Magic 101: Discipline
This is a 101 quality because discipline is the entry cost for any sort of effectiveness in vodou and magic in general, though it is a lifelong lesson which has degrees of difficulty that extend far past any numbered rank here.
In vodou, discipline is not just an entry cost, it is a fundamental quality. A lack of discipline will undermine everything you can accomplish. You can and will lose your sanity and life over your inability to have discipline. There are a number of lesser or negative spirits who will happily (and easily) lead you into delusion, addiction, or simply use your capacities in whatever way they see fit while consuming you. If you are intended to be a priest or spiritual worker, you will be allowed to work out for yourself, with some oversight, the degree of influence you allow those spirits to have in your life—your spirits will let you wrestle with lesser spirits to determine how positive the expression of spirits will be in your life. The better you are at maintaining discipline, the more positive that expression will be, within whatever you are capable of being or doing in your life.
When vodou is said to be a tradition of warriors, we are not kidding. Your priest or spiritual worker will fight for their sanity, ability to express positive spirits or positive aspects of spirits, and be required to maintain spiritual cleanliness despite being beset by negative spirits in order to be effective. That fight will never totally be resolved, over the course of their lives.
We speak of spiritual strength in vodou as an innate quality which can be thought of (for this entry; it can also refer to the spiritual character of a person) as the ability to get in contact with spirits of greater or lesser degree of power and authority. The innate strength of someone is coupled with the current state of the lessons they’ve mastered and the choices they’ve made in their lives to attract more or less positive spirits, or more or less positive aspects of spirits. All of this is to say that it is possible for someone to be able to easily attract attention in the spiritual world, but not have the lessons and choices necessary to attract positive spirits or positive aspects—generally speaking, the negative and/or lesser spirits are the easiest to get in touch with, and the stronger the person, the wider their appeal will be across positive and negative spirits.
The thing which preserves someone with sufficient spiritual strength is the discipline they have mastered. This can take a number of forms, depending on the domains the priest or spiritual worker are intended to serve. Previous entries have mentioned humility as a discipline. The willingness to adhere to the various spiritual duties and agreements is another, and a minimum for attracting greater spirits.
Nobody wants to work with a deal breaker but deal breakers, hoping to break the deal first. It should be assumed that negative spirits will actively try to break deals, but a deal entered into unwillingly is unlikely to live long no matter how positive the spirit might be.
Every priest or spiritual worker has to find, develop, and hone the disciplines necessary for their domain. Because of the high risks involved, this cannot be done alone.
