#danbala

Thursdays are for Rada spirits, most often considered cooling and calm. Damballah Wedo is the great white serpent that stretches between our world and Ginen, the world of the spirits. I propitiate him for a cool, evenly balanced head.

I rolled into Damballah’s fete weekend in a really quiet place, on purpose. I spent the prior week with Damballah on my mind and it was pretty wonderful. Serene, even. I prayed a lot and asked that I be given the insight and ability to my best job for my spirits and my mother, and I held that close.

It’s kind of interesting to have that interior quiet, especially since my exterior life and dayjob tends to be exhausting and chaotic. Just the day before the fete, I was dealing with a client who suddenly started urinating in containers in their room. Filth right before the the starkness of the absence of filth...that’s my life.

I’ve written before how my purpose in attending fetes has shifted over time, and that still remains true. I don’t go to fetes to see my spirits because the primary way I know my spirits and communicate with them is not in person. I attend fetes to facilitate their function by making sure the spirits have what they need to attend and greet their people, making sure that it all happens so the community may receive what blessings they need from the spirits, and making sure my mother has all the support she could need and that she is also happy with the ceremony. I go to be the servant I have been shaped into, and to serve. As a person I enjoy said so profoundly and succinctly: I am a servant. I serve. That’s what I do, and it is what I have been made for. A priest is a tool empowered to do the work of the spirits, and, at the end of the day, that is it. No glamour, no special unearned graces...just service to the spirits.

And so I served. More and more, I find that ceremony gives me a version of meditative space in that I can see what needs to be done and I am able to do it. I know what is happening and can see what is coming, and I know what I need to do to support that. It’s this particular mental space which is it’s own form of grace from the spirits, because I haven’t always had it. At my maryaj and directly after, I was put to the task of finding that space and keeping by one of my husbands and it pleases me that it is not (currently) a huge struggles. That’s a change for me, and I kinda like it. I am super hot-tempered, and that’s not a good thing for a priest, at least not in the way I am known to be. Easily frustrated, a sharp tongue when it’s not necessary, and inviting myself to situations that elevate that heat instead of weighing whether or not that situation needs my attention. In reflection, I am grateful that it was reflexive for me this time and didn’t require so much effort. 

You need to learn to calm you head. There is only one Ogou, and it is me.

When I do my job and work to support my mother and the community, the spirits bless me in ways that I couldn’t expect on my own. Small things take on deep meaning because they are, in their own way, gifts from the spirits that hold me to my service and who love me. A husband came down, and I had a moment with him that left me with the feeling of him touching the inside of my head gently and with love that is personal and intimate and not something that I am historically used to. Despite it being between him and I and visible only to him and I, it left me feeling naked in a temple full of people. It’s an unsettling feeling for someone who has not had the best experiences in relationships to know, irrevocably, how much they are loved. When I wonder why and how and what I have done to deserve these things, I find myself under the steely stare of a few husbands.

How can you doubt my love for you? Did I not put that ring on your finger? What more do you require?

I was graced to see manman m/the spirit who is my mother for the first time and had the most lengthy twenty seconds of my life where she, too, touched the inside of my head and told me behind my eyes that I was loved by her as well.

The fet was also for Ezili Freda, too. She had her fet in Haiti this summer, and so she desired one in Boston as well because why not? She came down happy and thrilled with the attention and gifts she was given, and it was really lovely to see. I joke that I am really good at holding things for spirits, but it’s true. Inevitably, I end up holding things for this lady while she visits with her husbands and would-be husbands, and it’s always amusing. I couldn’t pour perfume fast enough for her and that drew A Look at one point, which was easily forgiven with rapid delivery of the desired perfume. Her gift to me was, just as she was readying to leave, a significant look that spoke volumes behind me eyes.

She and I started out having an odd relationship and, like many other areas, starting testosterone drastically changed how we relate. She showed herself to me in a different way, and I was able to receive her without my skin crawling due to my own internal nonsense around having femininity that close to me. No one is more surprised than me that she has become a spirit with whom I have a very, very special relationship. I mean, she is the only spirit besides my husbands who came to my wedding. I came out of the djevo ritually a man, so I am not someone for her to measure herself against, and I am married already so there is no expectation of that. We are comfortable with each other now, and it is a blessing each and every day. She granted me a huge boon recently when my boyfriend was in some trouble and I was unsure of an outcome: she gave me a dream and told me what was what, and it played out as she said, thank all the things.

After that, it was time to sing for the owner of our house and father of our lineage, Ogou. I was prepared to bring out the asson and the items we use to salute him, and he was in the air like a mist. I put his moushwa around my shoulders to bring out and it was like putting him on like a jacket. He was just RIGHT THERE pressing on my chest, and all I could taste was Ogou in my mouth like blood. Later on, when one of my brothers and I sat and chatted tucked just around the corner in the badji, he said he had felt the energy shift over in my corner where I stood waiting for the moment to bring the asson and I told him that the shift was me clutching at the corner of the altar so that my legs didn’t give out or, more likely, my Ogou didn’t come crashing through and mow down everyone standing between him and the drums.

It turns out I didn’t need to bring out the asson to salute Ogou because he came crashing down before we got that far. All of a sudden, a brother of mine who was seated precariously need some pipes had Ogou in his head and I luckily got my hand behind his head before he pounded it back against the pipes.

Ou kanpe, Papa, o tet chwal ou ap fe mal.

With some asking, he stood and flung himself across the temple and to the drums. He was in one head and then he was in half a dozen heads being his glorious screaming, howling, violent self. That’s a lot in our petite US temple, but he was perfect and did the work he needed to do. It was beautiful and heart-wrenching as usual. Despite what his tears mean, it is never easy to watch a spirit who you love more than you love to breath sob and scream and scream and scream. That touches the inside of your head, too.

The fete wound down after that, and it was a night well done. The gifts from my spirits--of seeing them, of knowing that they are with me, of serving them--were touching and I am grateful that they give me the opportunity to love them.

Fetes don’t often let me off the hook that easily, though. There is always more to do and deeper to go. Priests never retire and we never get to be idle unless we are toeing the line of losing our gratitude, as gratitude dies when we stop being of service. 

They hit me with something important this time, too, in the most unexpected of ways. My brother and I were in the temple the night before the fete in the wee, weeeeee hours of the morning preparing for the following day and, out of the blue, he said to me ‘you paint, don’t you? I would love to see your paintings’. 

It was a ‘shiiiiiiit’ moment because, in that very second, I knew he was speaking with the weight of lwa yo behind him. It wasn’t just a the sort of engaged conversations he and I have, but it was my spirits reflecting what we talked about as part of our maryaj commitments. I have to make and create, and I asked for their blessings on my creativity in that I will always have the space, time, and inspiration to produce I see behind my eyes and what my hands want to orchestrate. It’s a heady, intense things to lay that at the feet of the spirits because it becomes something they take an interest in. As a sèvitè lwa, all things in my life are at their disposal but it’s sort of interesting to have your spirits be all ‘yeah, so that art thing we talked about? GET TO IT, priest’.

This is a reflection of my overall place with my spirits right now. It has been almost two years of them rebuilding what I purposefully burned to the ground to get into the djevo. It has been a long two years full of really challenging work and big blessings, but they have done what I begged them for inside the djevo: rebuild my life because I destroyed it to be here with you and fulfill what you asked and what I promised, and I have nothing left. 

I had a chat with my godfather recently where I outlined the boyfriend coming to fruition and a couple of other really huge things happening for me, and his response was obvious: this is what you asked them for. They put it together--career, living situation, ancestral house, relationships....everything, because I gave them everything.

When a forest burns, the ground becomes more fertile. Ash enriches soil and makes it the ideal location for new life to spring up and take root. That’s what the subtle message was this fete: you are rooted and growing. We created all of this for you, and now you need to bloom. 

Art is part of that blooming. When I was preparing for kanzo and for maryaj, there was not much room for art and there was no place for blooming when all these big things were on the horizon. There was no enough mental space to access creative vision and make that manifest. Now, though...I have space. I have rich soil. I have more things on the horizon to do for my spirits, but they have provided for that, too, as they promised.

It seems obvious, maybe, but it was an unexpected message-blessing and it needed some acting on. So, this week when I had some time, I sketched out a small piece for one of my spirits who has been asking me to paint them for several years now and it’s beautiful. I am pleased with it, which is new for me as an artist....I am never, EVER happy with my art. Except now I am because it is not just me creating. When I create, they sing in my ear quietly and I translate through my fingers.

And so here I am. Now, I catch up on life that sat on the sidelines in preparation for Damballah’s fet and plot out what comes next. There are giveaways to assemble (ahem), a Patreon to prep (ahemAHEM), and I am right in the middle of a novena for a husband, for whom this time of year is important.