Ogoun x 3

I had a pleasant Sunday. I spent a couple of hours in the presence of the lwa. I lit candles for Legba, La Sirene, Agwe, Erzulie and Ogoun and gave them offerings of various beverages they like. As I stood in front of their shrines, I could feel the field of their energy emanating out towards me. I held out my hands and offered them some of mine. I was hoping that my met tet would make himself known (I say ‘himself’ because, at this time, the strongest contenders appear to be Agwe and Ogoun).

I then did a tarot reading for myself using the Celtic Cross spread. And Ogoun showed up in the reading no fewer than three times.

Agwe does not show up much but, in all fairness, that could be due to the particular deck I am using, the Raymond Buckland deck. I like the Buckland deck because it does not use the typical European imagery and I feel a kinship to the Rom (commonly referred to as Gypsies), possibly because my mother’s people were also traditionally nomadic (Inuit). When I look through the Buckland deck, however, I do not see a lot of images that bring Agwe to mind–maybe some of the koros (cups) cards or the Page of Bolers, who resembles a spirit who appeared to me twice (a spirit whose identity I am unsure of). On the other hand, Agwe is the powerful sovereign of the seas, and if he wanted to show up, I’m sure he would find a way regardless of which deck I’m using.

The cards that remind me of Ogoun showed up three times in today’s reading. In position one, the forces at work around me, was the Knight of Koshes (wands), who in the Buckland deck is a carnival performer dressed in red and carrying torches.  (Ogoun’s colors are red and blue; he is associated with fire).

In position seven, the querent’s self (in this case, me), was the King of Chivs (swords). In the Buckland deck he is an older man dressed in a black suit and a bowler hat. There is a knife stuck into the ground in front of him, and in his other hand is a staff with an anhk at the top. The Buckland book gives the card’s meaning as follows: “Wisdom, authority, military or governmental intelligence, justice, power.” Ogoun Badagris is a general and politician.

In position ten, the final outcome, was the 8 of Chivs (swords), who in the Buckland deck is another carnival performer, a knife thrower. He again is dressed in red, and appears very strong and confident even though there is blood on the knifeboard where his assistant’s leg has been knicked by a knife. Ogoun is associated with metal and weapons.

I don’t know if Ogoun is my met tet or not, but he does have the habit of showing up a lot in my readings, including the one Mambo C did for me. I hesitate to say that he is at this time, as I have not yet experienced possession by a lwa. If he is my met tet, he is probably shaking his head in disbelief that I am not getting it yet.

Energy out

On Wednesday my girlfriend Anne and I went to the hospital again to visit Marie, who is very ill with leukemia. It was hard to see this once vibrant woman in such a fragile state, slipping in and out of consciousness. She is lingering between worlds.

While Anne sat by Marie’s bedside, gently feeding her ice chips, I asked one of my spirit guides to help me channel Zimbate healing energy to Marie, for her to use in whichever way her spirit sees fit–either to heal her body or to cross over. As the energy flowed, my hands tingled.

Our visit was brief; afterward we went out for dinner. We were home by 8:00, and I felt exhausted. I went to bed early (10:30, which is early for me).

The following morning I overslept and was an hour late for work, in spite of the fact that I got more sleep than usual and have three alarms set to wake me. While I am pleased that the energy flowed so well, I realize that I need to find effective ways to recharge. Fortunately, I have several friends who are experienced energy workers that I can go to for advice.

Envying the dead

Someone I care about is in the hospital right now, hanging on to her last breaths of life. Just before Christmas she was diagnosed with acute leukemia, and so far two rounds of chemotherapy have done nothing but make her weaker. She was hospitalized upon diagnosis and has not left the hospital since. As a result, death has been on my mind more than usual for the past couple of months. I say “more than usual” because I do, as a rule, think about death a lot, having suffered from severe depression for some 20 odd years.

And I realize that I still envy the dead.

For clarification, I do not envy the suffering that cancer brings–the weakness, the shortness of breath, the nausea, the tremors, the gradual loss of autonomy. Seeing my friend this way is a helpless and oppressive feeling. What I envy is that she is close to being released from the limitations of the physical body. As I slowly become more sensitized to the presence of energies and incorporeal entities, I long to be one with them, to be able to travel from one place to another at the speed of thought. I want to be with Puck again.

I know I have the tendency to live in the past and in the future. Yoda might have been speaking to me when he said, “Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph.” So I will continue my efforts to stop obsessing and live more in the moment. I’m under no illusions about the briefness and fragility of life.

Confusion, divination and signs

Recently I was feeling pretty comfortable with the idea that Agwe might be my met tet. However, I have a tendency to overthink things and, true to form, I’ve managed to confuse myself again. At this time there are at least three lwa that I think could be the master of my head.

One lwa that appeared to me twice is definitely associated with water. This could be Agwe, as his color is the blue of the sea. Or this could be Ogoun Balindjo, who is also associated with water (he is thought to be a crew member of Agwe’s ship Immamou).  Ogoun’s colors are blue and red, like the Haitian flag. The Witch/artist who is creating an Ogoun spirit doll for me received the impression that the colors for his doll should be a lighter blue (turquoise) with red accents. If you remember, Ogoun did appear in the reading Mambo C gave me, whereas Agwe did not, although he could be implicated by the presence of so many of his known associates (Ogoun, La Sirene and Erzulie). So to sum it up, I’ve been going back and forth in my mind: Agwe or Ogoun?

Last week I did a tarot reading for myself with that question in mind. When I turned over the ninth card and saw the Page of Bolers, I noticed how much he resembled the lwa who appears to me (just imagine him slightly thinner with shorter hair and black swimming trunks).

I felt excitement when I saw this card and wondered if it represented Agwe. And then I turned over the tenth card and got the Knight of Koshes who, with his red pants and torches, would obviously seem to represent Ogoun. Then the confusion set in again.

I was thinking about them both while riding the bus through downtown Seattle on Friday afternoon. As I gazed out the window at the mirrored glass of a nearby building, I wished that I could see the identity of my met tet in a vision. A moment later, the reflection of a man in a blue-green jacket appeared in the glass. Seeing the watery color of his jacket, I thought about Agwe. And then a woman’s reflection appeared. She was wearing a bright red jacket, which made me think about Ogoun. At that point, I had to laugh at myself. I wonder if the lwa feel that they give me more than enough clues and that I am their rather slow child.

To further confuse things, my medium friend Angel was kind enough to see if she could sense which lwa it might be. She received an impression of a lwa with a staff or long object made of smooth black stone or metal and a mask with an animal feel to it. Half skeletal remains lay on the ground by his feet. Now this does not really sound like Agwe, but could be Ogoun. Another possibility is Agassou, the half man, half panther lwa.

Seeing as my overthinking is not helpng me much, I once again must step back and wait. To quote Tom Petty, “The waiting is the hardest part.”

Thoughts on Avatar and colonialism

Warning: The following post contains spoilers about the movie “Avatar.” Do not read if you have not seen the movie or are easily offended by articles discussing racism, which is not erased in spite of efforts at political correctness. While none of this directly relates to Vodou, it does relate to colonialism, which in turn relates to Haitian history.

An online discussion with a friend last night prompted me to write this post, just to express things that need to be said. While James Cameron’s film has good intentions, some of its underlying themes are less than impressive (as well as the general storyline).

There are some things I like about the film. It’s a lush production with stunning visuals, interesting character and creature design, and a nature vs technology storyline. The first hour or so is a lot of fun. Largely this is due to the main character’s process of discovery as he downloads his consciousness into his alien avatar body. We get to experience a new planet, people and culture through his eyes. It’s pure escapism, appealing to our longing for spiritual awakening and a deeper bond with the natural world, as well as our individual desires to leave past mistakes behind and reinvent ourselves. Who wouldn’t like to be stronger and faster?

The second part of the movie falls into your standard and predictable action movie climax, with guns, planes, explosions and a one-on-one fight between our hero and the main bad guy. Not surprising, but disappointing after a strong start. Oh well, that’s merely the superficial part of this film’s flaws. Like other popular stories such as Crocodile Dundee, Tarzan, Madame Butterfly and the “Native American” epic Dances with Wolves, Avatar has underlying colonialist themes which, for those of us unable to ignore such things, are rather annoying.

Wikipedia actually has a pretty good definition of the type of colonialism I’m talking about:

Cultural imperialism is the practice of promoting, distinguishing, separating, or artificially injecting the culture of one society into another. It is usually the case that the former belongs to a large, economically or militarily powerful nation and the latter belongs to a smaller, less important one. Cultural imperialism can take the form of an active, formal policy or a general attitude. A metaphor of colonialism is employed: the cultural products of the first world “invade” the third-world and “conquer” local culture. In the stronger variants of the term, world domination (in a cultural sense) is the explicit goal of the nation-states or corporations that export the culture. The term is usually used in a pejorative sense, usually in conjunction with a call to reject foreign influence.

Cultural imperialism rears its unattractive head all the time in media representations of minority groups in some really irritating ways:

• Stupid notions of beauty.  If you are not super thin (if you are a woman especially) or tall (if you are a guy) you are not sexually attractive. If you have certain types of hair you are not attractive. If you have a wide or long nose, you are not attractive. This was brought home to me in a personal way by the movies Romeo Must Die and The Replacement Killers. In both of those movies, you have mixed raced couples in which the male is Asian. In both of those movies, the Asian leading man never gets to even kiss the leading lady let alone (gasp) have sex with her. Seriously, how often do you see that in your average R-rated action flick? Also worth noting for its ridiculousness is that Dances with Wolves has a white leading man and white leading woman in Native garb.
• Changes or misinterpretations of a group presented as fact. Oh, the joy of stereotypes. I hear bad things about the new animated movie “The Frog Prince” and its representation of Vodou. I haven’t seen the film nor do I intend to (unless it’s on TV when I’m drunk).
• Incredible leaps of believability.  See comment on Dances with Wolves in the first bulleted paragraph above. Or really, if you were an Omaticayan, would you trust a fake dreamwalker person who was spying on you, even if he attempted to redeem himself?

Movies like Avatar and Dances with Wolves remind me of one of my favorite poems by Sherman Alexie, titled “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel.” Using select quotes from said poem, let’s examine Avatar, shall we? My comments are in brackets.

The hero must be a half-breed, half white [or human] and Indian [or Omaticayan], preferably from a horse [or horse thing] culture.

If the hero is an Indian [Omaticayan] woman, she is beautiful. She must be slender and in love with a white man [human].

Indians [Omaticayans] must see visions. White people [humans] can have the same visions if they are in love with Indians [Omaticayans]. If a white person [human] loves an Indian [Omaticayan]

then the white person [human] is Indian [Omaticayan] by proximity. White people [humans] must carry an Indian [Omaticayan] deep inside themselves…If the interior Indian [Omaticayan] is male then he must be a warrior [Marine]….

You see the parallels. These patterns are hard to ignore when you’ve been seeing them all your life, even when they are disguised as science fiction.

Okay, this is the end of my rant. I promise the next post will be more directly related to Vodou.

New Year’s Day: an anniversary, offerings and insight

After sleeping through all the New Year’s Eve noise (and this is a good thing, as I don’t much care for the sound of fireworks and screaming from the neighborhood), I awoke to a wet New Year’s Day. It’s strange to think that today is the second anniversary of the day my girlfriend Anne discovered the tumor on Puck’s jaw. I’ve been thinking about Puck a lot lately, although that is nothing new–pretty much a daily thing for the past two years.

The spirit doll I purchased from Studio Nocturna arrived yesterday, and it’s beautiful. I visualized her as being a little too large for my current shrine area, but it turns out she fits in perfectly. I lit candles and offered it to Erzulie today. I also made offerings to La Siren (a small shell-shaped dish to put her food items in) and Legba (a Native American-made fur pouch that I thought was similar enough to a makout that he would like it). I stood in front of the shrines, meditated, and talked to the lwa a bit. The area was energized, and by the time I extinguished the flames, I felt the same ache in my forearms that I felt during the Fet Gede (but a much milder version).

Contrary to what some might think, when I feel this ache I smile, because I believe it is my body’s way of sensing energy. Back in February of 2008, I went to a Zimbate workshop at East West Bookshop in Seattle, and received an attunement. Afterward, when we were practicing techniques on each other, I had wished that I was able to feel the energy more intensely. Now that I have my wish, I’m not complaining about it.

On the topic of energy work, the artist that created the Erzulie doll is a Reiki practitioner. I mentioned in a previous post that, prior to purchasing the doll, I asked Erzulie for her thoughts and drew the Thoth card from the Cartouche divination deck. On the Thoth card is the caduceus. Initially I thought that Erzulie was indicating she would assist a sick friend (and I still think that was part of why I drew that card).  I also think that Erzulie was acknowledging the Reiki energy that the artist infuses into each of her dolls. When I handle the doll (and even when I handle the box she was in), a feeling of peace and well-being passes through me.

Below are some photos of my shrines, per a friend’s request. I doubt my shrines are traditional, but they are set up according to my lwa and my personal ascetics. Ogoun’s candle flame always burns brightest, either because of his fiery nature or the ingredients in the particular candles I buy for him. His area is a little undeveloped at the moment, but I’m hoping to purchase another spirit doll from Studio Nocturna to remedy this problem.

I also want to find a statue or doll for Legba, and an image or figure for Agwe that more closely resembles the way he looks when he appears to me. For now, the Neptune/Poseidon figure is fine, as the image/figure I want for him may take a while to find. I’ll know it when I see it.

My crowded shrine shelf

Legba's shrine

La Sirene's shrine

Agwe's shrine

Erzulie's shrine with her new spirit doll

Ogoun's shrine

Gifts to and from Erzulie

Every year, on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, my girlfriend Anne and I go to her mother’s house for dinner. At least two family members are shutter bugs and dozens of photos are shot throughout the evening. Within the next day or two, I get to view pictures in which I look horrible. Now, I do not consider myself an ugly person at all, but in photos I tend to appear tired (eyes half or fully closed), bloated or my skin looks blotchy. I look like someone who just stumbled out of rehab. Even my girlfriend will agree that I usually do not photograph well. Maybe one in ten photos will be decent, if I’m lucky.

So on Christmas Day this year, I was sent a link to Anne’s uncle’s photo page and….just about died from shock. In ALL of the photos I looked alert, healthy and decent. This has never happened before.

So, if you want to be photogenic, make an offering to Erzulie! I’m not joking….I purchased a beautiful spirit doll for her shrine just hours before we went to the dinner. I was not expecting any benefit other than making her happy, but apparently the lady is very generous when she is pleased.

Divination, dolls and symbols

Today I bought a very fancy doll for Erzulie’s shrine from an artist I admire (see her work at Studio Nocturna). Upon asking for Erzulie’s thoughts, I drew one Cartouche card from the deck. Interestingly, the card was No. 5, Thoth. I guess I should not have expected a simple yes or no (chuckles), but this card seems significant because it shows the Caduceus, the symbol of healing and the medical field. I have a friend who was just diagnosed with acute leukemia, and this card seems to suggest that Erzulie is willing to assist her. I plan to commission the artist to create an Ogoun doll for me, as I am having trouble finding a doll or statue that I like for his shrine.

Last week I was seeking input on another Vodou-related purchase and drew card. No. 21, the Sphinx, which made me reflect back upon the dream I had about the winged woman in the tree. (I’m still unsure about the meaning of the dream.)

It’s funny how certain symbols repeatedly surface in our lives at certain times.

Dream analysis, met tet and metaphysical bookstores

On Thursday night I decided to take Houngan D’s advice about communicating with specific lwa.

Thursday is Agwe’s day, so that morning I dressed in blue (his colors are blue and white) and wore an Inuit pendant with a whale design on it. That night, before retiring for bed, I lit a blue candle for him and meditated before his shrine for a little while. Then I put a glass of water and his card from the New Orleans tarot deck on the shelf next to the bed where they would be near my head. And I went to sleep. And had some crazy vivid dreams.

In the most interesting part of my dreams, I was with a group of people in the parking lot of a grocery store. At the edge of the parking lot was a low-lying tree. A dark-haired woman sat in its upper branches. She had large colorful wings.

I really don’t know who the woman is or what she symbolizes. I have been reading a lot about Damballah, the snake lwa. During his possessions, he sometimes makes his devotees climb trees. Some books compare him to Quetzalcoatl, the Mesoamerican winged serpent god. However, this dream image could simply be related to the sphinx. When I was going through the New Orleans tarot deck to find the Agwe card, I did see a sphinx on one of the cards. When analyzing dreams, a good starting point is to separate the “junk” from the meaningful symbols. By “junk,” I refer to the images that are randomly based on something you encountered during your waking hours. So, in this case, I am not sure if the image is important or not.

I am starting to think that Mambo C’s suspicion that Agwe could be my met tet may be correct. Between the near brushes with lightning, the two appearances of the dark-haired young man (once in a dream and once in a vision), and my own temperament (similar to his–a dignified exterior with deep emotions beneath the surface), it just feels right. And this isn’t a case of me trying to force the pieces to fit together. As I go about my day, I just realize certain things about Agwe or myself that make this fit seem kind of obvious, almost as obvious as Legba’s first appearance to me (see Dogs and Dreams of Water). And the fact that La Sirene and Erzulie were both prominently in the reading Mambo C did for me. It would make sense for them to be present if their husband is there. And Ogoun in his Balindjo aspect is a member of Agwe’s crew on his ship Immamou, so it would also make sense for him to appear in the reading. I could be wrong about this, but we’ll see. Before my reading, when I desperately wanted to know the identity of my met tet, Agwe never crossed my mind.

On Saturday my girlfriend Anne and I spent a pleasant morning/afternoon running errands and shopping. One of the places we visited was East West Bookshop, one of my favorite Seattle spiritual/occult shops (the other favorite is Edge of the Circle Books). After selecting a book on holistic cat care, I fell into a conversation with a woman who volunteers at the store as part of her service to her church (an eastern religion church). It turns out she is also a realtor. I really liked her energy and may call her when Anne and I are ready to start looking for a home. We shook hands and I asked for her business card.

The reason I mention the bookstore encounter is that after we got home, during dinner, my right forearm started to ache and reminded me of the pain I had at the Fet Gede, although this pain was much milder and only in my right arm. This pain could be from mundane causes, but I am wondering now if the realtor is also some type of energy worker. If she ends up being our realtor, I want to ask her.

La Sirene’s Mirror

Since I mentioned this mirror in a couple of posts, I thought I’d include an image of it here. As you can see, it’s quite beautiful and it currently sits in La Sirene’s shrine. It’s made of very strong cold cast resin and I purchased it through Gargoyles Statuary. It’s not on their website, but the owner ordered it for me upon request.