Magic 101: A PSA On Priests
This might as well be a PSA (public service announcement) for dealing with vodou priests.
Our initiations establish a strong, clear relationship to our spirits that we spend a lifetime honing. A priest could be quite handily thought of as an antenna or conduit to the spirit. The spirits are free to ‘tune in’ at any time, and will often tune in to check on one of their children, using the priest as a conduit. They may or may not announce themselves, and they may not feel the need to say anything to anyone. They might just dance, for a moment, on the priest’s head to observe.
Part of the sacrifice we make to be priests is to permanently be available to have our consciousness altered or simply shunted aside by the spirits of our court.
This makes a priest dangerous to behave badly around—it might just be the priest who notices the bad behavior, or a visiting member of the spiritual court of the priest or the misbehaving person might be present. That spirit might take umbrage at the behavior and, without necessarily asking or notifying anyone, act to mete out consequences or provide an attitude correction for the person. They might also consider it to be part of the discipline necessary for maintaining order in a house/societe/soyeste.
You can and will offend your court by being deliberately rude to your godparents. You can and will get an attitude adjustment for behaving badly toward a priest.
The priest is also free to decide, within the limits of their service to the lwa, to correct behavioral issues.
It may also be the case that the lwa are testing the priest, and/or that the consequence is being rolled into other types of discipline or learning.
The lwa will all have slightly different approaches to dealing with a behavior that needs correction. Ideally, the correction is a matter of a quick but unpleasant consequence. However, not all lwa will be interested in a quick or mildly unpleasant consequence. People who make a habit of behaving badly toward a priest are risking much, much more serious consequences than those who only behave badly once, depending on severity. People who behave badly toward a priest whose court is more reactive (‘hotter’) are also risking a much more serious consequence.
People behaving very, very poorly toward a priest with a very hot court are risking the most serious consequences.
This is an understood fact in vodou as a culture, but appears to be something of an unknown to people interacting with vodou who are not from a Haitian or Caribbean household.
Hence the PSA: if you intend to lie to a priest, try to bully a priest, attack their reputation, manipulate a priest, or otherwise behave badly toward a priest, you should be aware that it could result in serious consequences.
