Magic 401: The Great Divorce
One of the nastier things the Western philosophical tradition and the religions of the book contributed to the landscape of ideas is the mutilation at the heart of designating the body a lesser, separate (rebellious, treacherous) slave of the mind. The language is typically not as stark, but the implication is clear: the thinking and spiritual aspects of a person are the master, and the meat is the slave.
I won’t be delving into that tradition, other than to say it has done immeasurable harm. Instead, I want to talk about what it is to live in a society which accepts the divorce between ‘soul,’ mind, and body.
Vodou is not alone in terms of traditions which unify those three things (under different names and divided differently.) What vodou does offer is this: the understanding that you are intended to be, need to be, and actually are whole, though you may not know you are. You are not a series of disparate things working against each other, but a wholeness that you have been taught must attack itself. You are thinking, feeling, being, growing, learning not as a bunch of separate processes, but as a constantly evolving experience that you have been punished by the world around you until you believe you must ignore or divide.
None of this is to say that the individual does not need healing. Living under the great divorce causes us to tear huge holes in ourselves which can be seen in the idea that we can and should sacrifice health to an employer for money, or that there is something virtuous in maltreating the body and avoiding things the body enjoys for fear of being overtaken. We also try our best to tear holes in each other, considering it virtuous to punish each other and enforce that divorce.
The ways we punish each other are legion. Social media is about 80% that punishment. We might call it negativity or toxicity, but under the great divorce, it is a virtue, and one of the few ‘great’ virtues everyone can achieve and feel good about.
Priests and spiritual workers are not exempt from this, living in societies which teach us that in addition to the divorce and its side effects, the heightened life energy and our spiritual questioning/seeking makes us especially in need of that sort of discipline. We stick out, and many of us are abraded deeply by an overwhelming tide of punishment that we are assured is because we are inherently the problem.
And in a society where we’re told we must be a divided being, priests and spiritual workers are a problem. We just keeping reaching out for something, even when we’re so wrapped in the shame we’re told we should have that we are actively harming ourselves. Even when we can’t see what we’re reaching for, we stubbornly persist in trying to find something we just know is there.
If you’re a priest or spiritual worker, I urge you to consider where a society which venerates the great divorce has convinced you to be separate, convinced you that you cannot be a wholeness or must punish yourself. And I urge you to consider where you might be punishing others for some aspect of their wholeness.
If you’re one of my godkids, just know I am here for this, too. I am here for your wholeness, and the steps that need to be taken for you to know it.
