An Online Presence

I had an interesting interaction with someone yesterday which is going to end up being fuel for today’s entry. They turned down the chance to book a consultation because they felt I did not have any evidence of my practice in my social media.

I have pictures of veve I’ve drawn to use in magic, pictures of the altar before religious parties, pictures of the garden I grow herbs for magical and healing uses in, and I’m tagged on the veve or altars I’ve made for others, in addition to the podcast, this website, and this blog. I’m also on the podcasts of my godfather and write about the parties I’ve attended at his society (and others.) If you know what society and who my godfather is, I’m occasionally on pre-ceremony video. Not often, but it has happened. I also answer tons of questions on various vodou forums.

I do not have a ton of videos posted here, in part because I really don’t like being on camera. You can chalk that up to having been an engineer who dealt heavily with security. I cherish what little privacy I have, even if it’s just delusional.

I also don’t have a ton of testimonials. I appreciate them, but not everyone wants to associate themselves with vodou and most people know that there’s not a lot of privacy online. Also, it’s not uncommon for someone to be consulting on an issue they have very strong feelings about, so they often take the information from the consultation and run off to go do something with it as soon as we hang up. Even if they intend to record a testimonial, it tends to be forgotten. This is a common problem. At some point, I’ll likely do what many other people have done and offer a discount to help people remember.

A lot of what we do as vodou priests cannot be put online. As you might expect in a religion that values secrets, we don’t show a lot of what we do. We cannot, in my temple or many others, take video during ceremonies. The spirits strongly dislike cameras being pointed at them. I’ve been at multiple fetes/parties/ceremonies at more than one society/house/temple where the spirits have confronted someone who took their camera out. They don’t like being the subject of mass media, which is why video shorts tend to cut off quickly when a spirit comes down.

Vodou and the knowledge associated with vodou is not for everyone, and certainly not for sharing in a media that makes control of who sees it impossible.

Many of the things the spirits do during parties also involve people’s personal lives and information. I’ve been at plenty of parties where the spirit consulted on someone’s love life or physical health—most people do not want their love life or physical health to be posted online for random strangers to see for the same reason you wouldn’t want your doctor to post TikTok shorts about your test results from your last screening.

Some of us get around that by recording video shorts of ourselves giving advice. I may eventually do that, but I doubt it. I really don’t like recording video of myself and I will not allow video of myself in possession out of respect to the spirits.

I find the idea that I don’t have any evidence of my practice rather odd. I get it. People don’t know any better and confuse an opinionated person with videos for a knowledgeable person, in part because the media appeals to them. If that person is making a ton of videos, they must know what they’re talking about. If a lot of people like them, they must be authentic.

The problem, of course, is that a non-initiate has no idea what to look for. The information an initiate might use to verify that the person recording the video is authentic is not available to non-initiates. This is on purpose. Vodou is not for everyone, and emphatically not for mass consumption.

I wished that person luck and meant it. Non-initiates have a hell of a time trying to figure out who to listen to.