder to a painter's bench, and the sinister person is left below, and I'm like, "Okay, what is it?". He leans over and says, conspiratorially, "There's a reason you like whisky." I say, "And that is?". He winks, and climbs down the ladder, leaving me alone.
We're very funny in my family. :) Because, you know, I have no problem at all identifying whisky as a spirit I have. I'm just sayin'.
So I'm reading and the author is saying that each practitioner "has" some spirits and it will be easy for them to work with those spirits, but if you don't "have" a spirit, then it will be hard for you to work with that spirit, or the spirit might ignore you entirely. Now, in Santeria, you have an orisha (or maybe two) who have your head, and that orisha is your sort of spiritual parent and chief ally, and the way to tell who rules your head is to get a divination done. I don't know if there's a similar trick to it in voodoo - the author sort of says, yes, you could have a divination to see what spirits you have, but most people don't have access to that, so you kind of just have to know. So I was pondering that before going to sleep last night.
Now, I'm a dreamer. I'm really good at it. So of course, I had a dream in which my grandfather came to visit me, and brought along a fairly forbidding, sinister-feeling person (I seem to be unable to remember any details about this person - my brain slides right over them). So, anyway. In this dream, my grandfather says he has something to tell me, but he tells me that he can't talk about it yet. We have to get away from the other person and he can tell me. So we climb up this ladder to a painter's bench, and the sinister person is left below, and I'm like, "Okay, what is it?". He leans over and says, conspiratorially, "There's a reason you like whisky." I say, "And that is?". He winks, and climbs down the ladder, leaving me alone.
We're very funny in my family. :) Because, you know, I have no problem at all identifying whisky as a spirit I have. I'm just sayin'.
