Vodou Culture 101: Loyalty

There is little a priest can do without loyalty. It is a pillar of our authority.

Our children and clients have to trust and know that we’re working in their best interests, a relationship built over time. They have to trust that whatever we say, no matter how odd it seems to them, should be done the way we say it. They have to remain loyal as we cycle through periods where we seem good or right to them, and periods where we seem distant, erratic, or bad to them.

They have to believe in us to let us help them. Healing is messy work. It’s not straightforward, nor is it clean. There are whole stages in healing where the most healing thing a priest can do is be absent while the person works through something. There are stages where the most healing thing a priest can do is give someone back the things they have been told about themselves. In others, the priest is best friend and confidante, stitching roles in and out of the child’s life as the child’s wounds are stitched up.

We are any role that we need to be. Our children and clients have to remain loyal to us as we put on the roles they need us to put on but cannot acknowledge they need.

A priest has to be loyal to the spirits, which means being willing to be good, bad, erratic, poor, rich, hated, loved, homeless, ignorant, wise, remembered, forgotten: any role, any way that leads to what the spirits need. Our loyalty is to the soul, the spirits, and the divine, which means that we don’t even necessarily know what’s happening. We need only do as the spirits tell us, and hope for wisdom as things play out.

Often, wisdom does emerge that way. A priest changes as much as their children and clients do in the course of learning to be a priest.

You never need to look far to find the motivation of a priest if you know what we are loyal to. We’re only inscrutable if you expect us to be loyal to what you are loyal to, and to want what you want.