Magic 401: Bearing the Spirits

One of the things which characterizes vodou priests is their ability to ‘carry’ spirits—to host the presence of a spirit without surrendering control to that spirit. The initiation of a priest establishes their lwa uniquely, allowing those spirits to be expressed more clearly, cleanly, and with less drain or danger to the priest.

This differs from the experience of bearing spirits that are not in the priest’s court. The same capacity to host a lwa is the capacity to carry or bear a variety of spiritual entities. Without the relationship and permissions that initiation confers, that capacity can be extremely dangerous. This series has extensively discussed negative spiritual entities. They are typically happy to attach themselves to a priest if they can, attempting to disrupt communication between the priest and their lwa or cause as much mischief or disruption as they can get away with. They have far fewer constraints when they are dealing with someone who is not initiated, and tend to cause devastation wherever possible.

This is one of the reasons we tell people to leave these sorts of things alone and do not discuss how we do some of these things in any detail in public forums: without the correct initiations, training, permissions, knowledge, and safeguards, someone with the capacity to do this can very easily ruin their lives, and not just socially. Many of these entities will gladly cause someone physical harm.

There are a number of reasons a priest may opt to bear a spirit which does not belong to their court. The most common reason is healing: to remove or carry the burden of a spiritual attachment for someone while they heal the wound which caused that entity to be attached. Lineages in vodou have their own secrets for how that healing happens, but it’s not uncommon for the priest doing that work to also end up babysitting that negative entity while the person they’re healing works on that healing.

The experience of this is a little different for every priest, but the presence of those entities is generally a drain on the person: physical, emotional, or spiritual tiredness; negative moods or thoughts; urges to do minor self-harm or toward undisciplined behaviors; etc. The time it takes for healing differs. A priest may carry that negative entity for someone for months, until the person is healed.

One of the reasons vodou priests are respected in their communities is their ability to carry others’ negative entities and provide healing, not just the sacrifices they make to be a horse of the lwa. The daily drain of carrying spirits is formidable, especially when the priest is working on multiple people’s healing at once. Anyone willing to carry the personified negative patterns and urges of someone else so they can heal is someone whose compassion, discipline, and self-control bears respect.

Not every priest is capable of doing this healing nor consciously bearing spirits who are not in their court.