Saturday, March 19, 2011

No Cats (but several chickens) Were Harmed in the Making of this Blog

SpiderCircus2
St. SpiderCircus, 
Gros Bon Ange of the witch-doctor Ryan Valentine
detail by Doug Nox

I wanted to interject a quick response to some of the points Jack raised in Nu-Flesh before he had a chance to write another four pages of material on our original topic and I miss the chance to address these interesting digressions.  

Cat Murder!  Possession!  

“I recall the lecture being side-tracked repeatedly by eclectic Wiccans who wanted to know the difference between Voodoo Possession, and Drawing Down the Moon or Godform assumption. The idea that complete possession by a spirit versus “over-shadowing,” or extremely limited possession (e.g. the spirit does not take complete control of the body, but instead acts as a channel) might be different was lost on what felt like a chunk of the audience. I came away feeling like I wanted to know more about the subject: if complete possession occur, does one find themselves on the astral? Does the mind simply go blank as another form of consciousness emerges? Is it different for everyone? Does the type of possession or the completeness of it change based on initiation? Maya Derren notes that if you simply attend certain rituals to watch, the loa appear to be willing to leap into you if you’re a fitting vessel. How often does this occur? Is the ritual/community exchange and that of possession a dynamic that we do not have in areas of the West? Is this something that we’re perhaps missing in our group rituals – a dynamic of pure exchange between ourselves and the spirits? Or is this potential and behavior specific to the Loa themselves?”

Full possession is exactly that, annihilation of consciousness.  As though being in a deep dreamless sleep.  Its emphasis is not as universal among all the diasporic traditions as it is in Haitian Vodou but I would contend it has a place in each nonetheless. The value of having the Lwa perform a ritual on your behalf cannot possibly be overstated. Since the full spectrum of early ceremonialist material was also integrated into many of the diasporic traditions (especially Palo) I think it is fairly reasonable to assume that those methods of communication and identification common to the European forms of necromancy are also present within the individual paradigms. 

As a hoodoo I have come to define the ‘Lwa’ as any spirit capable of that complete annihilation of consciousness.  These have been largely Vodoun (Danto, Petro, Zombi, and Nibbho) with a smattering of Los Muertos.  I have never experienced complete displacement at the whims of a Goet, more like a creeping madness that begins as a profound ‘over-shadowing’ as you christened it.  Takes a while for them to really take ownership of the vessel (in my experience, I have heard tales otherwise) whereas the Lwa just step in and I am gone. 

Dirge has some hilarious stories about his Gede, who enjoyed late night strolls through china-town while eating a whole deep-fried chicken he had gotten from one of the all night restaurants.  Glassy eyed Dirge wandering around carrying a steaming hot, amazingly greasy chicken in his bare hands, little of chunks of meat sticking to his scruffy beard.  Just taking in the sights. 

He’d come around sprawled in some doorway, spent carcass in his hands and food all over his face.  As though for his Gede a whole deep-fried, greasy as hell chicken from one of Toronto’s late night Chinese food joints was like going on a heroin bender. 

He tells me it never cost him anything, he always had the exact same tiny amount of money after these events as he had before (this happened a lot back in the gigging days when counting money did not take a very long time).  Somehow that Gede wrangled himself a free chicken every time. 

I found personally that Gede Nibbho loves the act of juju, he’ll jump into ritual progressions and take over.  This has streamlined my ritual process tremendously but it’s difficult to describe the process of refinement because I don’t consciously remember any of it.  As though, because my body has done it so many times that if I don’t think about it, it will just happen on its own.  It can be roughly equated to jamming out a new song, you know ‘this’ makes ‘this sound’ and so forth but you have to turn off what you know to allow something new to emerge from that.  It has occurred to me occasionally that this is the inversion of how ritual is traditionally held to function, namely a discipline whereby the body informs the cosmos (herein, the cosmos informs the body).    

I do not feel qualified to comment on the impact of initiation on possession. 

“I found myself having a very hard time accepting both what I was reading, and with the dream in mind, the contents of the book itself. As to how much of it is or isn’t bullshit, I have no idea. But Gonzalez-Wippler stands as a good example of someone who appears to have taken all the information they were given on a subject and not having been critical enough.”
Also from a recent blog by de Frisvold.

"It is assumed that the Ashanti and the Dahomeyans is the carrier of the wisdom of Obeah. That it was slaves from west and-north-Africa that brought this current of power to Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. The tradition of Obeah captures several lines of occult transmission. The Obeah it self is best seen as an multi-differenced source of extreme power. In a way the Obeah-men are the True Chaos-magicians since they can use any system they want and fuel it with the power of Obeah, without the danger of disrespect for the gods."


I agree that cat murder is a notably European peculiarity but it’s a cruelty that made it into several of the grimoires, as was the creation of the nganga (see de Plancy).  It is not in the least outrageous that rituals for destructive sorcery collected or practiced by a resident of the America’s (in the 1900’s no less) might include such instructions regardless of whether such practices represent some existing religious dogma or not.  The central point of the blog I quoted above was that the Obeah permits both religious and magical syncretism and points to the popularity of European ceremonialism among the diasporic traditions.  What’s more, since none of the diasporic traditions have a central hierarchy questions of religious dogma (as you have posed) simply cannot be meaningfully answered since there is no central authority to dictate it. 

The reality as it has been revealed by the scholars is that the diasporic traditions openly accepted the innovations of the western ceremonialists in the 1700’s and are presently manifesting the brave new paradigms.  The grimoires saw widespread distribution in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese long before they did in English and their components are there to be seen in the contemporary practices of Central and South America.   Meanwhile, the wiccan and new world witchcraft practitioners are still struggling with the revelation that they more closely resemble European ceremonialists than the old world pagans they identify with (which is not to say the two things are not related) and that just maybe the unbroken line of pagan and animist religious thought which even still underlay the diasporic traditions could teach them something.  (The rest of this thought-provoking material must be useless because of that cat thing!)

Anomalous Eurocentric rituals like cat murder in Gonzolas-Wippler’s overview of Santeria actually validate her sources (though I can’t speak to the validity of her perspective as I have not read the book), at least viewed against Stratton-Kent’s and de Frisvold’s work on the subject which highlight vast tracts of overlay.  Not to mention the naked desire to explore the dark places particular to Palo and other expressions of the Obeah, which I think is at times confused with its actual contingency of spiritual observations.  There are a number of cat murder spells in old N. American hoodoo as well, most usually for the creation of talismans bestowing luck or invisibility.  Crowley killed some cats during the Egypt workings if my memory is correct.  Any paradigm with a strong animist undercurrent is going to emphasize sympathy, you want the luck of the cat you need a talisman made from the hair of a cat.  You want invisibility you need these bones from a cat for your talisman.  There are humane methods to collect bones and hair from an animal for sympathetic workings like this and then there are other, more immediate and far less humane ways but there is nothing particularly noteworthy about its inclusion among an anthology of practical magics.


12 comments:

  1. You do understand that by saying they're working on ways of reframing the debate, what they mean is that they're working to over-come differences and avoid this happening again, right?

    Next time, read the shit I link your happy ass too and pay attention. What you think is happening and what are actually happening are occasionally two different things. This had nothing to do with what anyone does in public vs. private. You made that assumption all on your own, brother.

    Feel free to delete this comment after the appropriate kicking sensation has occurred.

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  2. I didn't at any point call into question the actions of the Pantheacon presenters or their efforts to avoid future conflicts, I agree with all of those efforts. The statements that public vs. private arguments were invalid was actually made in solidarity with those made in Kenaz Filan's statements regarding the logical focus for Pantheacon.

    I also read the statements from the Covens involved and found them trivializing and dismissive. It is a recognized fact that the girl who was publicly judged unfit and turned away felt as though she was the victim of a xenophobic hatred. So I am on her side still, after the link reading.

    That being said, I have obviously offended you and that was not my intention. I shall excise said portion immediately (in difference to your sensitive, girly feelings) so as not to derail our discussion. Again, no offense intended.

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  3. @Valentine: Supermoon. I must be girly. Yeesh. Sorry, too.

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  4. Mien Gott Jack, our mangina's are showing.

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  5. Allow me to rephrase the cat bit so that my concerns make more sense: when you, as a psychologist with a vested interest in presenting information in a way that it will be accepted as true, rely on shock or horror based expositions then I have some doubts about the authenticity of that subject as is. The entire chapter reads like a warning against teenage Satanism, not like an erudite or otherwise restructuring of information.

    This does not mean that cats were not felled, or are not felled with regards with the practices. It is rather the method of presentation, the lack of sources by which such things can be backtracked (and no, I don't consider the Miami Police Department a reliable source for Palo information) and authenticated. In the case of Wippler's book - there aren't many to read it side-by-side with so as to compare the information and try to suss out sources. This will hopefully change in the next decade.

    Nor do I mean to imply that simply because killing a cat is inhumane, the source must be wrong. Again: presentation. If Wippler was one of us, I might not think otherwise. But she is supposedly a professional and a psychologist: by writing the information as she did, she clearly put it forth in a way that it should be considered to a certain degree circumspect. I suspect the chapter is included more to make Santeria look more humane in comparison. I may, however, be wrong. Regardless: if she is producing professional work, it behooves her to write professionally. Maya Derren and Wade Davis managed it just fine without coming across like crackpots.

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  6. Dammit... Having read through all yours and Jack's girlish nail polishing and diary entries I'm now super interested to know how Pantheacon folded into an obeah/cat/chinatown-chicken post.

    Call my mangina disappointed... But only slightly because this was awesome.

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  7. PS Jack: Have you ever seen any of Maya Deren's short films she shot in California?

    I studied them at film school.

    Total crackpot. :)

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  8. Psychologists are shocked and horrified by any kind of animal murder Jack. As is the vast majority of the western neo-pagan community. This is especially true of the late eighties when this book was being compiled and the Satanic abuse scares were going down.

    You should concern yourself with how the law perceives your discipline, that was the whole point of Obscene Promises and Kenaz Filan's blog on the reality of litigation should Pantheacon be seen as enforcing the exclusionary philosophies of some of its presenters.

    My contention has always been that it is less important that you have another book to compare Wippler against when there are a million Santerians living all around you. And you expressed a distinct prejudice towards more material on the subject in your blog because of the Wippler book, which seems to me to be going a bit farther than considering the information regarding the evils of Palo circumspect. A degree of circumspection is necessary for any book if you ask me.

    Maya Derren studiously ignores anything which might darken her already troubled encounters with the Lwa. No Petro, no Brigitte, no Danto, no Zombi. Still, an excellent book. I haven't read Davis. Milo Rigaud is also excellent, if a bit arbitrary and dense. I am still looking for a copy of the Magic Island by W. B. Seabrook.

    Anyways, my contention on the cat thing is that your reasoning on the Wippler thing should favor more books not fewer. That is all.

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  9. "I'm now super interested to know how Pantheacon folded into an obeah/cat/chinatown-chicken post."

    @Gordon I wrote super inflammatory statements about the Amazons and their sister covens and then subsequently deleted them. I call it, 'pulling a Budapest'.

    @Jack Help me find The Magic Island. Its Seabrook.

    Also, my mangina is prettiest.

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  10. And you expressed a distinct prejudice towards more material on the subject in your blog because of the Wippler book, which seems to me to be going a bit farther than considering the information regarding the evils of Palo circumspect.

    No, no, no. Just to clarify here: that is not at all what I want someone to take away from that blog. I have a prejudice against bad material. I want more material - and so I expect some material to fall short of my expectations. But I don't want, in any way, to stem the flow of information that comes into my possession.

    As for desiring more books when I could hang out with Santeros - I would not mind, at all, further inclusion of any/all practitioners. I do not want, however, to push myself upon them. I would rather seem somewhat distant than to be an over-expectant white American that no one wants around. There's plenty of that already.

    Regarding Z. Budapest: she's made poor comments on various subjects over the years. It's unfair to judge Dianic Wiccans based on her statements, as they've become progressively more extreme over the years. Prior to this event was the panel, a few years ago, when she blamed all the evils of the world on men and jokingly suggested we all ought to die. If that isn't classic alienation (especially when you consider the transgender comments in the same light), I don't know what is. That said: she is one woman. Not the movement. Judging all Dianics on this matter would be like myself judging the whole of Santeria based on Wippler's book.

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  11. OK .. Wippler points clarified.

    Are the Amazons not a Dianic Coven?

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  12. @Gordon: I haven't seen any of her films beyond some of the footage of Divine Horsemen. But if you want something hilarious with? Check out the movie version of Serpent and the Rainbows... directed by Wes Craven. (Don't even ask me how it works. It doesn't even follow Davis' story...)

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