Magic 101: Notes and Comfort

There are periods in the life of priests and spiritual workers in which the lwa withdraw to let us grapple with the emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual demands of independence and responsibility—periods where you feel truly alone. No matter how long you’ve been serving, the loss of their presence is hard. Even knowing the absence is designed to help train us, it’s hard.

If it is often said that vodou is a warrior’s path, it should be recognized that sometimes the fight is with ourselves. With the desire to be comfortable, the desire for things to be clear and simple and easy. With the desire not to have to do the thing, whatever the thing is.

Priests and spiritual workers tell people to take notes: to write down the lwa’s guidance, dreams, and/or instructions. Priests and spiritual workers are not immune to that requirement, either. They, too, need to take notes and write things down.

I have said elsewhere in this series that there is no comfort when you are in a trial. No one feeling pity for you, no one telling you that you should never have had to put up with it is going to make the trial one moment less what it is. No pity will make the trial even one second shorter. In fact, it might prolong your trial. No act of self-care, no matter how you might think of it, is going to make the trial less. The only thing you can do is distract yourself for a time. And you might need that, but it should not be confused for the exit of the trial. Once in a trial, the only way out is through unless your spirits or the divine take pity on you, which is not what anyone who is a priest or spiritual worker wants.

During silent periods, those notes provide a lifeline. The notes are your comfort, the only real comfort: instructions on how to learn the lesson, how to pass the trial. They are a reminder the you can pass, that your spirits are invested in you passing, and that no matter how it might feel, there is a light at the end of that tunnel.

I am not prone to tears, but on occasion mid-trial, I go back to my notes and weep with gratitude at the reminder in them, at the fact that I am loved enough to have been left instructions.