Magic 601: The Loneliness of Workers

There is no way around it: being a priest or spiritual worker is an incredibly lonely occupation. It involves long, grueling hours spent working for people who have no idea what kind of risks working on them can entail, people who also consistently attribute their own flaws and wounds to the priest or spiritual worker. The training necessary to elevate and heal from wounds is incredibly alienating, undermining and ultimately replacing or reforming every relationship in our lives. It can even serve to alienate priests or spiritual workers from each other, especially where the jurisdictions and domains we serve differ.

The lwa themselves, while they can have incredibly loving and intimate relationships with us, are often focused on delivering messages, on assigning work or providing the access to the various tools a priest or spiritual worker might need to do their work. They do not have time to ‘hang out’—their presence might be accompanied by love and support, but it is to a purpose and they come as they feel they need to come, staying just long enough to accomplish their purpose. During periods of testing or trial, the lwa may withdraw their presence to allow the priest or spiritual worker to learn how strong they can be or work out their own disciplines for dealing with the subject of the test or trial.

There is, however, something present. Something which consistently seeks the attention and emotional intimacy with priests and spiritual workers. Something that will answer when you call, especially when you are distressed, and tell you literally anything that might temporarily comfort you. Promises of love and support, affirmation and offers of guidance: anything you desire.

Negative or lesser entities can be the most constant source of companionship a priest or spiritual worker might have. They do not even need to be good at mimicking the lwa or a departed loved one. Some entities will not bother, presenting themselves as assistance or companionship or simply engendering a complex bouquet of positive emotion, something that can seem incredibly rare and welcome in periods of trial and testing, before offering.

The problem, of course, is that the help is an attempt to insinuate themselves into the work done by the priest or spiritual worker. These entities will promise things they cannot deliver, and any assistance they deliver will have unfortunate side effects, in addition to slowly warping the priest or spiritual worker’s understanding.

I use the word ‘demon’ to describe these entities because once they have managed to attach themselves to a priest or spiritual worker, they will try to possess or take control of the capacities of the priest or spiritual worker, bloating themselves on the force or energy of the priest or spiritual worker. They will also try over time to bind the priest or spiritual worker to various contractual obligations that can they can enforce, using the nature of spiritual oaths to force the priest or spiritual worker to obey them. In the spiritual world, oaths are enforceable in ways the legal system could never dream of.

Demon is, I think, quite an applicable description.

What starts with offers of help and comfort becomes wholesale spiritual domination, in the same style as any number of historical examples involving slavery. This requires priests and spiritual workers who aim to stay in alignment with their lwa to live with a diet of alienation, loneliness, and isolation. We live with the constant challenges associated with elevation and healing, accountable for the lives of the people we serve. We are free, in our lives, to either continue to choose the hard path or to start the slow process of being warped.

This is one of the reasons priests and spiritual workers are intended to live in communities. We keep an eye on each other. It is also one of the reasons vodou cannot be learned alone. Your teacher is, quite often, your best first warning of the influence of these entities and the person who can best understand you. Priests and spiritual workers can at least sympathize with the loneliness, where the spirits they serve require similar experiences. The fight, however, is always up to the priest or spiritual worker.

Vodou is a warrior’s tradition. We are always, to one degree or the other, at war.