On a travel final 12 months to New Orleans, I sought after to be told extra a couple of custom with deep roots there: the only whose West African root is known as Vodún, become Vodou in Haiti, and in New Orleans is all the time referred to as voodoo. The ebook I learn is Karen McCarthy Brown’s Mama Lola, which specializes in the Haitian model, so I’ll use the “Vodou” spelling. Any introductory dialogue of this practice all the time starts with an mandatory disclaimer about Hollywood stereotypes: little or no of it’s about zombies, or even much less is set sticking pins in dolls. However the actual custom is attention-grabbing in its personal tactics.
As a thinker, I’m just about all the time maximum intrigued through cultural traditions of their philosophical or theological facet: what varieties of considering and mirrored image they’ve concerning the universe and how one can are living in it. However that’s now not all such traditions have to provide, and if I confined all my pastime to the philosophy, I must have discovered Vodou a unhappiness. Mama Lola, the Vodou priestess Brown discovered from, would often inform her “Karen, you suppose an excessive amount of!” or “You ask too many questions!” Brown will get excited when a dialogue between Mama Lola and every other Vodou skilled begins to show to the theological, however they temporarily drop the topic and not go back. The custom is all about interactions with the loa or lwa, supernatural beings having the ability to possess other folks in ritual trances. However neither in Mama Lola nor in anything I’ve learn or heard at the custom, do I see Vodou practitioners suppose a lot about what precisely the ones beings are – even if there’s so much to surprise about, since maximum Vodou practitioners believe themselves Catholics, and the connection of the loa to the saints and angels they’re recognized with, let on my own to any singular God (bondye), is hazy at best possible.
However regardless of all that, there’s one part of the custom that totally fascinates me and calls to me. And her identify is Ezili Freda.
Ezili Freda – aka Maria Dolorosa del Monte Calvario.
Ezili Freda is the loa related to attractiveness, romance, and comfort. Within the poverty of Haiti this stuff are intently attached: says Mama Lola, “Deficient other folks don’t haven’t any real love. They simply have association.” So Ezili Freda is portrayed as light-skinned, because the Haitian élite usually are. Since slaves had been required to be formally Catholic and may just best practise their ancestral traditions in secret, the picture of Maria Dolorosa del Monte Calvario – a picture at first supposed to be the Virgin Mary, however with a sword via her middle and surrounded through jewels and middle shapes – in Haiti become the enduring portrayal of Ezili Freda.
I don’t get the influence that Ezili Freda is one among Brown’s favorite loa – Brown provides Freda best six pages, in comparison to 24 for her angrier sister Ezili Dantor – however I discovered myself turning to these six pages over and over again. For Ezili Freda is interested in the similar issues I’m interested in in my very own gender fluidity: the cultured trappings of conventional femininity, purple, frills, fragrance. I think she calls to me moreover as a result of – in contrast to such a lot of divine feminine figures – she’s now not a mom goddess. Maximum traditions affiliate femininity with motherhood. However for me I’ve by no means felt a calling to be a mom, or for that topic a father. Ezili Freda represents a femininity I acknowledge in myself. That she is considered a protector of gay men – the namesake of the New Orleans rapper Big Freedia, who loves his female aspect – additionally makes me really feel that she connects to my very own gender fluidity.
Ezili Freda additionally has a mental downside that I generally tend to have: seeing the arena as by no means just right sufficient. She’s now not snark over smarm precisely – she’s now not an educational or journalist – however like lecturers and newshounds, no doubt like myself, she acutely sees what’s unsuitable with the arena. No matter else Ezili Freda is, she is lovely – and he or she needs the arena to be stunning, completely stunning in some way that it could by no means be. She requires that offerings to her to be perfect. She leaves each consultation of spirit ownership in tears, as a result of one thing was once now not just right sufficient for her. In the words of Vodou begin and blogger Dykedon (who additionally calls himself Houngan James), “she mourns for the lack of an unspoiled perfection that in all probability by no means in reality existed. The life like ugliness of the arena wounds her.” None of it is a just right trait, in her or in me; it’s now not one thing to domesticate. However it’s relatable. And that does appear to be a part of the purpose: no matter else the loa is also, they aren’t ethical exemplars. Vodou practitioners don’t seem to be inspired to emulate them, best to have a dating with them.
All of which is a function discovered in lots of gods throughout cultures, from Zeus to Krishna. (A New Orleans information did tension to us that the loa are “now not gods, they’re spirits” – however the obstacles between the ones two classes will also be rather porous. One of the crucial issues a Vodou theological inquiry may just do could be to spell out extra obviously how that difference works.) One of the crucial many stuff I love about conventional Buddhism is that it admits this function for the gods: you’re now not intended to revere them (let on my own emulate them), they’re simply there. Many traditions take a god who starts amoral – just like the YHWH who punishes the pharaoh’s complete other folks for an act that God made the pharaoh do – and take a look at to show him into an ethical exemplar. Within the historical past of Buddhism, fairly than such gods turning into become ethical exemplars, the ethical exemplars – the buddhas and bodhisattvas – get started turning into gods. However Vodou takes a unique means that I additionally like: the loa neither began as nor become ethical exemplars, they simply are. Which turns out more true to the universe as it’s – the imperfect universe that Ezili Freda weeps for.
By way of Haitian requirements, Ezili Freda has the entirety, and it’s nonetheless by no means just right sufficient. That’s a bracing reminder for me, since through those self same Haitian requirements I’m able one thing like hers – to a Haitian I’m light-skinned, and my upper-middle-class American way of life is a wealth not possible to maximum Haitians. And my Buddhist awakening in Thailand in some ways confirmed me how I will be too just like her, so readily disillusioned through the entirety that’s missing, regardless of (or on account of?) my relative privilege. Ezili Freda is relatable as a result of she is each the female attractiveness I need to be, and the depressing spoiled younger self I’ve spent such a lot of many years seeking to break out from – in all probability what Jung might call a shadow.
One of the crucial issues that I to find thrilling about Ezili Freda is that she calls to me from a non-intellectual, non-theological global – and that’s beautiful ordinary for me. I generally tend to are living very a lot in my head: a gaggle of my buddies just lately had an process that concerned bringing one thing beloved from one’s formative years; the place everybody else introduced a filled animal, I introduced a ebook. The earthy, non-intellectual global of Vodou could be very, very a ways from mine – however Ezili Freda calls to me throughout its obstacles. If it weren’t for her, I’d most likely have in my opinion discovered Vodou unappealing – however it’s a unique tale along with her there.
