Vodou Culture 101: Luck

We talk about luck several ways in vodou, referring to the ability to alter the probability of events in the favor of someone or some outcome—or to put it the way my godfather might, to make sure things turn out better for you than they would without interference.

Luck can refer to personal magic or whatever power, energy, or force the person might have which they use to make sure things turn out better for themselves. Luck can also refer to slanting the odds for an event or a period of time as the result of work someone else does for you.

Luck does not mean removing all impediments, nor does a lucky person never experience hardship. All it means is that it could have been a lot worse, and sometimes it means the situation is surprisingly good.

Slanting the odds is one of the primary things that priests or magic workers do, altering the odds of a situation or circumstance on behalf of a client. We make people temporarily lucky, whether in that they are more likely to meet a partner or that their boss is in a particularly good mood when they present a proposal. Some of us specialize in lottery numbers or gambling, as well, making someone more likely to win than they otherwise would be. Whatever situation you’re facing, one of us probably specializes in making it turn out better than it could be.

The thing about luck is that when luck is in your favor, you typically won’t notice it. Things just work, and for most people that means that they move onto the next thing they want to do without thinking about it, without reflecting on whether or not the thing that succeeded might have been helped along, and without reflecting on what could have happened. By definition, if I’ve done my job or another spiritual worker has done their job correctly and god is willing (there’s no divine intervention against it) the only thing you’re going to notice is that things went smoothly.

Luck is typically only noticed in its absence, when things go rather badly, or if someone is in the habit of reflection and possesses an accurate ability to notice patterns. A priest or magical worker, because their work involves altering probability, has to be able to notice those sorts of things, but people who do not deal in luck generally do not.

We do our best work in their ignorance, partially because our success means they don’t have to think about it at all.