I've decided that my autobiography should be called "Why I Have Brav Gede's Cigarette Paper Stuck To My Thigh, And Other Vodou Adventures." To find out why, gentle readers, you might all want to settle in with some rum and spicy chicken/cake and champagne/coffee and cigarettes according to the preferences of your deities, because this is going to be a really long post!

Sorry for the mammoth essay here, but I wanted to share more of my experiences from Houngan Hector's visit to the UK. I learned more in one week in his company than I have in the entire six years I've been serving the Loa! He's definitely the Houngan I've been looking for. He's incredibly strong, laid back and patient but utterly straight talking. You really know where you are with him. I respect that immeasurably.

He very kindly agreed to lead a ceremony for the sea Loa Agwe while he was in town, and I was blown away by everything I witnessed.

After drawing a veve on the floor in cornmeal and reciting long prayers and songs to Bondye, the saints and the Loa, Hector began to lead us in a series of songs to the Rada pantheon - the gentle, cool-headed group of Vodou spirits. Before too long, the first of the night's Loa jumped into Hector's head. The first Loa to arrive in possession was La Sirene; the seductive and artistic mermaid spirit. She was beautiful but utterly eerie - her eyes were wide and deep and inhuman. She really loved one man who was there - she actually grabbed him and rolled about on the floor with him! La Sirene then tried to mime something to us involving a necklace, but we didn't understand; so she called her husband Agwe, who translated. Apparently La Sirene wanted someone to thread a key on a chain so that she could open doors and opportunities for one of the participants. We quickly put one together, only to watch Agwe swallow it whole. He brought it back up after a while and dropped it into the hands of the person who La Sirene had blessed.

Agwe was a wondeful spirit to meet. His eyes were soulful and strong eternally fixed on some distant horizon. He sat backwards in his chair as if he were piloting a small craft through fog, calling out to us in a low, resonant voice.

Agwe then motioned for me to come to him. He took my hands and poured absinthe into my palms. He rubbed them together, spat in my hands and pressed them together. It was like an electric current running right up my arms - I felt like he was giving me strength and blessings. It was a wonderful feeling. He also claimed someone else at the ritual as a follower. He grabbed their shirt and hugged them fiercely, saying "Mine!"

After Agwe left, Hector took a short break before moving onto sing for the rest of the Rada spirits. Erzulie Freda, Loa of love and beauty, arrived in possession very quickly, and leapt onto a chair until we spread a white sheet on the floor for her. She made me wash my hands in perfume before anointing her with the same scent. (Actually, it was BPAL's Number 20 Love Oil from their Voodoo Blends collection. Appropriate, I think.) She thanked me very graciously with a hooked-finger handshake, then turned her attention to one of the men present. He's actually not a Vodou practitioner at all, but she must not have cared... because she proposed! He said he'd think about it, so she started to cry. I've read that Erzulie will often cry at the end of her possessions, becuase she embodies idealism and dreams of perfection, and the real world can never meet those standards. Usually when she begins weeping it means it's time for her to depart. She fell backwards very gracefully into the arms of two strong men standing behind her.

Without a pause, Anaisa appeared in Hector's head. Anaisa is a spirit from Dominican Vodou rather than Haitian Vodou. Like Freda she embodies love and beauty, but unlike Freda she's practical and realistic - she's straight talking as much as she is flirtatious. Everyone adored Anaisa - she was utterly charming and lovely. I've never served her before but I now definitely intend to! We gave her a beer into which we'd poured more perfume and she handed round a plate of oysters that had been provided for Agwe. She smoked for a while, asked for some music and some flowers, then consulted everyone in turn giving them blessings and recipes for wanga, or spells.

The next Loa to arrive was the warrior Ogoun Feray - luckily he was in a very good mood! He sang to himself while he commanded us to give him rum and a cigar, then took a heavy machete and placed the sharp tip against his hip, and then his stomach. With no apparent effort, he bent the blade almost double. I've read that he often does this in possession but I never thought I'd see it myself! He actually at one point told me to hold the handle firmly and then leant with his full weight onto the point of the blade. We lit some rum and florida water on fire for him, and he ran his his feet through the flames until he was warm.

Ogoun was in a very solicitous mood; he told us all to sit down and eat until we were full, saying very sternly that he wanted to see all the food gone - especially the oysters because "they cost lots of moneys." It was really amusing actually - he looked at the rice, cake and fruit on the altar and said for us to bring in the food. Not the altar food - "the real food." By this he meant the chicken I'd roasted earlier; confirmed carnivore that he is! He blessed all the food and told us to cut the chicken and slice the mango but to be careful of our hands. "Knife accidents happen when I'm around," he remarked. In between swigs of rum and handfuls of nuts and roast chicken he gave us the recipe for a revenge wanga. Very useful stuff indeed! When we'd all finished eating he left and Hector's body sagged in the chair. Without a break, another spirit appeared.

Screwing up his eyes against the light, the spirit sauntered over to the altar and began to sing something in Creole that none of us understood but that was obviously utterly filthy. It was pretty obvious at this point we'd had a Gede crash the party, so we scrambled for a top hat, cane and sunglasses to give him. After grinding up against me for a while and running around molesting all the ladies with his cane, he vanished as quickly as he'd arrived. when Hector came back to himself, he told us that it must have been Brav - Baron's eldest son, who loves to shirk his work and instead go gambling, drinking and chasing women. He palms off the jobs Baron gives him on the rest of the family, and then takes all the credit!

Hector moved onto the Petro songs and dances; all of which were faster and more syncopated than the stately, joyful Rada songs. The Petro spirits are as a rule more fiery and aggressive than the Rada, and as such the majority of Vodou services are done for Rada, not Petro spirits. The only Petro Loa who came into possession was Erzulie Dantor; twin sister and sworn enemy of the gentle, compassionate Erzulie Freda. Dantor was frightening! Opening her eyes wide and hooting a strange, high-pitched "Ke! Ke! Ke!" she motioned for a cigarette and a bottle of florida water cologne to drink, then took up a full bottle of wine and pointed at one of the participants. Dantor doesn't speak, because she has no tongue. The legend goes that she came down onto the battlefield and fought side by side with the slaves during the Haitian revolution, and that afterwards a group of men tore our her tongue so she could never betray their secrets. This perhaps explains her often violent nature and her specific anger towards men who mistreat women.

Miming a message that we didn't quite understand, she whirled the bottle over her head and shouted angrily, and we all quickly told the object of her anger to kneel. She approached him, still shouting, and brought the bottle down with full force, stopping just above his head. Gently, she tapped him on the forehead with the bottle and gave him a few drops of wine to drink, and we all let go of our breaths in relief! For one moment there we all really thought he was going to get bottled. Dantor will however give warnings before she punishes people. She's a very stern mother but an understanding one.

At this point, Brav came back to translate. He was in a slightly more mellow mood this time. He tied a black satin scarf around his head, picked up the cigarette she'd left and grinned. "Ah, my godmother left me a cigarette," he said in a high, drawling voice. He smoked it while we found his cane, hat and glasses again and relayed the message. The person Dantor had targeted had to make peace with his own mother, Brav explained, and Dantor wasn't happy with some apparent tension between them.

Smoking two more cigarettes simultaneously, Brav strutted around the room for a while, poking one of the ladies present between the legs with the head of his cane and telling some of the filthiest stories you've ever heard - stop reading now if you're a delicate type - most of which started "So I was fucking the Virgin Mary last night...".

When Brav got bored of clowning around, he sat down on the floor and mixed us all a cleansing bath with instructions to scrub ourselves down with it as soon as we could. He lay back and stretched out on the floor for a while, then placed the stick between his legs and returned to his outrageous claims about what he did with the Virgin Mary. He scrambled to his feet and demonstrated his, umm, technique by tapping me gently on both cheeks with the head of the cane. He raised a finger. "Remember," he informed the boys present, "always slap it on the face." There was a perfect Warner Bros comedy moment as his entire body suddenly went stiff as a board and he fell backwards through a perfect 90 degree arc as he departed and Hector's spirit came back to his exhausted body.

So, that was my Wednesday night. How about you ladies and gents?

Sounds facinating and surreal. What an amazing Wednesday!

oh im so so so gutted i couldnt make it. that sounds like an amazing experience crow

Me too! Utterly stormin' honey. Will you be heading to Haiti any time?

Crow - thank you so much for that. Oh, I understand - and how thrilling to be present when so many Loa dropped by. It's a wonderful demonstration of their power and character.

One thing gave me the shivers:


I've had a god do that to me. Used the same word and, by the sound of it, the same attitude and inflection. It's a little...overwhelming.

Thanks everyone!

Unfortunately with the political situaiton in Haiti right now it's just not safe to go there and study, but I definitely intend to visit Hector's sosyete next year if possible and undergo a Lave Tet, which is a three day ceremony which feeds and strengthens your Loa.

sounds awesome Crow.

as soon as you mentioned one of them muttering filth i knew it was going to be one fo the Gede.

as a quick aside, do you know much or had much dealing with Gede Aragnee?

Ditto. Though I wasn't wearing a shirt at the time...

Sounds like an incredible experience Crow hon, thank you so much for posting

Um... same one, by any chance? or was it your Lady?

No, it was Himself... Insistent he was...

Heh. He's got a track record.

Hehe, they're quite outspoken aren't they? I'm very fond indeed of the Gede. We tried later to identify Brav's song; and if we've got the right one the lyrics are far too hilariously disgusting to post - even here!

I haven't dealt with Aragnee before, no; is that the same as Gede Naranyan? There are so many different spellings of the Loa that I lose track sometimes! I do know that he's associated with spiders, if that's any help, and that he's one of the more aggressive Gede.

Since reading your post I did a bit of reading up on the Gede. Wow, do they sound fun. Loki would love hanging out with that bunch.

LOL, what a terrifying thought, Moonhunter. The prank wars between Gede and Loki would escalate until they actually caused Ragnarok.

Apparently the humour of the Gede doesn't go over too well at all with some of the other Loa - Hector advised that I move my Ogoun Badagris and Feray altar away from the Gede space.

My Ogouns are both very serious and stern, having to do with issues of conflict, politics, diplomacy, honour and physical strength and vitality. Some of the Gede interpret this as the Ogouns taking themselves far too seriously; and when they meet someone like that they're almost guaranteed to needle them. Hector told me that apparently the Gede will sometimes come in and stomp around doing impressions of the Ogouns, walking around going "I'm Ogoun Badagris and you better do what I say, blah blah, blah... do this, do that, blah blah blah."

I think I'd run and hide under a table if that happened, because the wrath of the Ogoun group is not to be giggled at...

PS - I've edited the original post a bit to give some more context and info about the Loa who arrived in possession, because I realised a fair few people may not be familiar with my pantheon.

I used to work an awful lot with a god like that (Tiw), until I asked him if he wanted me to oath to him and he turned me down. Not because he didn't want me, apparently, but because he knew someone else was going to wander back into my life within a couple of weeks and say "Mine!" My patron does do seriousness as well as laid back, but unlike Tiw, he gets on with Loki and doesn't mind me spending time with him. Tiw and Loki don't get on, for precisely the sort of reasons the Ogoun and Gede don't get on.

I'll go back and re-read the OP with interest. After this thread, I shall look out for an opportunity sometime to attend a decent (if that's the right word in this context!) Vodou meeting. It might be fun.

Well, look me up if you're ever down Cardiff way and I shall break out the rum!

Totally facinating.

Like MoonHunter, I'd love to attend a meeting at some stage. I suspect it'd be an experience that would have no rivals

Well, if Hector comes back to the UK at any point I shall let you both know!