One of my husbands did not attend our maryaj ceremony, for a bunch of reasons. It was a hard thing and I was in my feelings about it for a minute, but it ultimately changed nothing--spirit marriage in vodou does not require each spirit to be present, as the presiding priest does the same work whether or not they are there. The ring is blessed and empowered, I am blessed and empowered as a spouse of this spirit, and the marriage certificate/contract is endorsed as complete and valid. For me, it was that this particular divine joining was a bigger leap of faith for me than any of the other marriages because I had never met this spirit embodied. Kriminel had showed himself to me in dreams repeatedly, making known his presence until I (and anyone else I told the dreams to) was quite sure it was him. He pressed himself upon me until the last moment when I asked my spirits if there was anything else that needed to be done for the ceremony, and there was a dream where I was told that I couldn’t have the ceremony without two extra rings, one of which was for him. Overlaying that dream was his laughter--just the sound of his uncontrollable, I-am-crazy-I-don’t-care laughter ringing in my ears--and I was told that they (all my to-be husbands) had me now and were never going to let me go.

Kriminel’s relative insanity is why I hadn’t met him before. He is a spirit heavily involved in the lineage I am a part of, but he is a rough ride and difficult to manage, at the best of times. A mild Kriminel disfigures his chwal by pushing pins and needles through his cheeks/tongue, a more feisty Kriminel slashes his chwal with a blade, eats glass, stabs his chwal (the first dream that I could definitively say it was Kriminel was when he walked up to me laughing, stared at me with blood red eyes, and laughed and laughed while he stabbed himself repeatedly in the stomach), and vomits blood .He is not saluted or called into possession often, and so him asking/demanding that I marry him was really me looking a psychopathic serial killer in the face with stacks of bodies around him on our first meeting and effectively saying ‘marry you? Sure!’. I could have said no, but, for whatever reason, I took that big leap of faith and logic and agreed, sight really and truly unseen. There was nothing really say that he wasn’t just going to show up and try to kill me, but, you know, living on the edge and all.

Curiousity hadn’t and hasn’t killed me yet, and as the wedding drew closer and passed without him being embodied, I found him more and more compelling. Once I managed my feelings post-maryaj ceremony, I prayed and asked him for a wedding gift: I wanted to see him embodied before I left Haiti. There weren’t a lot of opportunities for that to happen--there was one ceremony happening two nights before I was to fly back home where he MIGHT be allowed to come, but he otherwise was not going to be a presence that would be sought out.

He did come, though, to fet Dantor, and he delivered my requested gift. I watched a Kriminel that, the second he was seated in the chwal, I knew without a doubt was my husband. I watched him throw himself around the peristyle and go through a complicated exchange where he was allowed to drink from a bottle but not hold it. I watched him run full force into a group of priests who were blocking him from accessing the altar, where there were a variety of daggers and machetes. I watched him do work on people that sent them to the ground howling and crying. I watched him snatch up an errant bottle of rum, smash it to pieces over the poto mitan, and chew on the broken glass before he was stopped. I watched his chwal bleed from cuts inflicted as part of the bottle breaking and I watched Kriminel slowly bubble out blood from his mouth, in a way that made the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

When he was hustled into the badji/back room to have the cuts and blood attended to and to be offered the feast that had been prepared for him, I had a long moment of staring at the closed badji door. It was entirely possible that this was going to be the only chance I was going to get to see him embodied for quite awhile. If I invited myself back there, I could be inviting myself to an unpleasant party (think a group of velociraptors all turning their heads to look at you at once) of the several Kriminels who had arrived and were eating, or it could be an opportunity to observe my husband in his ‘natural habitat’. I really had a moment of indecision before I had a moment of Fuck It. I burned down my life last year and lived to tell the tale, and came back this year to get married, and I wasn’t going to be scared of any spirit I was married to (or any spirit in general--I did not come all this way in my life to be afraid.). So, I handed my friend my camera, asked her to wish me luck, and headed for the badji.

My expectation was that I would find a corner and occupy it quietly while watching my husband and the other Kriminels eat. I am one small and relatively unimportant person, and I make it a habit not to force interactions with spirits. However, my expectations are often broken because I am painfully human.

When I opened the door and stepped into the back room, the Kriminel I recognized looked up and everything changed. His eyes lit up, he threw his arms opens in a ‘YOU’RE HERE OH MY GOD’ sort of way, and gestured insistently that I should come sit by him. I swear to all that is holy that you could smell the smoke of my brain short circuiting in that moment. Was this not the same spirit who had assaulted a rum bottle and seen fit to harm his horse minutes ago? Is he not the same spirit who prefers blood to water and wants to burn down the world? It was, but it was also my husband and my heart recognized him. All I could do was hang my head and grin like a fool. The serial killer set about to straightening out the sheet-covered banana mat so that I could sit on it with him and not be on the floor.

His gentleness was overwhelming and disarming, and it was honestly all I could do not to cry like a 12-year-old meeting his favorite rock star. Yes, he had been extremely present in my dreams for months, but having him physically next to me and being joyful about me was something that I had not expected or planned for, really. He pulled me close to him, put his arm around me, kissed me repeatedly, and blessed the ring I wear for him over and over, with repeated kisses to it and the finger it was on.

He was excited to feed me and kept pushing pork and bannann and pòmdetè at me until it was almost force-feeding. Food received from a spirit, and doubly so from a husband, is a blessing, and he was intent that I would have his blessings to the point where I had to ask him to slow down and gesticulate wildly for some water while I gagged on the sheer volume of food that he was trying to shove down my throat. I fed him, too, and we both accepted food from the other Kriminels, meant as blessing and recognition in it’s own way. He was excited and happy and insistent that I not move one inch from him, and it was time-out-of-time while I was next to him. I have no idea how long he was there holding me to him, but it was truly a perfect moment and an unimaginable blessing

It’s hard to explain the significance of this. It looks so bland on the page. I can’t put into words what unfolded right then, but it was a moment that I truly understood how my spirits love me and it broke my heart open in new ways. To see the throat-slitter, the basin de san, the husband who can never be given a blade, and the one who I must say ‘no’ to when he goes to eat the bottle he is given to drink out of while we enjoy what amounts to a wedding feast choose to see through his madness to embrace me and what I mean to him and he means to me was astounding, undoing, and awesome in the truest sense of the world.

This was moment when the mystery of maryaj lwa began to really began to unfold itself for me. I find myself understanding why I have continually come back to mystical marriage as it plays out in the Catholic church. There are pieces of the initiation-ceremony that marries a nun to Christ or a monk to the Church that talk about preparing a table for the bridegroom and the bridegroom preparing a table for his spouse, and that slammed on my head in a big way after Kriminel drew me to him. He--and all my husbands--literally set a table for me and I for them. The table for my maryaj was filled with the foods the spirits eat, and each of them fed me from it and I fed them. Kriminel insisted I, his husband, eat what was made for him which is a sacrifice, since he himself will not eat it. They strengthen me by giving me what was made for them, in a gift of survival and sacrifice in a religion and culture where food is literally a life and death subject.

The liturgy of divine marriage in the Church also speaks of the monastic--usually a nun--creating and tending a temple in their heart for their divine spouse, and that suddenly made sense. My lwa have spent years now worming their way into my head, heart, and soul, but the act of maryaj lwa really cemented how that manifests for me. In maryaj, the spirits ask for things that purposefully set us aside for them, in specific ways, and create space to grow a relationship in a different direction. Having the first physical interaction with a spirit I married come after that put down roots in a brand new way--I have never known Kriminel in any other way besides the suitor and husband, and this basically ripped a space open in my heart and shoved a temple in there. With that in mind, he is dizzying and compelling and PRESENT.

I understand more of what mystics mean when they talk about the presence of their divine spouses. My husbands--even the ones I have known for years--are much closer now than they were previously. I don’t even have to reach out to find them, they are just there. They speak more clearly now, since they essentially have a pulpit in my heart, and they show themselves to me more and more.

My orientation towards the world finds my spirits everywhere, from the homeless man on the street to the bus rumbling down the highway to the hurricane that destroys and floods, but I find them even more specifically now. One is the basin of fresh, cool water, another is in the belt that goes around my waist. Kriminel, for some reason, is in the needle and testosterone that gives me ease of living. It took me awhile to ascertain why he asked me for maryaj, but as I continue to grow in my understanding of him I understand on a bone-deep level why and how. It’s in this deeply personal expression that I hear his laughter. I have known you since before you knew my name. I have watched.

At the same time, he embodies a profound reminder: don’t forget who I am. No matter how much love he shows me, I can only expect him to be himself which includes all of his self. Kriminel-the-husband cannot be separated from Kriminel-the-murderer, Kriminel-the-embodiment-of-insanity, Kriminal-the-executioner, Kriminel-basin-de-san, Kriminel-who-roars-thunder. As much as he presents me with love, he also presents me with those things and reminds me that, if I am to love him truly, I have to accept all of that. Kriminel, like all spirits, is a package deal.

And, should I betray my husband, I will find myself with his dagger in my heart, between my shoulder blades, slitting my throat. He will kill me, because he can and because it will make the most sense to him. The hand that holds is the hand that dismembers. Don’t forget who I am. Don’t run, I’ll find you anywhere.

Here I am, blessed beyond all conception and previous belief. Who am I to be so lucky? I am just a broken human, a tiny priest, and they give me more than I possibly deserve with no requirement but that I love them in return and uphold the promises between us. I have done nothing to earn this, but they deliver themselves and their hope for me to my door, without pretense. What can I do but do what they ask?

There are more things that tie in here, and that have shown themselves to be just as unexpected as this particular blessing, but this is long and word-y, and so there will be another post soon!