#agaou

Hi,

Sobo, Bade, and Agassou are all considered royalty within Haitian Vodou, along with a lot of Rada spirits in general. While some spirits had significant changes when they crossed the Middle Passage with the kidnapped and enslaved Africans brought to the island of then Hispaniola, those ones really didn't change that much.

Sobo and Bade are considered brothers and military generals and they do have a lot to do with thunder and lightening. In the asson lineage, they are often considered to guard the djevo/initiatory chamber and the new initiates. Their energy is carried quite a bit in the laplas and pote drapo ceremony that happens during larger fetes and is a part of kanzo. Folks will say they don't come in possession any longer, but that's something that really only been said in the US...they are seen often in peristyles in Haiti.

Agassou is also royalty and is probably even less changed than Sobo and Bade. In Dahomey, he was the progenitor of a royal lineage in what is now Allada in Benin. Alada figures heavily in a lot of songs for Agassou and other lwa. In Benin and nearby areas all the way into the Congo, he is or was heavily associated with men's secret societies. Some of that translated through the Middle Passage to places like Cuba, but that is not how he is present in Haiti. He is embodiment of the connection to Ginen.

Sobo, Bade, and Agassou also have a significant presence in the Dahomey rite as practiced in the Souvenans area in the lakou there. They are also regarded as royalty from the Dahomey kingdom. Gran Lakou Souvenans Mistik is considered to have a direct portal between Haiti and Benin, and count their rite as descended from Dahomey.

Agaou is a little different. He is associated with storms that have thunder and lightening, as well as hurricanes, sometimes earthquakes, and other types of natural phenomenon. He is generally considered to walk much more closely with St Jean Baptiste and the Ti Jean closely associated there and Kouzen. A lot of people fear Agaou and consider him dangerous and violent, but it depends on relationship and lakou, really. Some folks say Agaou is closely associated with the office of the head of the Allada army prior to the founding of the modern states in Africa, and some associate him with the father of Touissant L'Ouverture who held the title of chief of the army of Allada.

At one point, Agaou told me he is in the air and sees everything from where he is above, but your mileage may vary, of course. Similarly, I had a dream a very long time ago about Agaou working very closely with Sobo and Bade (and inviting me on a road trip in a red convertible, but that's neither here nor there), but again...YMMV.

Bon fet St Gerard Majella! Gede walks beside many saints, and St Gerard is one of the more well-known ones. I’m not cooking for Gede today (he eats soon enough..), but the Dead Man has some fresh flowers next to his seat.

It’s been BUSY over here at kay Bonkira; September and October are packed on my personal calendar and it usually catches me by surprise after a summer full of ceremony down in Haiti. Things were different this summer--we postponed ceremony until January, but I did go to Haiti in August--and so I had a little more brain space to plan.

September is often a month where folks hold a fet Metrès over several days (or one really long day), which is a fet for many of the feminine lwa and most often for Metrès Ezili Freda, Metrès Danto, and sometimes Metrès LaSiren as well. Several feast days for these ladies fall within that month, so it’s a good time for them to be celebrated.

While I didn’t hold a fet, I certainly spent a lot of time with those ladies. I try to keep at the front a message that LaSiren had for me and that has come up in a leson more than once: I am male-spirit heavy by default, in that my closest relationships with the lwa are with masculine ones, and so I need to make sure I am balanced out. This means conscious effort to keep the ladies at the front as much as I keep the masculine spirits, and that’s not nearly as easy as I wish it was. It’s been a long, LOOOONG process of digging in deep to being more comfortable with femininity and finding how I can connect with that in ways that don’t feel too out of character. 

The ladies are patient with me and probably more patient than I really earn, so that’s a grace I don’t take lightly.

Then, it was time for Marassa, the divine twins and multiple births. I have previously been a person who has not really enjoyed children, but taking care of my pack of Marassa and my own twin who did not make it to life has changed things. The happy, playful energy lightens my household; I am a fairly quiet and reserved person (really) and so my household tends towards quiet and perhaps kind of serious...but children shake that up and remind me to be looser and more playful. We hold our Marassa in a set of special purpose-built clay vessels called plat Marassa, as well as utilizing some traditional wooden trays as well, and they all got bathed and refreshed, and then given an assortment of traditional snacks called manje marassa. Like all the metrès, they give me grace to understand and open up another part of myself and I think that’s pretty great.

A few days later was Michaelmas, which is Agaou’s feast day. Agaou has always been what is honestly a sort of gleeful surprise for me. He wasn’t a spirit I knew well at all until after my kanzo, when I started dreaming with him regularly. As I prepped for my maryaj lwa, he began presenting me with rings in dreams and asked to be included in the wedding. When he came down to marry me, the first thing he told me was that the choice for maryaj had been his, and that he would have pursued me until I said yes if I had fought him. 

How I have come to know him is unique and he is a huge presence in my day-to-day, so when his feast day rolled around you know I was making some of his favorites. He eats turkey, so there was sòs kodenn (heavy on the sòs), diri ak pwa wouj, a few kinds of labouyi, and kafe ayisyen. Something small to hold him over until fet Agaou this January in Haiti(!!!). I have never been to a fet Agaou before, so I am really REALLY excited.

And each year that I celebrate Agaou’s feast day, he gives me a gift in an area that I don’t have a lot of knowledge in: somehow, he is invested in my family and family history. Last year, he clarified a really significant dream I had about my family while in the djevo, and that was a personal and spiritual bomb going of, and this year he chose to answer a long-standing lifelong question about my parentage, complete with some namedropping of someone who actually exists. It’s like spiritual Jerry Springer and I sit with all of this in a mixture of gratitude and ‘you have got to be fucking kidding me’. Agaou holds his cards close when he wants, so the pieces he gives me are important. Mapping out my ancestors and family--a hugely difficult area for me--has become it’s own small act of devotion.

October 2 was for my girl Thérèse de Lisieux and, if it was Before Plague Time, I’d have gone to mass at one of the local Carmelite monasteries and brought her some flowers but the majority of the churches here are still closed and Thérèse knows I love her without me needing to go to church. And, as a saint who died of a respiratory illness (TB), pretty sure she doesn’t need me getting sick just to prove a point. 

What’s next? November brings Gede and time to feed ancestors, as well as a special time for Simbi right before Petwo season kicks off full force in September. January bring fet Twa Wa/Three Kings, and unless things burn down even worse than they are now, I’ll be in Haiti celebrating and enjoying all the ceremony we postponed from this summer.

In between those things, I am working on a contribution for a book on folks who are converts to African and African-descended religions which will be out in early 2021, pumping out art (pestilence has been good for my creativity), and celebrating some career milestones and successes. 2020 has been an absolute bitch of a year, but I’m glad there are some positives to hang onto.

Hello!

While I appreciate your sentiment, titles like Manman and Papa are really only used with someone’s initiatory parent, and that’s not a relationship that would sort of play out on my blog. Most folks just call me Alex or Houngan Alex, either are fine with me!

Agaou is a really unique spirit. He’s often considered to be somewhat mysterious due to the fact that he is kind of a loner spirit, meaning that he does not walk with a court of spirits like many other lwa do. He sort of does his own thing and goes where he wants. He is largely served in the Rada rite which causes a lot of confusion for folks, as the assumption is that Rada spirits are all cool spirits. Instead, what most Rada spirits are is royalty and the idea that they are cooler is usually a misinterpretation of status (another whole post)...many spirits who are hot tempered as a default are or can be served in the Rada rite (Agaou, Bossou, Ti Jean, and more..).

A lot of his names relate back to what he is known for: thunder, lightening, earthquakes, and the sort of energy those phenomenon bring. Agaou Tonè, Agaou Zèklè, Agaou Loraj...all those names speak about natural occurrences Agaou is associated with. He also has interesting names that tell stories and talk about alliances as well, like Agaou Wedo, Agaou Bèt San San/Agaou Beast Without Blood or Agaou Lefan/Agaou Elephant. The mention of an elephant is REALLY interesting because Haiti does not have elephants. Some folks think it may be a tie to Africa, some folks say it is because the earth shakes when Agaou walks.

All of those things can definitely lead to a more Petwo understanding of Agaou or the choice to serve him Petwo style. A lot of internet stuff paints him as dangerous, feared, and known to kill his chwal...which I don’t find to be true. He is dangerous in the same way that all lwa are dangerous, and I see no reason to fear the lwa unless you wrong them or have purposefully been avoiding what they tell you to do. Like all spirits, they reflect how you treat them...if you approach Agaou as if he is a terrifying spirit who might harm someone, he may come through like that or he may surprise you and set you back on your heels by showing you what you don’t know about him.

I have known Agaou to be a somewhat selective spirit and even secretive in hsi day-to-day business...but that could be said of most lwa, who can choose to ignore you until they want to speak with you or have decided you’re ready to hear from them. He is often considered to be from the Jacmel area, which is where the lineage I am from is rooted, and so I know him quite well because he is very present in his hometown.

While Agaou may choose to remain distant, he sees EVERYTHING. When he came down during my maryaj to get his ring, that was one of the messages he left me with: I am in the sky, and I see everything so don’t think anything is beyond my notice. He is heavily associated with St. Michel Arcange, and there’s a lot of mystery there as to why.

Agaou gwonde nan peyi a! Bon fet Agaou; gwo neg m, gwo lwa m, gwo mari m! Bon fet St Michel Arcange!

Agaou arrives to take his kodenn/turkey at Fet Kouzen's 'pre-party'/feeding. It was a bit of husbandception for me since Agaou (my husband) arrived in the head of my husband.

Just before this part of the pre-fet S (the human husband) had been in the badji preparing some things for Kouzen, and came back as we were finishing the salute and the preparation of Agaou's kodenn. S got about 20 feet and half a dance move into the temple when Agaou began to arrive in his head. It was beautiful to watch and beautiful because when S gets lwa, they are always the lwa I am married to. It's a blessing to be married to someone who my lwa favor so much.

It’s been a busy couple weeks over this way, and a lot of stuff is happening both rapidly and slowly.

Last weekend, we mounted lave tet in Boston, which made for a long weekend Doing Stuff with family. It was a really lovely and intimate experience for me with some of my siblings, and it was good to spend time with them without the hustle and bustle of a big ceremony going on around us. Ceremony of any sort leads me to and leaves me with new understandings of the spirits and how they move in the world, which is a blessing I am grateful for.

Yesterday was Michaelmas/Feast of St. Michel Arcange, and one of my husbands walks with St. Michael, so I began a novena for him several days before lave tet began which was an interesting challenge for myself. Several nights had ceremony ending in the wee hours, which meant I would begin my prayers in the wee-est of wee hours since I prefer to make most of my big prayers right before I sleep. Some nights I was too exhausted to do anything but the main novena prayer, so I owe Agaou some rounds of rosary-saying.

Today was Haitian dance class, which meets weekly here in the city, and while I have been before, it had been a long time since I had been. One of my brothers was teaching, though, so I wanted to go support him and I really do need to lean how to dance. It was so, SO much fun. I joked later that it usually takes me a plane ticket and a passport to enjoy sweating profusely so much with my friends, but LORD it was good. We danced a little yanvalou, parigol, a whole lot of Djouba and Nago, and ended with a bit of banda. 

As soon as the drums started,I really felt alive--I live for those damn drums because they are the heartbeat of the spirits, and it is so joyful to hear the rhythms. I didn’t do too badly, overall--there is some stuff that I am really not good at yet (my spine does not yet want to move like my brother’s, but it will get there), but I picked up the footwork and could get it going. I love me some Djouba and Nago dances, though, and it was really amazing to start to learn how to move my body like the spirits do when they are down in possession. I really can’t wait to go back.

Today is also the 120th anniversary of the death of St. Thérèse of Lisieux/ Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. She has shown up for me in a big, big way after kanzo, and it’s likely because of my pre-kanzo praying to her. Part of my bargain with my spirits to get to Haiti and into the djevo was that, if they would help the money come, I would attend Mass weekly. The church I attended Mass at had a votive altar for her, and I knew her to have the reputation of being deeply faithful and possessing a lot of internal spiritual strength and fortitude--she entered the cloister at 15 and never left the convent after that, eventually dying of tuberculosis inside the walls. So, I prayed and asked her to grant my strength to do what I needed to do to fulfill my promise to my spirits and to have faith in their plan for me. They were prayers of desperation, honestly, since things were burning down and I had no idea how I was going to make it all happen. To be frank, if my mother had told me that praying to the light bulb would have helped me, I would have done it. She didn’t tell me to go speak with Thérèse, but I decided that nothing was off limits so to  Thérèse I went.

Imagine my surprise when she started talking back, after I had settled down from kanzo. I have dreamed her over and over where we sit down and talk about things or where I find things that have her image on them. Hell, right before kanzo someone gave me a statue of Thérèse. I wondered out loud to my mother why a saint known to be a very Catholic-y Catholic would start talking to me, and my mother looked up from her task and said ‘because she was listening’. Duh.

Thérèse doesn’t seem to have any sort of issue with me--despite me being the worst version of a Catholic you have ever seen, complete with my happy living in sin of various sorts and the whole trans thing and on and on--and even seems pleased with my attention. She outright doesn’t care about the vodou thing, which was super surprising, and the more I read about her, the more I understand how she and her philosophy of devotion fit within my spiritual sphere and personal development. Once I get settled into my next home, she wants a space of her own and I guess since I was screeching at her pre-kanzo, she is exempt from my ‘absolutely no more spirits’ declaration I made post-kanzo. So, she’ll get her shrine.

Her attention and presence has coincided nicely with a request from one of my husbands to attend Mass regularly, which, in the dream he gave me that informed of this in a ‘why don’t you attend Mass more? why don’t you participate?’, resulted in my dream-self sort of telling him off (’the Church doesn’t want me and I don’t want it’). My mother’s take on all of this was super pragmatic--if your husband is telling you to go to church, you probably should get your ass to church’. So, I have been bouncing around to a variety of churches to find one that I like. Tomorrow, I go to Mass at the chapel at the local Carmelite monastery for a special Mass in honor of Thérèse, since tomorrow is her official feast day.

All of this keeps being drawn together in one fat care package for me of ‘things you need to work on’ from my spirits. I was not raised Catholic, but grew up in a fairly religiously combative Protestant household with involvement in what amounts to a Christian-flavored cult and am a pastor’s kid. I have a lot of baggage to unpack there and they are making sure I get to it. In a lot of ways, it is circles just being looped in tighter and tighter to form one whole, which, basically, is me. It’s nice, in it’s own way, if not completely comfy.

The title of this post is part of that idea of tightening circles, kind of. One of the big misconceptions that a lot of folks have about kanzo is that once you’re out, you’re good. Like, things are in place, life will be smooth, you don’t have a lot to keep chugging on, and I sort of laugh at that because I totally see where that comes from--you’ve essentially just climbed a huge spiritual mountain complete with ice crevasses and sheer cliffs. Surely this means Done, right?

Nope. For me, I got lucky--I didn’t even have the time/space to consider what came after kanzo as the world was basically ending on the date I was scheduled to head to Haiti. Anything after didn’t matter and I didn’t think about it, so it wasn’t that huge a deal when it was clear that, oh no, kanzo is really just a beginning of the work. In that framework, the way leads on to the way. There is no finished and no good enough. There will never be a point where I can point to something and say ‘yeah, I got that’. There is always a way to make something a little better or a place to learn a new thing or, at the very least, a new challenge from the spirits. 

In that vein, priests never really retire, in any sense. There will always be spirits to tend and feed, always stuff to do, always ceremonies to put on, always clients to help, and so I will always work, in many spheres. The way leads on to the way. I will always needs to have income, if only to make sure my spirits stay happy, and I will always need to develop myself as a person so that I can be the best priest-tool and best version of myself for my spirits. There is no sitting still, only moving forward, even if I am crawling.

So, the way continues to unfold, and I am glad for it. It means I am not dead yet and that I have purpose at my finger tips, even if all I want to do is scratch at the walls when things are uncomfy.

Lots of stuff coming up for me, too! A book I wrote a piece for on queer magic in vodou will be coming out in April which is super exciting. I will be doing an AMA/ask me anything on Reddit as soon as I get myself together and submit the post (and I will link it here if anyone wants to go read) and have a day where I am not running around doing a million things. I am starting to plan for top surgery in the not-distant future, which means I have a lot of things to plan out and work to do since this will not be a small undertaking at all. More stuff is on the cusp of coming to fruition, and it’s all good.

Things are good in general, and I feel blessed to wake up every day and feel gratitude for all that has transpired in the past few years and gratitude for all that my spirits have done for me. All that I have descends from them--my hands may have done the work, but it is by their grace that it all has come to be. These days, I can only pray to know their will for me and to see their faces out in the world and on the inside--they take such excellent care of me, and I am so damn small and inconsequential.

Syèiko o evida, syèiko evida nayide Syèiko o evida, syèiko evida nayide O Damballah vye vye, salou Gwetò O Damballah vye vye, salou Gwetò evi o evi se Se Agaou se Se Agaou se Ago lisa gwonde lwa m nan Syèiko evida nayide

Hello!

So, how I tend to see things is not dissimilar to how we talk about how the lwa relate to Africa: it is all (potentially) the same root that has divided into separate plants. It could be that Belie Belcan and Agaou have similar roots.

For me, I don't see spirits from different cultures as aspects of each other because (again, for me) it is looking for what we may think of as similarities in an effort to connect understandings in our brain. It is a backhanded curse descended from Joseph Campbell and the roots of anthropology. Culture has definitely developed very differently on the island, and so Agaou is very, VERY Haitian with potential roots in Africa, as Belie Belcan is very Dominican.

I have heard folks say that Belie is most similar to Ogou and the songs I have heard for Belie Belcan make that make sense for me...but YMMV, of course.

And fwiw Agaou is not the only lwa associated with thunder! Off the top of my head, there are at least three or four others I can think of.