Magic 201: Power and Trial
A reminder: vodou and magic are nothing you should be doing alone.
The lwa have a very particular teaching philosophy for teaching magicians—you should be giving your all to the process of learning. Learning is necessary and it is a privilege to be given a lesson, especially in the context of a challenge presented directly by the spirit. A lesson is learned more thoroughly when you are left to struggle with it, to work out the terms and discern the necessary action. You might be given hints or part of a solution, but it is expected that you are going to dig in and do your best to recall, reason, understand, and act. The process of understanding and acting will deepen your knowledge and give you a set of magical tools you will be expected to wield in the service of the divine.
All of this is to say that if you are intended to wield any sort of power, the lwa will drop you in the (metaphorically) boiling water on the regular with what feels like no backup, no idea what’s going on, no announcement to tell you that you’re in a trial, and no initial idea what’s going on. It’s not an overstatement to say that being dropped in like this is really distressing, and in fact the distress is part of the lesson. The lwa love a compound lesson, one part the magical skill, and several parts education on what you are capable of. They know, of course, but you don’t until you’ve gone through that particular pot of boiling water.
It takes a little time and experience to get there, but eventually you figure out the valuable lesson that there’s nothing for it but to immediately start trying to figure out what’s going on. There’s no comfort that will make it better, nothing anyone else can do to make it better. The only thing that makes it better is to go through it and be done with the lesson, preferably by learning it so it doesn’t repeat.
In fact, as I was reminded today, there is nothing that can comfort you during a trial. There’s nothing that can be said or done which will, in any sort of lasting way, soothe the discomfort of that trial. The comfort comes after the trial, when you recognize that you were given the tools to pass the trial. It’s the knowledge of this preparation which is an actual comfort, not any amount of “poor baby” or “you should never have to go through this,” etc. The trial does not go away until it is resolved, and a lesson can (and will) follow you across lives.
The role of a teacher is to coach you a bit, if it helps, or to refuse to coach you, if it helps. Sometimes our role is to help drop you in the boiling water, or to provide clarity via spiritual or magical means from the background, leaving you to do the often unpleasant but vital work of getting through the trial and learning that you are a lot tougher and more competent than you thought you were. In general, though, we are here to remind you that it is an act of love to put you through it, not the indifference or hate of the lwa that sends a trial to you.
