Magic 601: Infinite Lwa

I have been talking about demons, in part because they are the easiest, most frequent entity to get in contact with priests and spiritual workers. They also try to deceive priests and spiritual workers, for the reasons and to the effects mentioned in this series, making a working knowledge of them important for doing this job.

I have not talked as much about the lwa.

I usually won’t, in part because in a society where everything has to have the one true way, it’s very difficult to have a meaningful discussion about a religion that has a million houses, each with their own way. Everything I say about the lwa is going to end up being either a ‘gospel’ for people who do not understand it or is going to mark me as a pretender for someone who heard it elsewhere first and thinks that is the one true way. Anyone I need to discuss details with is going to end up getting those details as a part of me serving them.

The topic of demons is going to come up again, but it’s important to talk about the spirits which provide us with guidance, not just the spirits that try to distract or mislead us.

I’m going to talk about one of my wonderful wives as an example, Danto. While the lwa are positive, the way we connect to them falls on a spectrum in much the same way that energy falls on a spectrum. Danto is a mother. A mother can be affirming, supportive, stern or authoritative, and deeply compassionate. A mother can also be deeply wounded, lashing out at her children and the people around her, suspicious and paranoid. She is still a mother, no matter where she might be on that spectrum. The spectrum has an infinite number of shades, an infinite number of incarnations or manifestations of motherhood.

We say you reflect what you can reflect. This means a number of things, but in this case, means that when the lwa come through us, they come through whatever we are. Whatever unhealed wounds, whatever understandings, whatever you are becomes a part of that manifestation. There are an infinite shades in Danto, one for each horse.

This makes it very, very difficult to tell whether you’re talking to Danto (or another lwa), or to something pretending to be a lwa. If the horse is hurting, the manifestation of the lwa will reflect it, and while there will be a sense of presence—and let me tell you, a lwa has presence—a Danto in the head of someone who was, for instance, abused by their mother is going to manifest differently than someone who was not abused by their mother.

You might recognize a sense of presence, but the things that ‘shade’ of Danto says might mostly reflect the hurt in the horse unless the possession in question is total. One of the reasons no one gets possessed alone is precisely because a shade of a lwa might show up which strongly reflects the horse, and the horse might have dangerous tendencies (self-destructive, violent, etc.) That partial reflection of the lwa might also lend the authority of presence to something that the horse feels about someone, causing them to give advice that is destructive because it is mostly about the feelings of the horse. The possession needs to be recognized and overseen by someone who can tell what’s talking.

If you can’t sense that presence, what a hurting horse might say will be very like what something more negative would say.

The lwa themselves are infinite. Their domain has bounds, but inside those bounds, the lwa are the divine’s lieutenants, heir to and connected to that energy in a way humanity cannot be. Danto is every mother, every shade of mother from the most nurturing to the mother who neglects or destroys her family, along the spectrum from positive to negative manifestation. Every mother to have ever existed, to ever exist can be seen in her.

Because I know her stories, I should add that you will see her in every woman who fought physically for the life of her children, every woman to take up a knife, a pot, a pair of scissors, or a handgun. Danto is a veteran of guerilla warfare in the fight against slavery, a mother who took up the most vicious of warfare for her children.

Every horse bears as much of that energy as they can.

There is no single true way the same way there is no one manifestation of Danto. The lwa are infinite in character, in their domains.

For a priest or spiritual worker, this means a rather open palate for working with a lwa. One can call on Danto for a very, very large number of causes, reflecting her domain and positive or negative aspects of it. It is important to remember that what we call on reflects where and what we are. The more unhealed wounds, the smaller the spectrum we can call on her (or any other lwa) for.

We simply cannot see past those wounds into the rest of the spectrum.