Magic 501: The Respect of Your Lwa
If you are already a vodouizan, you should have been exposed to stories about the lwa. These stories reflect your lineage and society, and are given to vodouizan as a part of the oral tradition. We teach by conversation and stories.
I have never heard or been given a story about a lwa’s human life—some were once people, some were not—in which they were having a life of ease, comfort, and luxury. Some lived lives of some luxury: as an example, some of Freda’s stories contain luxury along with people trying to exploit her. Some lived lives which had some ease or comfort. But almost all of the stories are about hardship. In some stories, people are trying to kill them. In some stories, people are trying to rape them, or steal from them, or fight them, or abandon and neglect them, etc.
You could, of course, say that the stories are only about what we need to learn. However, I think there’s a variety of lessons in the regularity of the difficulties in those stories. This is just an expansion of one of those lessons.
Do people who have survived serious hardship take someone seriously who is having a mental break because they broke a nail or someone dislikes them?
The lwa have compassion for us. They love us. But when we are shallow, easy to disturb, childish, egotistical, or refuse to participate in our own defense or process of maturity, they do not have respect for us. They are our companions, our teachers, they help defend us, they guide our lives, but you can do all those things for someone who ain’t shit.
Respect is earned.
We earn respect by growing the fuck up—by doing what we can to grow, heal, change, and participate in our own lives. We earn it through accountability, responsibility, and through a pattern of decisions which embrace that accountability and responsibility. We are incapable of the responsibilities the lwa carry, nor are we expected to meet them, only the responsibilities given us. We do not have passive spirits, nor spirits who always forgive and permit. We have spirits who demand that we meet life as warriors, as they met life. That process is active. We cannot do one thing one time and earn respect. It is a lifetime of earning, with a lifetime of rewards.
Not being a little bitch, knowing that you are not an “ain’t shit” person, is one of them.
Life is not a passive place. Trying to force the lwa to do the responsibilities we’re too lazy and immature to do is often an excellent way to end up with very harsh lessons on the topic of responsibility—as much as we can bear in that life.
Knowing us, meeting us where we are, adapting message and approach to us are all things the lwa do and do well. But what they do not do is flatter us, feed our ego, and/or allow us to manipulate them into doing what we can and should be doing. Understand, if it seems like any of the previous is true, it is a reflection of your understanding not the true nature of the situation (and likely a reflection of you designed to demonstrate to you that you have a problem via consequences.) No lwa is stupid, and all are a product of survival, of the creative process of existing despite various things trying to prevent it.
The respect of your lwa—or at least not their disapproval—is something that is ideally a goal of every vodouizan. If you have lwa, you have a relationship with those lwa.
The tone of that relationship is partially yours to set, and strongly effects the magic you will be capable of doing with your lwa. They are not going to extend much effort for someone they love but do not respect.
