Vodou 501: Ego In Possession
One of the mistakes a priest can make is in where a possession experience starts. For a variety of reasons, ego works pretty hard to subvert priests. Ego can be incredibly subtle, and a priest is in a position to make it a lot easier for ego to prey on a group of people.
In possession, ego can be spotted by behavior. The advice given, the presence itself will reflect the selfishness, the desire for control and attention, the need for it to be superior and someone else inferior—all the hallmarks of how ego perceives and operates in the world. A lwa might come angry and even be insulting, but the advice given will always lead to and be motivated by the need for the person to learn lessons, not by the need to be admired by others or demonstrate its control of people.
The lwa and divine can use any experience, and do, but it falls on priests to practice enough discernment not to be an easy pulpit for ego.
Ego can and will attempt to insert itself into the possession experience, particularly where it comes to trying to invoke possession. To be very clear, a possession begins with the lwa who is possessing, not the priest. The priest can invite the lwa they have a close enough relationship with to do so, but they cannot force a lwa to come if they do not wish to come for the same reason that an individual ant cannot compel a human, only at best annoy. Where a priest might think they can compel and control, something is out of balance in their relationship to their lwa. If they believe they can successfully compel the lwa, it is because there is a lesson in front of them to learn that the lwa is participating in.
Once the invitation is issued and accepted, the experience of possession rolls from the lwa through other parts of the soul to the body. It is not an act of will nor a voluntary change. A priest might voluntarily issue an invitation and choose not to struggle at the point where their consciousness is displaced if they possess the will to do so, but the possession itself is not something the priest can do to themselves.
It can be dangerous for priests to confuse the exercise of magical will with their capacity to engage in possession. If a priest thinks they can ‘put on’ or otherwise invoke aspects of their lwa and impose a possession, what they’re feeling possessed by is typically not a lwa. There are a variety of other spirits which will happily take the open space in which possession may occur and do what they like in it—whether physical damage or just the kind of pernicious damage done with bad advice.
Ego in possession is a demonstration of poor discernment. Priests can and do learn better discernment.
