Seeking Justice

The symbol for justice used to be the scales—there’s an argument to be made (and has been) that the better symbol in the US majority culture is of a stack of $100 bills, USD. You’ll still find the scales on courthouses and lawyer advertisements, but they ought to be seen as parody or accidental sarcasm.

The more accurate motto should be: justice for a fee, not for thee.

In vodou, justice far more resembles the scales. The lwa can be appealed to in order to get justice in a situation, and in fact some of them are quite good at it. The problem is that, as scales, both sides have to be equal not just look equal.

It might be best to think of the lwa as investigators. They do a very thorough job of investigating the situation, which includes looking at the behavior of the person that is hiring them for justice. If they find something that the client has done which needs to be addressed for balance, the client might also get the consequences of a rebalancing. The situation will get balanced, but the lwa can and will rebalance both sides of the scales, the client and their target. They might also decide the client is at fault and balance the situation accordingly.

This tends to upset people, who expect that if they are hiring the lwa to fix a problem, the problem should be fixed in their favor. After all, they paid for it.

The lwa do not think like humans do. They do not reason like humans do. And they don’t feel obliged to be nicer to someone who is paying them.

Be aware that if you’re asking for justice, that justice will be an absolute balancing of the scales in the situation.

You are one of the things on the scale.