A Wisdom Archive on Voodoo

Introduction and links to related topics

Voodoo - (Or VOUDON; from Tovodun, the Dahomean gods.) The West African religion together with its transplanted form in Haiti and elsewhere in the Caribbean and Gulf. It derives from Dahomey or Yoruban vodun, "god" or "spirit" and the chief spirits are Legba, Ogoun, Ghede and, in the new world, Baron Samedi, Piquant and Cimitère. Rites are said to involve serpent worship, sexual magic, cannibalism and corpses (see ZOMBIE). Another name for spirits, those that actually possess the worshippers, are the loa.

According to Michael Bertiaux, latterday priest or Hungan, Voodoo is not an evil religion and is much misunderstood. He heads La Couleuvre Noire, or modern "Black Serpent" Voodoo Cult working with the so-called "Ophidian Current" and "the leapers of the paths" on the other side of the Tree of Life. The latter practice is associated with Juju, another "modern" African religion.

Esoteric Voodoo is actually a highly practical procedure for leading us into making contact with our deepest levels of being and most ancient modes of consciousness, through the dark spirits of the universe that operate on the same frequencies.

Michael Bertiaux''s Voudon Gnostic Workbook is probably the most comprehensive and illuminating contemporary work on the subject, both from the practical and from the philosophical, mystical points of view. It ranges in mind from the basic desires of the most ignorant levels of society to the esoteric abstractions of the heights of untrammeled consciousness.

Uragas - Uragas (Sanskrit). The Nagas (serpents) dwelling in Patala the nether world or hell, in popular thought ; the Adepts, High Priests and Initiates of Central and South America, known to the ancient Aryans; where Arjuna wedded the daughter of the king of the Nagas - Ulupi. Nagalism or Naga-worship prevails to this day in Cuba and Hayti, and Voodooism, the chief branch of the former, has found its way into New Orleans.

In Mexico the chief "sorcerers ", the " medicine men ", are called Nagals to this day; just as thousands of years ago the Chaldean and Assyrian High Priests were called Nargals, they being chiefs of the Magi (Rab.Mag), the office held at one time by the prophet Daniel. The word Naga, " wise serpent ", has become universal, because it is one of the few words that have survived the wreck of the first universal language. In South as well as in Central and North America, the aborigines use the word, from Behring Straits down to Uruguay, where it means a "chief", a "teacher and a " serpent ".

The very word Uraga may have reached India and been adopted through its connection, in prehistoric times, with South America and Uruguay itself, for the name belongs to the American Indian vernacular. The origin of the Uragas, for all that the Orientalists know, may have been in Uruguai, as there are legends about them which locate their ancestors the Nagas in Patala, the antipodes, or America.

Voodoo - Voodoo is both a corruption of the African Fon word ''Vodou'' (which means ''spirit'' or ''mystery'') and now a powerful spiritual tradition in its own right, most associated with New Orleans and the American South.

Voodoo travelled from Africa in the hearts and souls of Africans who were transported to the Americas during the slave trade. There it became blended with the spiritual practices of the indigenous peoples, who often had a shamanic or animistic belief system, and with the Catholic religion of the slave owners. It recognises one creator-god and a pantheon of angel-like spirits (called Loa) who work on his behalf. The ancestors are a third spiritual force.

All of these spirits may be appealed to for practical help, advice, and support, through prayer, divination and magic. Herbalism also plays a major role in New Orleans Voodoo, where it is known as Hoodoo or root doctoring, and the Voodoo priest and priestess are often powerful healers, working with herbs and with more spiritual and magical healing tools.

Famous names associated with New Orleans Voodoo include Marie Laveau and Dr. John.

Blood - Blood The vital fluid circulating through the heart, arteries, and veins, supplying nutritive materials to all parts of the body, and receiving elements of waste for later discharge from the system. Occultism enlarges upon the truism that the blood is the life, by relating it to the spiritual and psychic life-forces circulating in the solar system. Blavatsky says

that (a) the Sun is the store-house of Vital Force, which is the Noumenon of Electricity; and (b) that it is from its mysterious, never-to-be-fathomed depths, that issue those life currents which thrill through Space, as through the organisms of every living thing on Earth. . . .

"Thus, there is a regular circulation of the vital fluid throughout our system, of which the Sun is the heart -- the same as the circulation of the blood in the human body -- during the manvantaric solar period, or life; . . . Could the human heart be made luminous, and the living and throbbing organ be made visible . . . then every one would see the Sun-spot phenomenon repeated every second -- due to its contraction and the rushing of the blood" (SD 1:531, 541-2).

The analogy is seen in these streams of solar living fire stepped down into vital electricity on earth, and also in the psychic and astral-physical currents of lunar life which influence generation and all terrestrial growth. In chemical composition, the plasma or fluid part of the blood is said to be identical with that of primordial sea water, ocean water having since become more concentrated.

The blood is actively protean in representing on this plane the streams of higher vitality manifesting in body, soul, and spirit. Thus, its pranic oxygen is the agent of the solar fire; its white and red corpuscles represent the psychic life-force and the red kamic energies, all acting together in their material forms. The leucocytes or white corpuscles are formed in the lymphatic glands, in the spleen, and in bone marrow. They correspond in a sense to the lunar chhayas or builders of the ethereal forms of the second and early third root-races which "needed no warm blood, no atmosphere, no feeding" (SD 1:609). These spherical ameboid cells have both the primordial, changeable pudding-bag form and the autogenerative type of propagation. Their relation to the formation of the red cells typifies that of the early astral forms which, gradually becoming physicalized, evolved into the red-blooded, bisexual, manas-endowed beings of the later third root-race. The red cells, without autogenerative nuclei, are born in special leucocyte cells of red bone marrow, where they are produced at the rate the effete red cells are destroyed.

In human beings the pranic life-currents become impregnated with the manasic quality conferred by the agnishvattas. The lower elements of kama-prana are used in the blood offerings and sacrifices of voodoo rites and other forms of black magic:

"Blood begets phantoms. . . . Paracelsus writes that with the fumes of blood one is enabled to call forth any spirit we desire to see; for with its emanations it will build itself an appearance, a visible body -- only this is sorcery" (IU 2:567).

The old Greeks said that a divine fluid or ichor ran in the veins of the gods. It is also our physical destiny in the far distant future to evolve into bodies without blood as we understand it, in which nobler currents of conscious life will circulate.

Hoodoo - Like Santeria, Hoodoo is a blending the worship of traditional Catholic saints, Christ and the Gods (loas) of Africa, for example, the Hoodoo practitioner could beg for intercession from St. Patrick and really be calling on their serpent God, Danbhalah-Wedo.

Hoodoo worshippers believe that the work of the loas appears in every facet of daily life and that pleasing the loas will gain the faithful health, wealth, and spiritual contentment. The loas speak to their devotees through spirit possession but only for a short time during ceremonies and manifest to protect, punish, confer skills and talents, prophesy, cure illness, exorcise spirits, give counsel, assist in rituals and take sacrificial offerings.

The priest (houngan) or priestess (mambo) acts as an intermediary to summon the loa and help the loa to depart when his or her business is finished. Magick, for both good and evil, is an integral part of Hoodoo. Evil is merely the mirror image of good, the magick of the spirits is there to be used, and if that is for evil, so be it. Also known as Vodoun, Voodoo, Voudou, Voudoun.

Legbha - African (Dahomey, Yoruba.). When the Sun-God Damballah touched the penises of Leghba''s four sons,they ejaculated the logoi spermatikoi into the heavens, whence the philosophers received reason and wisdom.

Papa Legbha is the god of the knotted stick (phallus), the strongest God of the Voodoo religion. He is the guardian of the crossroads and opener of the way for the other gods to follow, and the last son of the Creator God and equated in the New World with the Devil. He appears as a ragged old man with a crutch, pack on back and pipe in mouth. Leghba desires the human race in a lustful way and every voodoo magician, at some point, experiences a desire for sexual union with Leghba, whereupon, if he is accepted, the supplicant enters an initiation into the deepest mysteries of all.

(Note: Readers who wish to know more about Voodoo, should read Bertiaux''s "Voodoo-Gnostic Workbook" and those who are familiar with computer games, will find Gabriel Knight - Sins of the Fathers (which is set in New Orleans) very instructive.

Fairy - (1) Any of several traditions of Mesopagan and/or Neopagan Witchcraft started by the blind poet and scoundrel guru Victor Anderson since the 1970s, mixing British and Celtic folklore about the fairies, Gardnerianism, Voodoo, Hawaiian Huna (itself a Mesopagan invention of Max Freedom Long), Tantra, Gypsy magic, Native American beliefs, and anything else he was thinking about at the time he was training the founders of each trad.
(2) Varieties of Neopagan Witchcraft focused around homosexual or bisexual images and magical techniques rather than the heterosexual (and often homophobic) ones used in most Wiccan traditions.
(3) Other sects of Neopagan Witchcraft focused around real or made-up fairy lore, often taken from romantic poems, plays, and novels about the fairies. In most of these traditions, there is usually an assumption that the ancient associations between fairies and witches were true, and that the fairies were originally the Paleopagan nature spirits and/or deities.

Zombie - In Haitian and West African folk belief, a soulless corpse reanimated by a Voodoo preist, known as a bocor. A zombie moves listlessly in a trancelike state and does the bidding of the bocor. The term is apparently derived from Nzambi, a West African deity.

Most cultural anthropologists working in Haiti discount stories about zombies. Some researchers, however, claim that the stories are true and that a bocor''s victims are administered a powder containing a powerful neurotoxin derived from the puffer fish. The powder is alleged to paralyze the victim into a deathlike state. The bocor later revives the victim. Pharmacologists who have tested samples of the alleged powder found little or no poison in them.

Zombie was originally a python god of certain West African tribes, and its worship was carried to the West Indies with the slave trade, and still somewhat survives in Voodoo ceremonies in Haiti and some of the southern states of the USA.

Pheonisme - (Bertiaux''s terminology.) A private, internal god''s or elemental''s manifestation or "initiation" within consciousness which may take over the body and soul temporarily. Common in Voodoo possession. According to Bertiaux, Legbha is the supreme God of all magical systems. Bertiaux in his Voudon Gnostic Workbook writes, "There comes a time when the God Legbha takes notice of the magician and seeks to bring the magician closer to the higher powers. At that time, Legbha sends a pheonisme of himself to the magicians and awakens them so that they possess a desire to sexually unite with Legbha. When this happens, the magician is then taken into very high worlds and experiences initiations which cannot be described. Legbha has always had a feeling of lust for the human race. His concern is then to bring humanity closer and closer to the mysteries of Legbha."

Vodun - (1) A West African word meaning “deity” or “power.”
(2) General term for a variety of eclectic religions and associated magical systems practiced throughout the Americas, consisting of mixtures of various African tribal beliefs with various Native American tribal beliefs, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, Spiritualism, Theosophy and other systems (including Hinduism, Islam, Neopagan Witchcraft and anything else that seems useful). Different names include Candomble, Macumba, Santeria, Hoodoo, Voodoo and many others.
(3) In the United States and Canada, systems of thaumaturgic magic and religion practiced by people who are usually poor, uneducated and nonwhite. Therefore, see Black Magic.

Voodoo Doll - If everything is connected to everything else, any intention to do harm is enthused into everything the "intender" touches. Indeed, there is no M/magic(k) at all without intention. Specifying the object of malevolence immediately begins to funnel the energy and the more the substitute object resembles the hated victim, the more effective it is. If, then, to this doll are added things that once belonged to the victim, such items help to focus the malevolence all the narrower, as a magnifying glass narrows and intensifies sunlight into actual fire. If chants using the victim''s name are used, the hate-force is again intensified.

Poppet - A magical doll (also known as ritual effigies, voodoo dolls, Kolossos and Kolossoi) made for the purpose of spell-casting and/or ritual magic in Witchcraft and Voodoo.

Poppets are usually made to represent someone or something that for some reason is not present at the ritual performance, or it is the object of the spell-casting. If the spell is a curse, the poppet is either pierced with pins, nails or shards, bound with cord, covered with hot candle wax or hung by the neck.

This actions are supposed to bring death, misfortune, illness, or to bind and stop someone from a particular activity.

Sympathetic Magic - Based on the sympathy between similar things, even at a distance. What is done to one happens to the other. If the wife of a sailor breaks a water jug, her husband''s ship may go down. Eskimo boys are forbidden to play cat''s cradle, lest their fingers someday get entangled in the fishing nets. In the natural world these common qualities are called "signatures". A cause introduced into the one results in an effect on the other. It is on this principle that Voodoo curses kill, that rain dances produce rain and that watching television teaches us what the real world is like.