rootwork the rootsblog: a cyberhoodoo webspace

that noose at columbia and cultural dysfunction, high hoodoo and the high hoodoo

FRIDAY DAY

ahem, i look at that last post and im kinda shellshocked
really wandered off the reservation with that one didnt i

trying to decide if should i leave it up or take it down
ima probably leave it up, what the hell, i wrote it didnt i

got to have the courage of my scribblings
but ive embarassed myself, ima chill for awhile

try to clock some pages

thats what i like about being a novelist
if i win i win, if i lose i write about it

all my love
rdoc

WEDNESDAY MAYBE

hello world, sorry i been out of the loop

schoolhouse got me humping, desperately trying to maintain
momentum on novel and trekking to the delta, just dont have no
discretionary nothing

got to make less do more these days
wait till something i think worthy of my time

first off a noose was hung on a black teachers door at columbia
universitys teachers college, 

might be a jena copycat, might be sister enjoy the spotlight

forgive the cynic in me but hard for me
to tremble in my boots on this one

if somebody was to put a noose on my door at syracuse id probably
leave there, great post race conversation piece

okay.rick, enuf frivolity, two more
comments and some closure

one that barack obama, who seems to be losing steam against hillary, is being
chastised by blackfolk for not taking a higher profile with that

but i empathize with his situation, doesnt want to follow the model
of two previous black contenders, jessie jackson and al sharpton

that would not be viable, and i believe folk have to give him room
to make a credible run, kind of a old martin malcom two step

we are diverse enough a people to have all kinds of blackfolk on the field
in spite of the rev jackson and ms dickersons position that he isnt black enuf

of course that diversity doesnt include race traitors like clarence thomas, not in the
book of flowers or the great black book of generations - him i have excommunicated

and truth be told, to run for and actually be president is so compromising that id
rather obama found another role to play, one that will allow him to be more righteous

than being president of the united states will allow

the other recent news i want to point out is that hispanic poverty has fallen
by some 20% or so in america, not sure of the exact numbers offhand

but this includes the poverty pressures of a constant
stream of new immigrants, legal and illegal

what this says is that, like most other immigrant populations, the hispanics
are getting their act together, and you can see it in their willingness to work hard

to provide for their families, etc etc

in the article it talked about how they are moving into entry level good jobs
that white folk are leaving, like construction, service, etc

said hispanics instead of blackfolk getting those jobs and leaving blackfolk in the dust
which is why we a little leary sometime of immigration reform

but it hurt me to see hispanics (and west indians) getting rousted
families being broken and all, just for wanting a better life

and rickydoc gon tell you the reason blackfolk arent getting those jobs
is because they arent going for them with the kind of determination you need to win

what rickydoc gon tell you is that blackfolkare about to get left behind again, once again
slotted to be americas bottomfeeders in a period of acute economic change

a period of opportunity for script flipping

rickydoc the one gon tell you this is a cultural failing, we are just a weak people
ive said it over and over, wherever you got blackpeople anywhere in the world

they are on the bottom of their respective society
africa, south america, asia, united states, everywhere

this is a cultural failing on our part and we cant get around that
reparations? give me a break, give blackfolks money and they will buy $100 sneakers

spend their money on clothes and cars instead of capital formation

and when you say thats inappropriate you are accused of being a self hater
unlike bill cosby i dont just blame the poor, if anything i blame the bougie class

i represent for not taking care of business, for not looking out for the rest of the race
folk who swear we live in a post black world and they dont have to identify anymore

this noose is for you

okay, so the situation is cultural, and all those little sidegame initiatives on the board wont change that

i have got to change my people souldeep, the old rootdoctor got to turn them into a different kind of people

a mighty and illuminated people
a wondrous and powerful people

(there are some issues in a truly longgame program about how humanity will identify once it reaches for the stars and blackfolk become a star faring people but i wont go there right now, it will just confuse you)

so i look at the board and i wonder how can i transform my peoples souls

ive chosen to lean on my hoodoo identity
which is of course tightly wrapped with my artistic identity

both of them workers on the hoodoo board of destiny
soul workers, destinyworkers

those of you know me know how i feel about the responsibility of indigenous spiritual traditions
for the care and feeding of the tribal soul and destiny, both for individuals and the collective

i look at the influence of buddhism, christanity, hinduism, ifa, islam, judaism, etc and i see
what a viable spiritual tradition can do for a culture, for a peoples destiny

i look at the influence of the bible, the koran, the iching, and so forth and i see what a viable
sacred literature, a good holybook, can do for a culture, for a peoples destiny

and its like hoodoo, a tradition thats only been used for folk magic
is a blank slate to do with as i please, to transform it into the kind of instrument i need

to transform a people
to illuminate a culture

the task too daunting for me to do it in my lifetime so
what i got to do is forge a tradition that will do it for the next thousand years

or so

so i commence to conjuring
now a destinywork spell of this magnitude is a lifetime work

basically im operating in my mythworker mode - Mythmaker
im using this novel to construct the destinywork and explore the concept of mythwork

be nice to explore prophecy, destinywork and this particular spell
with the kind of complexity wideman brought to prophecy w/the cattlekilling

but the novel is a rarefied instrument, it only speaks to longgame thinkers
novels, to be viable, must be an indirect influence

you have to understand the power of ideas
the power of art, and how it work, powerful but indirect

my Works i considers seed of the future
my Ideological Orchestrations, preparation of the ground

so i got three other initiatives that support the destinywork in novel
this weblog, the hoodoo book of flowers and the hoodoo hands

(and new ren writers guild too but thats another post)

so basically i need to insure the viability of my mythwork by working w/both hands
mythwork by itself dont work, have to also build institutions that facilitate it

inthis case i have to transform the hoodoo tradition
into an instrument of redemption, a role that it has traditionally played in

the mode of gullah jack, zora neale and ishmael
there is a history of hoodoo as an instrument of cultural redemption,

most particular in literary hoodoo
this is not as far fetched as it might initially seem

so i have been trying to reform, regenerate, revise, rewhatever the hoodoo tradition
i have gotten a lot of resistance from folk who want hoodoo to stay a piddling little

folk magic tradition

and have had to make it clear, i dont object to folk being little folk magic hoodoos
spells, hells and black cat bones, if thats what they want its fine with me

its just not for me, im interested in bigger game than that
so folk accuse me of not being true hoodoo

and ive had to define my brand of hoodoo into the hoodoo world
because i will not let hoodoo be defined by mercenaries and folk magic

times are too dear and my tradition too powerful to be allowed to lay fallow
since what i am trying to manifest is more highmagic than folkmagic

and trying to leave room for folk to be folkmagic hoodoos if
thats they want to do

ive made the distinction of calling the hoodoo i practice 'high hoodoo'
and in my more private moments i call myself 'the high hoodoo'

i dont go around trying to claim this title
but in my heart thats what i believe, thats how i conduct myself

the first law of conjure:
conduct yourself as you aspire to be and you are

as a trained organizer i know mythwork on its own is not viable
you have to also build facilitating institutions

i have been trying to build a hoodoo institution that will faciliate this myth,
basically a hoodoo secret society - the hoodoo hands

i was whupped on so bad for this effort that i had to draw back and lick my wounds
basically i lost my confidence, who am i to try to found a new way - be a Waymaker

im constantly having to convince myself that i am not just a deluded fool
out here tripping hard, but it comes with the conjuric territory that you often

a reailty of one

and i dont never give up no destinywork, once you on the board you on the board
accept your insecurities, take your punches, make your adjustments, keep on trucking

till the day i die
and then some

so basically ive got 5 audience, 5 narratives ive got to forge:

the hoodoo world: got to convince them there is more to life than folkmagic, that hoodoo is a serious historical force and potential instrument of cultural redemption

blackpeople: got to convince black people they have a destiny, a mission greater than their adversity, to be an illuminated people, guide and guardian of humanitys destiny, and that hoodoo is the instrument of that destiny

the atr world: got to set up hoodoo as the prophetic tradition of the atr world, convince them that atr needs to be brought into the 21st century and the archaic practices left behind

the worldspirit: got to convince other spiritual traditions that hoodoo and atr are contenders for a better way in the 21st century

the world: got to convince the whole world that hoodoo is a prophetic tradition instead of the joke they think it is now, that hoodoo is a better way for the 21st century and beyond, a star faring tradition

so basically thats my goal as an ideological orchestrator, 5 dialogs ive got to engage in
and i figure i got about 10, 20 more years (god willing) to do it in

got to illuminate the hoodoo tradition and make it a powerful tradition instead of the folkmagic curiosity it is now, which means i have to make it a strong tradition, so when the spotlight hits it folk find it worthy

got to use rest for the weary to build a mythwork of blackfolk as a powerful people with a destiny

give them a vision greater than their adversity
a vision they can believe in

for this to work have to give all humanity a myth they can believe in
a myth in which an illuminated blackculture is guide and guardian of

humanitys destiny
magical negro indeed

and of course a major component of this mythwork is my own life
the mythmakers greatest work - myself as a model of the hoodoo future

thats what Mythmakers do

two other components of that myth designed to have more immediate impact
is this weblog, in which i forge ground for me to stand on, for my vision to be manifest

(may not have a lot of readership but i got some, say 4 years ago nobody thought like me, or understood my position, now a select few do, by definition the sharpest folk on the planet, may not always agree with me but they understand what im trying to do - 10 years from now, who knows - step by step and inch by inch, slooowly we manifest)

and my wouldbe holybook, the hoodoo book of flowers
also known as the great black book of generations

there are times when i doubt myself and my vision and i wonder
if i should stop trying to speak for blackfolk and just speak for all humanity

that is a standing tension of my work
i get a lot of flack from well meaning folk who think i should be post black

and speak for all
most particularly flack from myself

cause speaking for all would be the stronger and more illuminated position
but as long as blackfolk suffering i will be the voice of my peoples

greatest dreams
for i am rickydoc

wouldbe prophet
of the hoodoo way

when you need me you
call me, i will come

this battle will be one of grace: which is the better way

hello world, this got sent out on a hoodoo list
by papa gede nibo bey lakwa

in the assault on atr by the religions of the desert
i tend to think of christanity as less coercive than islam

but apparently this is not the case
they are both aggressor religions that try to impose

their exclusivity on others
we saw this same process in haiti and elsewhere

atr is under assault all over the world, including africa

got two dangers here, the aggressive proselytizing
costing us believers

and our own archaic practices costing us believers

christanity and islam both have proven to be more illuminated
traditions when in conflict with atr in traditional societies

i suspect some folk are going to object to that statement
but its been a factor in our loss of traditional ground in africa

islam and christanity both been pushing us back

the criteria of success for a good system is that its
believers live a good life

one full of meaning and significance, one of power
over self and adversity

and so forth along these lines
african traditional religion has failed this critical test

whereever in the world that you have blackfolk living
a traditional life they are behind in all indicators of social well being

they are sicker, weaker, poorer than other folk
and eager to find another way that will give them a better life

so when islam and christanity come hunting souls
they find atr to be fertile pickings

hopefully we can repel their aggressive search for converts
but our archaic and outdated practices will also have to be reconsidered

all religions, all traditions, have to evolve
there is this constant tension between tradition and evolution

this constant need to decide what must be kept
and what must be left behind

this constant quest
for illumination

we must become an illuminated tradition
competitive in the spiritual marketplace

we must become the illuminated tradition
of the 21st century

with a system designed for the 21st century
mind and sensibility

for in the final analysis this battle will be one of grace
which is the better way

all my love
rdoc

-----------------------------------------------

  Christianity vs. the old gods of Nigeria

by Dulue Mbachu, Associated Press Writer, Tues, Sept 4, 1:19 pm et

 

Born to a family of traditional priests, Ibe Nwigwe converted to Christianity as a boy. Under the sway of born-again fervor as a man, he gathered the paraphernalia of ancestral worship — a centuries-old stool, a metal staff with a wooden handle and the carved figure of a god — and burned them as his pastor watched.

 

"I had experienced a series of misfortunes and my pastor told me it was because I had not completely broken the covenant with my ancestral idols," the 52-year-old Nwigwe said of the bonfire three years ago. "Now that I have done that, I hope I will be truly liberated."

 

Generations ago, European colonists and Christian missionaries looted Africa's ancient treasures. Now, Pentecostal Christian evangelists — most of them Africans — are helping wipe out remaining traces of how Africans once worked, played and prayed.

 

As poverty deepened in Nigeria from the mid-1980s, Pentecostal Christian church membership surged. The new faithful found comfort in preachers like evangelist Uma Ukpai who promised material success was next to godliness. He has boasted of overseeing the destruction of more than 100 shrines in one district in December 2005 alone.

 

Achina is typical of towns and villages in the ethnic Igbo-dominated Christian belt of southeastern Nigeria where this new Christian fundamentalism is evident. The old gods are being linked to the devil, and preachers are urging not only their rejection, but their destruction.

 

The Ezeokolo, the main shrine of Achina — a community of mainly farmers and traders in Nigeria's rain forest belt — has been repeatedly looted of its carved god figures. While no one has been caught, suspects range from people acting on Christian impulses to treasure thieves.

 

Recently, a village civic association volunteered to build a house to keep burglars away from a giant wooden gong decorated with carved male, female and snake figures. The gong in the market square is reputed to be more than 400 years old, and in decades past was sounded in times of emergency.

 

"We feared it may be stolen or destroyed like so many of our traditional cultural symbols," said Chuma Ezenwa, a Lagos-based lawyer.

 

But the move to protect a communal symbol has not changed the minds of others.

 

Ikechukwu Nzekwe, a 48-year-old farmer who belongs to a traditional masquerade cult, rues the action of his younger brother, a born-again Christian who destroyed the family's masquerade costume, including pieces dating back seven generations.

 

The masquerade cult was once part theater, appearing at festivals to perform songs and dances, and part traditional police — its members helped enforce mores and customs. Now its role is largely restricted to theater, including performances and races by men in costumes depicting ancestral spirits.

 

Ukpai, the evangelist, tells followers the artifacts bear "curses and covenants" linked to the gods they represent.

 

"Since the curses and covenants do not automatically disappear when we repent, Rev. Dr. Uma Ukpai is a man called by God for the total liberation of mankind," he says on his Web site, claiming to have the spiritual backing of Jesus to break the curses.

 

Efforts to speak to Ukpai were unsuccessful, and e-mails to his office asking for an interview received no reply.

 

Early missionaries to Nigeria condemned most traditional practices as pagan. Roman Catholics and Anglicans later came to terms with most practices, even incorporating some traditional dances into church liturgy. But there was no room for local gods once their erstwhile worshippers became Christians.

 

Similarly, Muslim preachers in Nigeria's predominantly Islamic north forbade interaction with figures dedicated to local idols, although many cultural dances featuring traditional masks are still tolerated.

 

Most converts are in constant tension over how much of the old beliefs can be incorporated into their new faith, said Isidore Uzoatu, a specialist in the history of Christianity in Africa affiliated with Nnamdi Azikiwe University in southeastern Nigeria.

  "Where the older Catholic and Anglican denominations are more tolerant, the Pentecostals reflect more strictly the idea of a jealous God that would brook no rival," said Uzoatu. The changing attitudes have not escaped the attention of art dealers.   "This work you see here is from a shrine. It was brought to me by one woman who said her pastor had asked her to get rid of it," said Wahid Mumuni, a dealer at Ikoyi Hotel in Lagos, gesturing toward a carving. Mumuni said the price was the equivalent of $1,500 and he expected a European visitor to take it away soon.   The National Commission for Museums and Monuments, which is responsible for protecting the country's cultural antiquities, has responded with a sensitization campaign.

"We are ... telling the Christians that they can't detach themselves from their past, that there is a beginning to their history," said Omotosho Eluyemi, a senior commission official. The commission urges those who do not want to keep sacred objects to take them to local chiefs. It also seeks stricter enforcement of the law prohibiting export of artifacts. Okwy Achor, an archaeologist, fears the government's response has been weak compared to the fervor of the evangelists.   Achina is part of the region where famed Igbo-Ukwu bronzes were discovered in a private compound in 1958. Older and more sophisticated than the better-known Benin and Ife bronzes, the Igbo-Ukwu bronzes date to between the 8th and 10th centuries and provide proof that a unique form of metallurgy evolved in Nigeria. While Achina had few Christians 60 years ago, they now constitute more than 95 percent, says Emmanuel Eze, a retired teacher.

   

"There is hardly anyone around these days to speak up for tradition," said Eze.

vodou child: vodou in long island

hello world, i feel bad about that last post on the tradition in venezuela
tried to look at it dispassionately but it was a very classic kind of attack on the tradition

im going to put this article from the village voice on here whole as a kind
of fair balance reporting - a vodou ceremony in long island

as a hoodoo we dont go in for all that ritual and ceremony
sound like a lot of work to me, but most folks they need their

churches and all, their priestly interlocutors, its cool . . . .

(flowers it seem you just cant help yourself can you, part of the reason im
putting this post on here is to stay cool with my atr peeps after
putting that attack article on because it did raise some interesting questions
mostly about the political spread of atr in south america

but instead of just being cool, here i am start talking about ceremonial religion -
forgive me gang, this strictly a sorceric personal

but this is the reason i aspire to the prophetic rather than your conventional religious

i want to be part of the atr world but i do not want to go through all that ritual, nor
do i want to be subject to all those religious rules and regulations, my relationship
with the divine i want to be a more personal negotiation

hoodoo is always been an outlaw relation in the atr world, more magical than religious
the lost children of the conqueror, but i believe the future of hoodoo will be more deeply

tied to atr, many hoodoo now are also initiated priests in other atrs
so im trying to retain our magical independence while at the same time defining

us as part of the atr world
and of course positioning hoodoo as a power in the atr world

which is why i am trying to position hoodoo (and myself) in the prophetic

the prophetic is part of the world yet separate from it, the prophetic is in it but not of it
and given the cultural dispensation to not only break the rules, but to establish new ones

most folk need organized churches and priestly interlocutors to deal with the divine and
i accept that, i understand the value of it, its just not for me

i go to atr ceremonies for the same reason i go to church
occasionally (southern black baptist of course) i enjoy the flow

most prophets are more deeply tied to their given traditions but they always have to step
away from what the theological herd is doing and try to establish new and improved processes

to renew and regenerate worn out traditions
by definition the prophet has to be out of step

or something along these lines, i dont have time to get deeply into this, i got manuscripts
to read for my 330 class, be well, my love to you all, in particular my fellow atr practitioners

anytime i step out of line, just yank my chain)

-----------------------------------------

Vodou Child

Haitian religious rites in the unlikeliest of places: a Long Island suburb

by Tamara Lush

September 4th, 2007 5:09 PM

Chantal Louis is a 42-year-old Haitian immigrant who lives in suburban Hempstead in Nassau County. She's a mother of three, a computer technician, and flashes a megawatt smile. She lives in a white, two-story, colonial home graced by dainty lace curtains in the windows and a white wicker chair on the porch. The home, which is worth $420,000, sits on a tidy, oak-tree-lined street.

Lately, she's been a bit depressed—her eldest daughter is heading off to college, and Chantal is wondering what her own future holds. Most women at her age and station in life would pop a Prozac or take a yoga class. Instead, she turned to a 36-year-old vodou priest named Erol Josué.

So one night in July, Josué traveled from his home in Miami to New York, where he gathered a half-dozen or so other vodou practitioners—including a paralegal, an accountant, and a hospital worker. All were well-heeled Haitian- Americans—the kind of people who might work next to you in an office or perhaps coach your kid in a baseball league. Their mission: appeal to the spirits to remedy Louis's ennui.

For seven hours, starting at about 10 p.m., they spoke in tongues, danced, spilled high-octane rum onto a machete, lit the blade on fire, and held it aloft. The next day, they would bless a chicken, kill it, then eat the flesh as thanksgiving to the spirits.

Though vodou got its start in West Africa, then spread into the mountains of Haiti, and later to the slums of Miami and New York, it has increasingly made its way into well-appointed homes like Chantal's. And who better to bring it than Josué, a world traveler, choreographer, and artist who released his first CD of vodou-tinged global-beat tunes, Régléman, to critical acclaim this summer.

"Wherever I go, I go with Haiti, because my way of life is vodou—my music, my dance, I go with that because it is in my heart," he says. "My heart is Haiti. I live the Haitian life every day."

Erol's stepfather was a well-known vodou priest (called a houngan), and so were his mother and grandmother. "When you come from a vodou family, you're a very different child," says Carol d'Lynch, a Miami priestess originally from Haiti. She knew Erol during his boyhood. "As a vodou child, you know your responsibility, you know what is important, you know the things coming in life."

For Haitians, vodou is not just the stuff of dolls with pins stuck in their eyes or zombies wandering in the forest. The centuries-old religion has permeated Haiti for generations, after it was carried by slaves from West Africa to the Caribbean starting in the 1700s. On the island of Hispaniola, which includes Haiti and the Dominican Republic, those transplanted Africans mingled with the Taino Indians, who were also persecuted by European occupiers. Vodou evolved from the three cultures and played a huge role in Haiti's liberation from France. In 1751, a houngan named François Mackandal organized other slaves to raid sugar and coffee plantations. The French burned him at the stake. Another former slave and vodou practitioner replaced him at the helm of the liberation movement: Toussaint L'Ouverture , whose efforts helped Haiti win its independence in 1804.

In the years that followed, vodou became a mystical, powerful tool of the government and a cultural touchstone for the masses. Haitian immigrants brought it with them to the United States. For the young Erol, vodou meant family, nature, and love. "It was the best thing in my life," he recalls.

Though a large percentage of Haitians, like Erol's family, practiced vodou in the '70s and '80s, it was still officially discouraged by the government and the Catholic Church. Because Erol's family wanted him to receive a decent education, they sent him to Frére Justin L'Herisson, a Catholic school in Haiti named after the man who wrote the country's national anthem—but his mom and dad forbade him from talking about the vodou practiced at home. "I would have gotten kicked out had they known," he says.

Like Erol, Chantal grew up in Haiti. Unlike Erol, she didn't discover her vodou roots until she had emigrated to the United States in her twenties, had children, and began to question her existence. "I needed something to hold onto," she says. She met Erol in New York at a friend's ceremony and felt a connection to him. Chantal rarely hosts ceremonies; this is only her second since she began practicing vodou.

By 10 p.m., the small group is ready. There are six women in their forties, all dressed in white, including Florence Jean-Joseph, a paralegal at a law firm and a voudou priestess herself. There's also Huguette, who works in a hospital, and one man other than Erol: 39-year-old Ernest Jourdain, an accountant from Fort Lauderdale. He's a friend of Erol's who happened to be visiting the New York area on the night of the ceremony. Jourdain is the only person not dressed in white; he's wearing a lime-green Izod shirt and jeans.

Josué, who is tired after a delayed plane flight from Miami, is dressed in a silky white shirt and white pants. He steadies himself and begins the liturgy. He closes his eyes and sings, his voice rising into a rhythmic chant. The sound is directed to the people in the room, but the lyrics are meant for the spirits. Huguette shakes a brightly painted gourd and Florence sings and the women clap and sway in time with Erol's voice. Ernest sits on a white plastic chair in the back of the room, following the music and praying softly to himself.

One by one, Erol and the others greet the spirits. Each supernatural being receives a similar ritual: a song, an offering (usually of rum or some other liquid), a lit candle. Everyone kneels on the floor at least once during the greeting. Occasionally, Erol dances with one or two of the women—he dances the most with Florence, whom he calls his "spiritual sister." It's a sensual dance, but not sexy. The rituals are nothing like Hollywood's version of vodou—no pentagrams, animal sacrifices, skeletons, or zombies in sight. There's actually a lot of laughter and easygoing banter during the ceremony; it's a loose atmosphere, with people getting up, walking out, using the bathroom, or sipping water throughout.

Chantal is the most moved by the ceremony and the prayer. At around midnight, she cries as she sings. Her tears and words turn to high-pitched babble—she is speaking in tongues. She faints into the arms of Florence Jean-Joseph and Huguette. Erol gently, yet quickly, walks over to help ease Chantal onto the floor and then covers her with a white sheet. Florence sprays perfume into the air. The room now smells like roses, sweat, and fried fish. Chantal rises, then staggers into a small room off the main basement area, where she flops down on a bed for 15 minutes, exhausted.

At around 1 a.m., Chantal is back before the altar. Another spirit possesses her—it's Damballah, the snake god. At first, Chantal careens around the room, as if drunk, out of control. Then she falls to the floor, writhing, belly down, contorting her body and rolling her eyes back into her skull. She hisses in time with Erol's chanting. After a few minutes, Chantal rolls over on her back and faints. Erol again covers her, tenderly. When she comes to about a minute later, she gets up and walks out of the room, groggy, as if rising from a deep sleep. When Chantal walks in a few moments later, she asks if anyone wants coffee, and if so, would they like cream or sugar.

At 4:30 a.m., Erol ties a red scarf on his head, a striking contrast to his all-white outfit and caramel-colored skin. He is singing loud, summoning Ogou, the warrior god who also represents politics and magic. It is believed that he gave power to the slaves in Haiti when they rebelled against the French government in 1804, and bestowed power again when Aristide took over in 1994. Ogou likes weapons and chaos.

In front of the altar, the woman named Huguette sits on the floor, her arms floppy and her legs stretched out in front of her like a Raggedy Ann doll. She's dressed all in white, her satiny skirt billowing around her ample hips, with a white scarf tied around her head. Her face is soaked with sweat and her eyes are half-closed, in a trance. She holds an avocado in her hands. She takes a giant, sloppy bite of the fruit, skin and all.

Chantal, her eyes round and unfocused, slowly steps to the altar. She takes hold of the machete that has been sitting on the offering table. Erol removes the red scarf from his head and ties it around the knife's handle. He sways and sings, his voice rising above the low hum of the others who are having their own private conversations with the spirit. Erol summons Ogou in Creole and Chantal steps to the altar. Still clutching the machete, she takes a bottle of Barbancourt rum with the other hand and pours half of it over her head, then carefully kneels down. Setting the machete on the floor over two rocks, she pours the rum on the two-inch-wide blade and reaches toward the altar for a pack of matches. Chantal strikes one, then ignites the alcohol-soaked blade; there's a soft blue flicker. She chants, and the words get louder as she jumps up and tries to stamp out the flame with her bare feet.

In one motion, Chantal stands up, grabbing the machete by the handle and brandishing it above her head. She screams, angry, her eyes wide and clear.

Chantal's 18-year-old daughter, a slip of a girl with her mother's wide smile who is soon going to college in upstate New York, appears at the doorway to watch. She had been sitting in front of the widescreen upstairs in the family room but heard the noise and wandered down. Dressed like a typical teenager—she's in a pink Baby Phat tank top and tiny shorts—the girl looks like a time traveler, strangely modern compared to the women in long, billowing skirts. Chantal screams, loud, and the room suddenly feels uncomfortably small and crowded. The other five women stand before the altar, swaying in unison and singing. They don't pay attention to Chantal or the machete that she's clutching in both hands.

The other women in the room push the daughter forward, in front of her mother holding the machete. Chantal takes the blade and touches her daughter, gently, on each shoulder, almost as if she's knighting the girl. Chantal looks deep into her daughter's eyes while chanting in Creole.

It's almost 5 a.m., and Erol has also been seized by Ogou, but Ogou the dealmaker, the politician, the organizer. His face is confident, masculine, hard—so different from the tender, almost maternal look that he had when he was helping Chantal a few hours earlier. Then he slips out of the spell.

He gulps a mouthful of rum and blows it around the room in a large, misty spray. He walks over to Chantal, swigs some rum, and sprays some on her. She is holding the machete in front of her, its blade inches from her face. Without a word, Erol calmly takes the machete from her hand and passes it to a woman standing nearby. He embraces Chantal, and she, too, slips out of the trance. The room is quiet.

There is more singing—in soft voices now—and a few candles are lit. The ceremony is over. Erol is physically drained. The spirits have come and gone.

It is 5:30 a.m. The oak-tree-lined street in Hempstead is beginning to stir; lights illuminate windows and people in suits walk to the cars parked in their driveways to begin their commute to work.

Erol and the others from the basement go outside and stand on the lawn. Erol jokes and chats softly with Florence, while Huguette and the other women shake the fabric of their skirts and cool off in the morning air.

kudos for juno diaz and oscar wao: and rickydoc gon pass on racine, i consider this beneath me

hello world, i been off the grid
lets do some quick catch uo why dont we

1st: nytimes photo from the west indian
day parade in brooklyn - aint she pretty

2nd, junos novel is out - and getting good reviews
the brief and wondrous life of oscar wao

this is good news and bad, good because he did it
bad because juno got his novel out before me

we both been dug in working on longgame novels
and now that junos is out and getting good reviews

im feeling the pressure, yall

juno got his done, juno came thru
this what time magazine had to say

"In 1996 a young Dominican - American writer named Junot Díaz published a slender book of short stories called Drown. It was tender and tough and heartbreaking and all a first book of short stories is supposed to be, and he was hailed as the next great hope of American literature. Then Díaz more or less disappeared for 11 years, long enough for most readers to assume that, like most next great hopes of American literature, he wasn't coming back.

Now he has, and with a book so astoundingly great that in a fall crowded with heavyweights--Richard Russo, Philip Roth--Díaz is a good bet to run away with the field."

it can be done
you go boy

let me see, had a couple other points
seems the mambo racine thing controversy in 2nd gear

went by the rootworkers list the other day
hadnt checked it for a year or so because it

had become a mambo racine all the time fistfight

apparently the parents of the incarcerated skull diggers put out an appeal
for money not to go to racine op but to lawyers hired by the family

they say racine using the money otherwise or something like this
i dont know the details, i was just scanning and i didnt read back thru

but i did notice that my previous post was being used as a indictment on her

and ive since gotten a couple of emails from folk asking me
to join in the hunt but ima pass on that, aint got time for that

i dont want to spend my little limited energies getting
caught up in that dogfight

im retired from frontline organizing - im a busy man
i got to catch up with brother wao

i was moved though when whoever referenced my post
referred to me as the 'respected commentator doc flowers'

i be thinking nobody listening

speaking of skulls i dont know what to say about this article i ran across
in the la times recently, obviously i dont approve of graveyard activity

but i know some paleros who would probably be offended by the tone of this piece
i dont know enuf to comment on this articles claims so i will just put it on here whole

it was the politics of santeria in south america i found most fascinating
and it appear to me that its atr ascendency that they really find frightening

the bulk of the accusations i assume to be political, the breathless tone

of the article sound like a very conventional atr (african traditional religion) as evil presentation
very oldschool catholic defense playbook

in my efforts to be a prophetic voice in african traditional religion
some things i would like to say wont fly, graveyard work being one of them

a lot of what we do keeps us on defense
latimes is a signup op so i will put both link and the article here

again, i do not testify, in fact i consider this article suspect
but it does raise some very interesting issues doesnt it

----------------------------

The Dead Dont Rest in Venezuela

A ghoulish crime wave in the Venezuelan capital supplies a black magic cult whose popularity is fueled by faith and politics.

By Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 5, 2007

CARACAS, VENEZUELA -- Skulking in the dead of night in the remote and overgrown Las Pavas section of the Southern Municipal Cemetery, robbers armed with crowbars and sledgehammers first shattered the tomb's concrete vault and the granite marker that read, "To our dear wife and mother in heaven, Maria de la Cruz Aguero."

Then they lifted the coffin lid and stole leg bones and the skull of the woman, who had died Sept. 9, 1993. They sold the bones for $20 each, the skull for as much as $300, said Father Atilio Gonzalez, the cemetery's resident Roman Catholic priest.

Sometimes entire skeletons, particularly those of children, are stolen from crypts in this final resting place of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, including three former presidents.

"These unscrupulous people are insulting God and committing a mortal sin," said Gonzalez. He said that graves in the city's largest cemetery are robbed every night, and it's getting worse. "They have perfect liberty to desecrate the tombs because the government does nothing to stop it."

The desecration of the woman's tomb was part of a ghoulish crime wave, including assaults, rapes and dope deals, that has made the cemetery so dangerous that funeral home workers say they carry weapons whenever they have to go there. Parts of the vast cemetery, particularly the remote hillside sections reserved for the poor, are in ruins and choked with weeds, providing perfect cover for thugs and the homeless.

In the past when graves were robbed, the primary objective was to steal personal effects such as jewelry or gold dental fillings, said Odalys Caldera, an investigator in the city's judicial police. Today, thieves are pillaging the graves for darker reasons.

The buyers of the bones are paleros, the practitioners of a black magic cult related to Santeria whose rise in popularity here is fueled by a strange brew of faith and politics.

"Santeria, witchcraft and black magic are much more out in the open now. That's the reason," Caldera said. "Of course the state is aware of the robberies, but hasn't taken the necessary steps to impede them."

Santeria, which combines Catholicism and African and indigenous spiritualism, was brought to the New World by slaves from Africa centuries ago and still thrives, particularly in Cuba, Haiti, Brazil and, increasingly, Venezuela. It is also popular in regions of the United States with strong Caribbean immigrant communities, such as south Florida, Washington and Los Angeles,areas where hundreds of thousands are thought to practice it.

Although most Santeria followers steer clear of the use of human remains and Satanism, the paleros embrace them. They use bones in black magic rituals in which the objective is to cast evil spells on enemies: to induce bad luck for an unfaithful spouse, a car accident for unwanted in-laws, a serious illness for a business competitor, Gonzalez said.

Police, church officials and historians offer a variety of theories for the rise in Santeria generally and of black magic in particular in Venezuela. Some, including anthropologist Rafael Strauss, point to the vacuum left by the Roman Catholic Church, which, as in many other Latin American countries, has lost believers in Venezuela to evangelical and other Protestant religions. Church rolls also are suffering from a lack of interest among younger people.

"We are seeing a new syncretism that is uniting parts of different religions," said Strauss, a retired University of Central Venezuela professor. "It's how people make it easier to meet their spiritual needs."

Gonzalez acknowledged that the country is suffering a crisis in belief.

"People are losing faith," he said. "Instead of assuming responsibility to accomplish something good, they resort to witchcraft, which they see as the easy way."

But others see politics at work. Father Manuel Diaz is a parish priest in the El Hatillo suburb of Caracas where three Santeria babalaos, or shamans, have recently opened centers. He says the government of leftist President Hugo Chavez is encouraging the rise of Santeria to counter the authority of the Catholic Church, which Chavez has viewed as his enemy.

In a pastoral letter to his parishioners last month, Diaz said the government has a "concrete objective, to undermine the authority of the church and align its faithful with certain ideologies." In the letter, he wrote that leaders of the movement to discredit the church were coming from an unnamed "Caribbean country," presumably Cuba.

Although Santeria and other spiritualist religions have been present in Venezuela since Spanish colonial days, the rise of black magic, including that practiced by paleros, is relatively new, said Maria Garcia de Fleury, a comparative religions professor at New Sparta University in Caracas.

"We've always had a little witchcraft, but nothing like what has been unleashed recently," De Fleury said. "This is not Venezuelan."

Without offering hard evidence, De Fleury and some church officials blame the growing presence of Santeria on Cuba, which she says is exporting babalaos along with doctors, teachers and sports trainers to Venezuela as part of closer economic relations with Chavez.

"It's because the government is behind Santeria, promoting it, letting in Cuban babalaos who are proselytizing very actively," De Fleury said.

While not addressing Santeria, Chavez in a February 2003 broadcast of his "Alo Presidente" TV talk show denied that he was a believer in black magic. He is known to be a mystic of sorts, and some say that he believes he is the reincarnation of a 19th century Venezuelan leader, Ezequiel Zamora.

"President Chavez, who knows the mentality of Venezuelans, takes advantage of their magical religious imagery to further his popularity and his revolution," university professor Angelina Pollak-Eltz said in an essay shortly after Chavez took power in 1999.

Yarlin Mejia, a hotel worker who is also a babalao in the  Catia slum of Caracas, said the majority of Santeria believers stay away from witchcraft. "The paleros work for evil," Mejia said. "I do it differently. I work for positive things."

Half a dozen people come every Sunday to Mejia's house, where his ceremonies involve "white magic" -- rituals that aim to help believers attain specific goals, be it a new house, a better job or success at school. A chicken is usually sacrificed. Mejia says interest is growing and attributes it to the presence of Cubans.

"They're everywhere," Mejia said.

-----------------------------

let me take this post out on a good note
t shia asantes website, check it out

a multimodal experience, everybody on
the gun but me

rdoc

clear water & ibeshe tchula, the dream of sekou sundiata and desperate men

TUESDAY

hello world, me and bonnie had dinner w/trebor and deb last night
we had a good time, in spite of my antisocial ways - bob and deb chill me out

bonnie had got me one of his photos that i had fell in love w/for my bday
the lighthouse one that chill me out, (we got a nice bob gates collection on the walls)

trebor is not only a lodge brother of the mystic knights of the sea
trebor is one of the most consistent readers of this blog

will comment occasionally on things ive written
offer kudos and challenges

often when im talking here, im talking expressly to him, or one of
my other few regulars that i know about - my beloved regulators

thinking trebor will like this one, this one will impress him, make him smile, etc (conscious of when he wont approve too)

samesame the other few folk that i know surf this blog w/some regularity
i like to claim i dont write to please anybody but i do have folk that are my

audience, in my head im writing/communicating with them
speaking for them, speaking to them - my beloved regulators

i be thinking of my regulators as guerilla troops, soulwarriors, covert operatives out here playing
the hoodoo board of destiny and conjuring a new reality on the human condition - regulating

look like im the one they be regulating
im feeling fey today, in a strange space with my novel

finally finished the historical section (4 years maybe?) and now im back
in the contemporary section, last 3rd of novel

but i havent systematically focused on this section for 3, 4 years now
and ive got all these unformed ideas of what to do with

- jubilation highjohns struggles as hodooo sorceror and wouldbe prophet
- the human struggle to live a meaningful life
- his/my struggle to empower the african way of god
- to save the race and his/my crippling sense of defeat and perhaps redemption

- the struggles of my characters
making them authentic endgame progressions

critical scenes/dynamics that have to be brought to life
so they speak to folk beyond consciousness, disturb and transform them

make my literary vision manifest

and all these narrative games i want to play, just what is
the relationship between reality art destinywork and conjuration

everything else been setup
the endgame is where the novel dies or becomes luminous

showtime and i look at it and im lost
got to redo my outline, figure out how to take it home

so next couple of days outline and plow thru
no way in hell i can do this in 20 days

but thats not going to stop me from trying, lord
i do my best work under pressure

in the name of o killens - the great griot master of brooklyn
(took my boys to his grave in brooklyn, they helped me tend to his ground)

worked on my holybook last couple of days, which felt good,
birthday present to myself

got to catch up w/projects ive allowed to fall by the woodshed - family, holybook, manuscripts, palf, etc etc

have you checked out the website for the pan african literary forum yet - looking good if i do say so myself

but the forum itself is still up in the air - as you well know, getting
something like this off the ground is a major challenge

and the old gray organizer just aint what he used to be
we got commitments but we aint seen a check yet

and we have made all these commitments and we got large contingents
of students coming from kenya, senegal, southafrica, nigeria, congo - all over africa

gon be an amazing experience
a seminal moment in african world lit and culture

its fa, its destiny

we got commitments from the legends of african world lit - the potential of what can be is breathtaking
and we have decided that no matter what the show will go on, that we have to establish

a reputation for doing whatever we say we gon do
if it comes down to:

jeff allen - novel
mohammed n. ali - shortstory
arthur flowers - nonfiction
some ghanian woman poet - poetry

the show will go on

course if the money come thru we gon have all the folk on the website and more
if the money dont come thru we pay our own way and make it happen

hope you will be part of it
gon be a seminal moment

speaking of shows going on i got to go

i got to get that new outline done today
got to get rootwork.com back online today

so many projects, so little time
my love to you all

rdoc

FRIDAY

hello world, was going to move on and start a new post
but i believe i will stay in this one and set up the 101 talismans

but today a shout out to one of my favorite conjurors in all the land
ibeshe tchula, was googling about when her name came up and

i see she has redone her website, it was always aesthetically pleasing
and now is even more so - until the water is clear is her riff

Tidings:

Welcome to until the water is clear, a website  designed to convey the many facets of my artistic expression. Ibeshe Tchula, a conjurer.   I am also Anna Beatrice Scott, a cultural/performance theorist  I work in various media and modes, with a special emphasis on the kinetic. I enjoy producing investigative works that provoke further inquiry and performance.  My focus is multiple for these pages, but I  have posted this site with the desire to book more performances.lectures, workshops and now, workings.                          
As a conjurer, I am very interested in the old timey ways of wrapping one's mind around a situation to produce a solution or series of possibilities.  Repetition. Cycles. Circles. Tides. Calling. Responding. Coding. Ciphering. Spelling. A lot of my work is influenced by or in discussion with sacred texts from many of my ancestral lines. I am hybrid, though easily recognized as a Black woman. I have come to understand myself as (minimally) Gaelic Afro Indian.  You may laugh. It is a joke.                      

I particularly enjoy pushing the boundaries of race, racialism, racism with radical love.  No one can know what's at the bottom of the sea, so who's to argue with the parameters of our existence?

Please dive in and swim around.  If you know you belong here, in the flow of her darkness as it draws upon the hind leg of clarity, then click here,  for further instructions.  Good tidings, one and all.

THURSDAY
hello world, sorry i been out of the loop

still recovering from my trip to the delta
and sekous death

aint no small thing you know, shifting the world a
little bit, better get a grip
                                    urban music by sekou sundiata

been listening to sekous work, i think
this is my favorite - urban music - i hear you sekou

what up black    you still black? . . .

i know you trying    to be something else    in your dreams
but you just keep coming back didnt you black, and more black and more black

'i understand   trouble   in the mind of blackness     trouble in the mind of blackness
seeking the light of    anything    to explain    the long reign    of the upside down. . .'

went to the funeral saturday, big drama, they tried to keep it tight, so there was

all this dont tell nobody going on but surely they didnt think they could stop sekous
folk from showing up - cathedral st johns divine, folk i havent seen 10 15 20 years

they done him proud
folk was showing a lotta love

i can only hope ive earned that kind of love when its time for me to go
at some point ima do up  what i want my service to be - forget that sad bit

i want a throw down, i want to rock the house
make a joyous noise - rickydoc checked out, gave it my best shot

a luta continua

'i wanna tell you    how much we wanted    to make reovlution
and in our yearning we learned    that suffering aint noble    and to struggle is a blessing'

listening to sekou now, he left a good body of work, but the one i love is that urban music,
i got some lyrics here for you, but reading them aint the same as hearing them

'we dreamed you black    in your madness,
made you up out of poems    and lies   and words to live by

we ourselves was dreamed    most likely by some slaves

whenever they    got a little space   they climbed into their heads   and be free
when they close their eyes    what did they see    they saw you    they saw me

ima miss sekou, gotta work sekou into my mythwork, he deserves some play
and apparently thats my role, determine who of my generation gets mythworked

into the destinical narrative

i got this initiative in rest for the weary, i believe
ive spoken on it before, where i annoint 101 hoodoo haints

historical and contemporary hoodoo destiny players
to be canonized - deified

and im thinking about my contemporaries, folk like sekou and
safiya and imogunla and dorisjean and jokillens, davidearl and more to come

while not all literally literary hoodoo i believe i will canonize them anyway
they are part of this life i have known/recorded and i will include them on a personal

after i list the 101 talismans, i plan to give them attributes
mythwork, a narrative

the 101 talismans of rickydoc

- historical hoodoos
- leaders&destinyplayers
- contemporary hoodoos
- literary hoodoos

work on this during the week sometime, just dont have time right now
got pages to clock, last lap, about 30 days left before i have

to go back to the schoolhouse, go back
to being a civilian - back in the world

bunch of pressure on me to deal with the world now but all i can say is not yet
i got 30 days, world  -   people, obligations, everything got to back up off me

stonewall time - best not to get in the way of a desperate man
next 30 days belong to my novel, my work, my dream

whatever it cost me
i will pay the bill

once again we must seperate the writers
from the dilettantes

i just read over what ive done and got left to do and it
looks suspiciously bad, i fear im just playing with myself

and you dear regulators - doing a juneteenth on you
i fear i just dont have another viable novel in me

15 years is a longtime to have worked on something
that still has not reached threshhold viability - that bothers me

its so strange i cannot judge its viability

all i can do is keep the faith and do what i was born to do -
ive already given my life to this, i dont have options at this point, dont want them

i fear i just might not have the talent, but if determination
counts i got that

i will not accept defeat in this matter
masterpiece or farce, ima do this

if i am not a great novelist i am nothing

i fear that i am not even a decent novelist
a literary footnote whose vision exceed his reach

no matter, ima do this
win or lose ima do this

today, tomorrow, everyday i can beg borrow
or steal ima do this

woodshed you never get all you planned done
life always take its pound of flesh

frustration and despair inevitable

but i can do a lot in 30 desperate days
need to come out of this woodshed with a draft, lord

not getting no draft is
not an option

in struggle
rdoc

i wanna be a hero: wind whipping my dreads on the mountaintop

hello world, ran up on this interesting site
a post this guy wallace calls modern day hoodoos

a christian with an agenda but he made some interesting points
basically talking about use of the charisma, the glamour

basically he talking about what i call ideological orchestration
he dont approve of us

but he did peep the power, gave all these negative examples
but he made some really insightful points for a civilian

loved when he identifies books as spells
designed to shape humanitys future

first he claim intellectuals are modern day witchdoctors

which i 1st understood reading the glass bead game as a cub
when magister ludi leaves academia and starts writing short stories,
one of which is a tribal shaman operating as the books intellectuals did

connection in my head: visionaryartist/intellectual = shaman

a connection reinforced by the early works of ishmael reed and my studies as literary hoodooman - and my 15 year apprenticeship with babajohn o killens, the great griot master of brooklyn

these are excerpts from article and my riffs on them:

"Call me afflicted with a terminal case of daffiness, but I see no evidence the people on this big round world of ours are any different than those of, say, 1,000,000 BC

We believe in the same things our ancestors did, though we give those things different names.

In the past certain people were called witchdoctors; today the foolish call them intellectuals. I call them Hoodoo Men.

You can take the same dangerous goofiness from thousands of years ago and map it on today and it'll fit perfectly. Not only can we take all those Hoodoo Men and witchdoctors from the past and call them the intellectuals of today, we can also take charms and talismans and amulets and and mojo bags and find the same exact things today. So we don't really have much business laughing at "primitives." We're them."

so basically he talking about intellectuals as ideological orchestrators
but what fascinates me is why he call them modern day hoodoos

this struck me cause its how i understand the game
its a dual manifestation:

sorceror prophet and hoodoo magician in the spiritworld
intellectual and visionary artist in the realworld

2 sides of the same coin: hoodoo mack

"That name, "Hoodoo Man," has stuck with me since I first heard it years ago. It's a Southern/country term, apparently only vaguely related to the similar word, "voodoo." Voodoo is an established religion; hoodoo can have religious overtones, but must not necessarily have them.

A Hoodoo Man is one who uses spells to try to enchant people to get them to do what he wants. You may laugh at someone who tries to cast spells to Win Friends and Influence People, but if you do, you're making a great big mistake.

The word "spell" literally means "to talk," or "tale." A Hoodoo Man is one who attempts to cast a spell through words directed at other people, in order to enchant them so they'll do what the Hoodoo Man wants. Simple, huh?

I certainly don't believe in toe of dog or wing of bat, or Love Potion Number Nine for that matter, but I do believe it's not even a matter for debate that words can be used to enchant people. Spells do exist. The point is not moot."

okay, so far so good, i cant argue with him
i might take exception to the breathless tone

but he has peeped the power
the power of the word

understand contemporary hoodoo better
than most folk practicing today

most hoodoos today practice a slaverytime hoodoo about 100 years out of date
folkmagic in the 21st century - dont get me wrong, folkmagic has its place

but an exclusive focus on folkmagic in the 21st century is an anachronism
that aint the living breathing culture still evolving, hoodoo is so much more than that

they dont understand the highgame
guide and guardian of the tribal soul and destiny

master of the longgame
destinywork

he dont either really, he aint really talking about hoodoo,
its just a term he apply to his real beef about ideological orchestrators as magicians

"All you have to do is watch Triumph of the Will, and you'll see how Hitler, one of the most hypnotic speakers ever, walked through a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people, who parted before him like Charleton Heston waving his staff at the Red Sea. He had literally ensorcelled these poor, deluded, frightened and willing fools, had cast a spell on them. And this was in the 20th Century.

And as Mein Kampf makes clear, he had a way with words, whether written or spoken. He was one of the premier Hoodoo Men of the 20th Century.

It wasn't just Hitler. There was Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and Pol Pot. They just didn't grab hold of the machinery of the State and start rubbing people out with it. I guarantee you there was a huge mass of people who supported them, who had fallen under their spells.

Hoodoo Men exist on a smaller scale, too. David Koresh, anyone?"

david koresh? how did we get saddled with christanitys renegades
hitler et al was bad enuf

basically he calling anybody with the power a hoodoo

could have just as easily named jesus, muhammad, buddha, moses, et al
gandhi, mandela, martin luther king or sojourner truth

"They try to cast spells by the use of words, to ensorcel the susceptible masses, to get them to do what the Hoodoo Men want."

o he off the reservation but he making some deep connections in spite of it

thats exactly what we do - from your basic country magicworker
to destinyplayers such as myself

the word is a weapon a tool an instrument
a spell designed to shape reality - nommo

then he go into his political agenda
start talking about how hoodoos define the world in good and evil absolutes

say we set up a we the righteous have to defend the good against evil dynamic
he call it a trick but that aint fair, its often the case

article talks about how societies have always been manipulated by macks
that the misuse of that power is responsible for many of historys tragedies

among which he and i both include bush and iraq

"That spell will always work on the susceptible, of which there are way too many. That spell has been cast so many times in the past I consider it a law of human nature as to how people will respond to it. It's one of the most powerful and awful spells that exist, perhaps the most awful one of all, one that led to the deaths of up to 200 million people during the 20th Century.

Herman Goering understood that spell. At the Nuremberg trials he said, "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

"An example of this false division into pure good and pure evil is the book, An End to Evil, by Hoodoo Men Richard Perle and David Frum. It's a purely nitwitted book, one worthy only as a doorstop and one anyone with an dollop of sense can see straight through. But since the rubes can't see through it, well then, they're another story."

wait up now partner, i really really object to being saddled with bush
hitler and koresh were bad enuf, but bush and the neocons, thems fighting words

i think we can add anything bush has said in the last 6 years to this list of okeydoke
pretty much anything the rightwing has said in the last 30

if anything my mythic role as a witchdoctor is to protect the tribe against witches like this
fucking with folks souls and creating zombies out of my people - rickydoc dont allow that

i will not abide a thief of souls

"I mentioned talismans, charms, amulets, mojo bags. A talisman, an amulet and a charm are the same thing: objects that are supposed to protect you. Today, they are often books. Follow the instructions in the book, and you will be protected. I've already mentioned An End to Evil. I could mention the Bible, too. There are people, and apparently a lot of them, who think the instructions in it will protect them from the purely evil monsters in the horror story they have projected onto reality. If they recite the spells in it (which they call "prayers"), they will be protected from evil.

A mojo bag, contrary to Austin Powers, is not something inside us that can be sucked out by Fat Bastard and his power drill. It's a small bag made to be hidden and carried around. It's the same thing as a charm. I like the term because it is, like Hoodoo, particularly American. A Hoodoo Man carrying a mojo bag is the same thing as a modern-day intellectual (okay, psuedo-intellectual) armed with his book. His spell-book."

got me there, the book as spell
this where i live and breathe

i consider every Work a spell designed to influence human destiny
or as ishmael said in the poem dragons blood, referring to his novel: mumbo jumbo

on you i said to the enemies of the soul

my books i consider seeds of future realities
my ideological/institutionalization work i consider preparation of the ground

also he got me when he talk about hoodoo and mojo as so very american
the indigenous africanamerican spiritual/magical system,

born out of our concrete conditions and needs as a culture and society
and like so much of africanamerican culture, the heart and soul of america

soon as i dust it off, put it on the good foot, extract the bullshit
make it congenial to the 21st century mind and sensibility

so basically he just using the word hoodoo to refer to any high magician and
ideological orchestrator -  like any power the power itself is neutral, depend on who wielding it

"You see what I mean by all this? The Hoodoo Men of today, the Victor Davis Hansons, the David Frums, the Max Boots, the Richard Perles and Paul Wolfowitzs, consider themselves intellectuals, ones more awake, smarter and probably more moral than we are, but in reality they're nothing but Hoodoo Men, telling people they're stuck in a horror story where their goodness is under attack by completely insane monsters that wish to annihilate them. And if we listen to them, these self-appointed heroes and messiahs, and recite the charms from their books and put them into effect with missiles and machine guns, we will defeat the monsters. But what we're really going to end up with is unending war"

i still object to being saddled with the neocons
but im with you here partner

i hate it when power players like myself take advantage of the people
the way bush and his crew used 9/11 to froth the american people

justify torture as policy, imperial privilege, arbitrary wars and god know what
here i am trying to keep the tribal soul healthy and here they are degrading it

but i do plead guilty to believing intellectuals (& the mystically inclined) play by different rules
i am more conscious than most folk, have a more informed idea of whats going on

thats a power in society and the only question is how do i use that power

thats how i came up with one of my primary mantras
awaken the sleeper, protect the weak, guide the strong

i know thats kinda corny but it covered all the ground
tight and concise like i like it

i try to wake up folk who sleeping - this article claim hoodoos always claim that
he say its just part of our trick -  that wasnt fair, most of the time thats all you can do

cant push folk, all you can do is show them the value of being awake, of being aware
when most folk just drifting through life on automatic pilot - being took advantage of

just what is your fa
what is your fate, what is your destiny

protecting the weak is pretty self explanatory
its guide the strong put the icing on that cake

i believe its the strong i really have to reach

the ones capable of causing harm to people and societies
the ones capable of helping, of serving, of making a difference

providing leadership

its the ethics of the strong that i really concerned myself with
the same ethics i myself try so hard to adhere to

cause i really do have the power you know, all joking aside
only real question is how do i use it

"We really are no different than tribal people thousands of years ago, ones that believed in goblins and ghosties and things that go bump in the night."

problem here is things do go bump in the night
all the time

and every society thats ever been has had its high magicians, like soldiers
farmers teachers and politicians we an essential part of the cultural mix

guardians at the gate against demons that go bump in the night
guides to humanitys ever higher self

magical charisma is a strange little power
its greater in impact if you keep it restrained

i remember as a young hoodoo training in charisma - the glamour

learned how to radiate it like when im handling an audience
how to put the whole audience in the palm of my sweaty hand

make it a moment around the sacred fire

or how to concentrate it into a tight little beam focused on an individual
and take souls

when i was a young hoodoo in training i used to take souls because i could
considered it experimentation, development of my power

i will always remember the day my mentor,  john o killens, sat me down and said

art you a brilliant writer but with a little compassion you could be profound

all i heard was brilliant

wasnt until many years later i realize the old shaman was trying to ensure
that my contribution as his student would be warm and loving

instead of hard and cold
as a young player i aspired to be a hordesman

my plan was to gather my people into a horde and fling them into history
as i matured i decided that was a little too hard on the tribal soul - and mine

now im trying to call them to the longgame,
still a chosen people mythwork but one that elevates and illuminates

one that heals the tribal soul
and keeps it healthy

i still deal in souls, thats my stock in trade but instead
of taking them i heal them, ima soul doctor, like my daddy

dr arthur richard flowers sr
of memphis tennessee

but you have to be careful handling folks souls - youve heard me say this before
my mantra here is souls should be handled with a very light touch

restraint restraint restraint
but not to the point of not being true force

ima player on the hoodoo board of destiny
far as im concerned the whole world works for me

when they do write my story i dont want them to say
he had the power but he didnt have the heart

being a visionary artist and an intellectual of historical stature is a
blessing of a high order and you have to live by the code

if you want to keep your power - want to keep it strong
if you dont want your power to go bad

samesame conjureman

its babajohn o killens, the great griot master of brooklyn, taught me to be a visionary
made sure the code of conduct was embedded in my soul

i have spent my life in service
and i would never do anything john o killens would not approve of

i am of the line of o killens
and i live by the code

i will keep in mind that i am always walking on shaky ground
and i will strive always to keep to the highroad of true commitment

i will strive always to be greater than i am
to grow always in the compassion of o killens

"It's straight out of a fairy tale: the Hoodoo Men are the heroic wizards, casting spells, to rouse the inhabitants to save their village from the fire-breathing dragons. At least they consider themselves heroes. And apparently wizards, too."

i wanna be a hero

with all my heart and soul i want to be a hoodoo hero
wind whipping my dreads on the mountaintop

guardian at the gate

just your basic neighborhood witchdoctor trying to help the tribe survive another winter
and by all thats holy, the tribe will not starve on my shift

in the line of o killens and
the name of the conqueror

rickydoc trickmaster
wouldbe prophet of the hoodoo way

handling souls and testimonials: my spell worked perfectly thank you

WEDNESDAY

hello world, seems danny glover will be directing

a film on toussaint louverture, the 18th century haitian revolutionary, in a film produced by venezuela/chavez

danny glover been an interesting force has he not
might as well annoint him roving ambassador of black america

might as well make it official

least he wont have a white lead like upcoming bury my heart at wounded knee film

which told the story of the displacement of the nativeamericans, right - so hollywood continues that displacement by casting a white lead 

everyone felt very strongly that we needed a white character or part white/part indian character to carry a contemporary, mostly white, audience through this project" says scriptwriter daniel gait

actor adam beach is ojibwa so its a nativeamerican faking white in an ahistorical character
whose only purpose is give white audiences a narrative they can relate to

on what a twisted weave we web

reminds me of that old story about the lion and the hunter and
how the story go depend on who tell the tale

just read this fascinating nyt article, at least fascinating to a writer whose work engage storytelling,
that talked about the impo of personal narration to the formation of character

talked how the way you tell your lifestory shape your evolving personality

how telling your story in 3rd person appear to be psychologically healthier
than telling it in 1st person because it gives you the distance

necessary to finesse the hardtimes instead of wallow in them
(instead of you got the demon the demon got you)

and all kinds of fascinating such tidbits that will work themselves into
rest for the wearys narrative structure (sorry ec)

specially since a large part of rest is riffing the slave narratives, which were all 1st person

was thinking how i could have chars working their way from 1st to 3rd as a healing dynamic
and all sorts of such like riffs that i will keep in mind as i do this draft (sorry ec)

will have to read the article closer and ponder on its pertinence but right now, im trying
to get my groove back on, i been slacking with the pages, minnowbrook threw
me off my game - i was clocking pages before i went off those 3 days, i got to

chain myself to the sacred desk

this personal narrative thing also goes with my little mantra on the construction of self identity
as conjuration - conduct yourself as you aspire to be and you shall

wonder how glover fancy himself,
a contemporary louverture of some sort id say

him and chavez both
21st century revolutionaries id say

a luta continua
rdoc

MONDAY

hello world, you know i never trust website testimonials
its like yeah right, how long did it take you to write that one

but this one i received recently warm my little hoodoo heart
had a client recently, youngster, 17, 18, im not sure

was having trouble with her wastrel boyfriend and ask
me to take the case - make him love me, make him true

i ask her for the details, i consult the conqueror
and tell her i cannot do it, i will not take this case

he didnt sound like somebody worth keeping, he was treating her badly and abusing her, i advised her to let him go - walk away

but she was insistent, told me she had tried other hoodoos that had taken substantial amounts of money & left her feeling used

and if she didnt get right with him
she was just gonna die

she sounded so young to me, you know how it is when you that age
like it was this man or nothing,

and he was a young knucklehead not ready for love
didnt appear to be a bad guy, just wasnt ready for love and commitment

i told her be patient and the right one will come along
never take bad treatment from anybody -

she was preparing to go to college and all, had all these dreams

i told her spend this energy you using to chase/hoodoo this man
making yourself into the kind of person who will draw a good mate

concentrate on your life for a minute
told her its a world of choice still out there for you, this one is not it -

but she so young and desperate and by this time
i cared about her, had already taken on her case

and i was moved by her faith in the tradition to help her
thats what butter my bread

so i told her i would take the case but only if i was allowed to
construct the spell to do what i thought it should

she agreed

this is one of those situations i was talking about earlier
where you really have to be careful w/folks lives

folk ask me for life advice all the time and im very conscious i
might tell them to do something they shouldnt have

i often give life changing advice - advice that affects their destiny
and expect them to follow it with almost blind faith in me

if i dont feel that faith i dont take the case

and you really have to be careful when you have that kind of power over folk
when you handling souls

but at the sametime as a hoodooman, thats what i do, give life advice
handle souls

and im good at it, my heart is right, im sensitive to empowering folk and i aint
in it for the money - or the power - im in it to help people

i turn down the great majority of cases that come to me
its a big decision to take on responsibility for a troubled soul

dont make enuf money to justify the emotional expenditure or loss of noveltime
even if i were charging abusive money it still wouldnt be worth it

i charge 9 dollars or 99, depending on what i think folk can stand
only reason i charge anything at all is cause folk dont take you seriously unless you do

even then i often give folk the option of paying me only if you satisfied w/the results
and just as often give the advice for free during the consideration process - but if you actually

want me to Work for you, then you got to pay

for a desperate 17 year old still in highschool i tell her 9 crisp new dollar bills
but i dont tell her where to send them - i make it difficult for her to pay me even that

but i have to help her, in the course of consideration ive become fond of her
and i cant have her out here naively giving her soul into the care of charlatans

so w/a degree of trepidation, i design a spell that would bring him back & hold him if
that was to be but designed more to give her the strength to walk away if she so choose

designed to force her to decide what she wanted out of life
what she want out of a man - and demand it of both life and men

so anyway i recently receive this email from her,
edited to remove personal information:

Hello again sir,

First off I wanna thank you so much for helping me. I tried the spell but in the end it did not work for long but surprisingly I am not really upset. I tried to make things work but at the end of everything I couldn't make (   ) change his ways so he must see his mistakes on his own. I feel as though the work you did for me has given me the confidence to stand up for myself and I realized when doing my meditations the man I wanted,(   ) was no longer capable of being and it was in my best interest to really take a stand for myself and move on. I guess it took a little bit of ancestor magic and religion to pull the curtains from my eyes and I thank you dearly. I even think that the spell sent me someone else that matched what I was asking for in my meditations but all i'm worried about is doing well in college this fall. I do miss (   ) but now I understand what you meant when you said you wanted to give me spine and believe me I have a lot spine now. I remember you saying when I contacted you a long time ago something about nine dollars, if you charge anything I'll pay it because I have gained so much from this experience.   Again a huge thank you

-----------------------------

i write her back and tell her au contrary
sound like my spell work perfectly thank you

in the name of the conqueror

o im so good at what i do
soulwork by trickmaster

wouldbe prophet of the hoodoo way

sanctifying hoodoo haints: e.c. osundu and the caine prize, rickydoc in the woodshed

WEDNESDAY

i must have clocked 9 hours or more today
i feel like a real man, i feel like a big mac or a blt or something

quick commentaries and ima knock off some projects (manuscripts)

1) oprah backs obama, i feel you girl, i really do

2) rev al makes curious commentary:

“as for the one mormon running for office, those who really believe in god will defeat him anyways, so don’t worry about that; that’s a temporary situation”

beg pardon, i didnt quite get that

well rev al, your enemies gon crucify you for that one
painful to see you wiggling like you doing, i meant this and i meant that

you got busted
just make your apologies and move on

cant get your back on this one man, i aint in it
dont see where this one got nothing to do w/colored people

i got issues w/the mormons conservative bent but truth be told all you believers got
questionable dogma and i consider fundamentalists of all stripes problematic

its that fundamentalist flavor in this one delight your enemies
and dismay folk who want the best for you - and of you

just make your apologies and move on man
and look here dawg, might have to check yourself

on another note, first i started using in the name of the conqueror

in my bid to attribute the conqueror as zora did when she gave him
afroam folkloric attributes instead of john the baptist attributes

then i started using in the name of o killens, to sanctify john o

then i used in the name of gullahjack one time and im thinking
i should have a pantheon of hoodoo saints that i use according to need
and that im trying to ancestorfy (or deify as the case may be)

got that focus on ancestorfying from djenra windwalker
i had said something here about my relationship with god once and

windwalker pull my coat that it was more afrospiritual to consider
that a relationship with the ancestors and it was like a light
went on in my headod

god gods ancestors, all pretty interchangeable to my way of thinking
aint gon get caught up in no dogma if youg et my drift but ancestorfying
is a very afrospiritual approach to the spirit that i find useful in my attempt

to empower the african way of god
take it to higherground

so anyway ive decided to create my own ancestral hoodoo pantheon
for service according to the need

first the family ancestors im closest to

1 my father, dr arthur flowers sr
2 my maternal grandfather, grandaddy ross
3 my paternal grandmother, grandma flowers

4 john killens
5 david walker
6 harriet tubman
7 gullahjack
8   ida b
9  fred hudson

man, i wanted to do a solid hoodoo 9
but what about nat turner

and addison gayle - addison is one of my special folk
in terms of life influence, as is fred hudson

i would want to sanctify both of them, david earl jackson
and safiya and doris jean too, this list is going to get prohibitive

that drawing above for instance is john killens as a long distance runner
done by tom feelings, both of them deserve ancestorship

okay, two pantheons, a personal pantheon and a tribal pantheon

1 dr athur flowers
2 granddaddy ross
3 grandma flowers
4 aunt josie
5 aunt elise
6 doris jean austin
7 safiya henderson holmes
8 david earl jackson
9 fred hudson

and imogunla, sometimes i forget
imogunla actually dead

rickydocs tribal pantheon

1 john killens
2 zora neale
3 davidwalker
4 gullah jack
5 harriet tubman
6 marie leveau
7 nat turner
8 martin king
9 addison gayle

(what might be interesting is to have a descendents pantheon also
of 9 children/students/younger generations you keeping an eye on
this one problematic because they not ancestors/dead but a diff kind of spirit
one to be nurtured, will have to work this one out conceptually)

obviously these listings will be flexible, some folk coming on some dropping
and fred hudson for instance as much tribal as he is personal

but basically im saying that a hoodo pantheon will consist of 18 (possibly 27) folk
personal, tribal and destinic (this me laying paths for the hoodoo future - one of my own attributes)

9 personal/family haints and 9 tribal haints, i should have a full
pantheon of tribal haints for folk to choose from

attribute (give them powers and a narrative) them for different tasks
as needed, for instance for literary stuff i use in the name of o killens

for tribal guidance i use the conqueror

for warmaking i use gullahjack, for sanctuary i will use harriettubman
nat turner for the hard moral choices, and so forth along those lines

also i really have to come up with a hoodoo term for sanctifying folk
for the process of transforming them into loa/orisha/etc - what would
be a good hoodoo term for that be - use rest for the weary to attribute them (sorry ec)

could i rehabilitate haint maybe, hoodoo haints doesnt feel quite right
too close to saint and connotation too negative, but it is a spirit that hangs around

i will use hoodoo haints till i coin a better one
in the name of the conqueror

man this post started off as a quick comment on rev al
and went on and on and on on and on

gotta go, gotta clock some pages
in the name of o killens

word by trickmaster
wouldbe prophet of the hoodoo way

TUESDAY  6:46

2 days good work, thats a good sign
today will tell the tale

was reading over this weeks post and perhaps im obsessing
as i tend to do and will bore you dear regulators, i will restrain myself

had lunch yesterday with ec osondu
ec chastise me as he so often do

ec quick to tell me when im whining

arthur youre whining on your blog, you must be a lion arthur
you must roar arthur, roar all the time arthur

i tell him i cant roar all the time ec, i roar most of the time, most of
the time im huffing and puffing but sometime the blues run me down

havent been whining lately so he hit me on another sensitive spot

arthur i see on your blog that your novel continues to grow, arthur you must
restrain yourself and finish the thing

so now he basically accuse me of fitzing around w/my novel

i got defensive cause i fear he right and nobody will be
more pleased than arthur when this novel stop evolving

the implication is that i am going in circles but i know
this novel is not yet what it is to be - in my heart i know this

and i just got to be patient with it
this my masterpiece, i know it is, the novel i was born to write

i confess - i want this bad boy to be so complex folk dont ever figure it out
but i want to tell a good story too, one that last forever

im outta here, got pages to clock

arf

mythwork, zoraneale, marieleveau and rickydoc trickmaster

hello world

been reading this book, like i got time for discretionary reading
bonnie was reading it and when she finished said i might be interested

i glance at it, the historical marie laveau
title:  a new orleans voudou priestess

i dont testify for it, ive just started it
but i found the intro chapter fascinating

chronicles the process by which marie laveau was mythologized
and is in process of being transformed into a historical ancestor

a voodoo lakwa

now this is interesting to me on a lot of level
for one mythmaker is one of my primary attribues,

(just thinking it would be nice to engage mythmaking in rest on the
level of literary sophistication wideman engaged prophecy in cattlekilling)

so anyway rest is all about mythwork
as is my life this blog and all my works

the mythworkers best myth is always themselves
which brings me to my girl zora, an unreliable narrator in all her works

zora wasnt looking for truth, zora was mythworking
you got the work she did with that WWII piece on highjohn the conqueror

which made a returning culture hero out of folkloric john tricking master tales
and a hoodoo root named after highjohn the conqueror,

she put the two together and came up with this myth of a returning hero
who helped get blackfolk out of slavery by tricking old massa and
whose soul returns to the root until called again by the cries of the people

this was some sophisticated mythwork, by making him a returning culture hero
who will come whenever the folk in need, the recurrent manifestation of the conqueror

will be shaped to the needs of that generation

(thinking about how to work all this into rest - you know i almost hate teaching that class, mumbojumbo, thehealing, corrigedora, beloved, mamaday, texaco and the cattlekilling - everytime i read/teach them the bar for rest seem to get higher - something in those 7 works i think represents the redemption of the african american soul and the salvation of our generations, i need to add one more, rest will make it 9)

so anyway, aint hardly nothing zora claim actually true
my girl was a serious mythworker and i claim mythwork as a hoodoo legacy

in the name of zora neale

her autobiographies are a joke, and quite a bit of the hoodoo/voudou stuff she account in mules and men etc is questionable or relatively easily traced to other sources

but she worked it, she shaped the nature of hoodoo on the cutting edge and took it to new ground,

highjohn the conqueror was givien afroam folkloric attributes instead of the european/christian john the conqueror attributes which i assume come from john the baptist

but zoras best myth was herself, thats why she will tell you this blend of truth, fiction and folklore cause good mythwork have to be historically possible, not necessarily true

but possible

in the same way im constantly tending the the mythwork of rickydoc trickmasterr
every word i say, every act i make is to build this historical enttity

wouldbe hoodoo prophet and returning culture hero as
horse of the conqueror -  i aspire to tribal ancestorship

thats why it dont really bother me not to get play in my lifetime
im playing for higher stakes

zora as mythworker is probably my closest historical model
hoodoo mythworker and novelist in the literary hoodoo tradition

zora neale Worked the cutting edge

so anyway this book on how the legend of marie leveau was mythologized
how the legends and the nature of her power and life were attributed to her over the years

i find this fascinating reading, this book i will take the time to read
and try to work whatever mythwork understandings i get into this draft of rest
(that justifies me taking the time out to acdtually do discretionary reading, now its research!)

im not going to be able to get into this too deeply right now
too many end of semester obligations, im still under the gun

ill work this one this week
what ive gotten so far, really off the cuff

attempt to find the historical marie leveau

1st lwp (lousiana writers project) part of wpa during depression did a lot of black folkloric work
one project was to find the true story of marie leavau, did bunch of interviews

transcribed civil and ecclesasical records relating to marie her family and associaties
translated french and spanish into english, copies 19th century newsappar aqrtices on voudou

interviewed 70 folk born between 1853 and 1878 who remembered her or her successor
interviewees old and remembering stuff far in the past and of varying % of reliability
and wpa fieldworkers take unrealiable notes - got to work w/what we got

1940 wpa employee catherin dillon uses material to write 700 page "voodoo" manuscript, with chapters
on marie  "marie the great" and "marie the mysterious"

this work (and obits when she dies) become core of legend

(now the question is how to shape the legends of today and into what relationship with afroam and human destiny - who are the players current, what role are they playing, who do i want to exalt and whose influence do i need to diminish destinically speaking)

another based on newspaper and printed sources was done by marcus christian, dir of lwps 'negro unit' at dillard university

this information is housed in various places, cammie henry research center at the watson memorial library at tulane university and other places she mentions in the work - most of this stuff im taking straight from the work, i will digest it later,  im just trying to get the fact straight right now, these are research notes

telling you what she says about the evolution of the marie leveau legend (and pondering its pertenance to my own contemporary mythwork in my attempts to shape the africanamerican soul and destiny (and that of all humanity, okay, enuf pontifcation, back to work)

god this is so fascinating to me, make the old mythmaker drool
this gon put me in a speculative mood about a subject thats dear to me

cause thats what i think of my works as, my attempts to create contemporary myths
that will shape the hoodoo future, shape the afroam future, shape the future of humanity

my Works and the model of my life that i am constructing and mythworking thru my works
i want to be the model of the hoodoo future - guide and guardian of the tribal soul and destiny

i believe indigenous traidtions have that responsiblity for their respective cultures
and the critieria of successful tradition is in the quality of the lives its adherents live

folk in the tradition always want to exol the african way of god but if we were so strong
our people wouldnt be suffering all over the world, no, whatever we doing it aint working

christanity and islam kicking our ass all over the board
all over the world african peoples are suffering, all over the world

this simply will not do and we cant keep on doing what we been doing and call it grace
no, we got to come up with some new licks, got to flip the script

move to higher ground
okay, where was i, i got to get through this little project, i got work to do

so anyway marie was illiiterate so she left behind no records of her voice
and its all thru accounts of others

she dies june 15, 1881, 1st acccounts are the obits, obits and articles in the local papers
most laduatory of her charity work, some sensationalist, basic journalist practices of the era prevail

many ways of spelling laveau
writer shooses to stay w/laveau

obits perpetuate truths, semitruths and fantasys, kinda like perceptions of hoodoo et al today
many of these mythwork by maries daugther marie philomene glapion legendre

mythwork is a basic hoodoo skill, mostly though its practiced on the communal level
you have to establish yourself as a competent worker of magic - establish yourself as a font of good advice

with glibzliation and the web that communal representation can now emcompass the world

i try to do this in my works, i remember the decision to acknowledge and play my hoodoo thing in mojo rising and consequently this blog, this was a major decision for me,

i had always kept my hoodoo thing occult, i work it in fiction but fiction is special, you can always claim its just art, just reserarch, but then i decided to acknowledge myself publicly as a hoodoo

my concern was that i would be perceived as a classic folkmagic hoodoo and that aint me at all, i practice what im calling high hoodoo, highmagic instead of folkmagic

but my brand of hoodoo is not considered valid hoodoo in hoodoo circles, literary hoodoo im asked, whats that, highmagic, you mean you dont do potions - well no, actually i dont, that dont interest me

so ive had to basically define myself into the mix, present my opinions here and in hoodoo forums and forums of traditional african religions knowing ima get buked and scorned, or even worse ignored

but i juust keep swinging, my goal is to leave a papertrail, a record of struggle that lays out my vision of tribal and human destiny, i want to shape the hoodoo future, and i want hoodoo to take responsibilty for human destiny, oh i got big ambitions

im trying to move reality
like a conjure should

and reality dont move easy
but thats what make me a magician

if it was easy everybody would walk down the street and get some

ima do what i can do
ive had some success , i understand the dynamic
i live and breath it

ive had to establish myself culturally as a viable magician and wouldbe prophet
a manifestation of magic and prophecy that make sense to the 21st century sensibility

people think folk like me are only historical, that we dont show up no more i guess
but thats cause destinywork is only recognized in the historical

okay rick, chill w/the huffing and puffing
where was i

this post will cover a lot of ground obviously
believe im going to have to close shop for moment

i will come back to it
finish transcribing raw notes and speculations

clean it up for roostblog
incorporate speuclations into rest

and my mythwork

but for right now ive tired myself out
and i got so much work to do

forgive spelling, typos and all that
aint time time to work that just now

also i got to call papa gede nibo bey
and interview him about how he made this chain

the 1st ever hoodoo divination chain
surely i can mythwork that

in the name of the conqueror

rickydoc trickmaster
wouldbe prophet of the hoodoo way

hoodoo divination as a science of moral analysis: a system of tribal guidance and life initiation

hello world
and all my generations

on a hoodoo listserve the other day, missnippy raised the question of hoodoo divination systems as 'a science of moral analysis"

i had to ask for clarity
what pray tell is 'a science of moral analysis . . . '

wish i could tell you exactly what she said but i wouldnt feel
comfortable directly quoting listserve folk

but basically she said a system for building good character/ire,
a system for providing a path to your destiny

this of course sent me into a spasm of me me me

cause the hoodoo divination system im trying to build tries to
do just that . . . .my edited reply to her as follows:

--------------------------------------------

bout what i figured, just wanted some clarity before i jumped into this discussion
as folk know this question of a hoodoo divination system is one thats dear to my heart

since i dont do initiation i have not had access to the ifa system and that irk me

hoodoo has many homegrown systems, folk use cards, water, tealeaves, ball in jack, etc, the
magical classics from a magical hodgepodge, kinda like hoodoo the system

but ive wanted a more structured system for my own use for some time now
one based on africanamerican culture, history and destiny

personally i prefer the head over the hand
the head just know, the hand use instruments

i feel like that conjuror in hyatt who say my constant study is to know
you when you walk in my door better than you know yourself

personally i think its stronger when you dont need instruments, you just Know
but the hand has its uses too, hoodoo theatre mostly

and as the beating heart of a system of moral analysis
tribal guidance and life initiation - the hand is wthout peer

for passing the knowledge on

as you know the word/concept 'hand' is a
hoodoo workhorse anyway

so i been working on a system, and i do so with all humility
the basic structure ive put online, just the outline, im working on the text offline

and will put it up when its clean enuf not to embarrass me
http://www.rootwork.com/hoodoobookofflowers.htm

then im just gon keep refining it for the rest of my life

i use 9 small highjohn roots and 9 cowries
and i throw twice because 9 just didnt give me enough progressions

the cowries i use for mathematical progressions, the science shall we say
the highjohn roots for totality

i use very small highjohn roots so it will all fit in my hand

i have tried to figure out how to chain them all but ive had
trouble making the cowries flexible enuf for a true toss

i will probably figure that out one day when i got time to really focus
ive found that tosses often fall too often toward the middle for my taste
but i will work that kink out also eventually -what im looking at now is putting
the more  daily questions of life into that busy zone - and those extreme moments of
life challenge and opportunity towards the rarer margins

bunch of kinks i got to work out
but hey i got a lifetime to do it

dont really need the highjohn roots but i like a little highjohn in whatever i do

as you will see, im trying to do a hoodoo holywork
in tandem with it, like the ifa corpus or the iching

im still trying to refine the 'system of moral analysis' as lifetime initiation

once i get that done i plan to translate the kinda generic initiation concepts
into more fully afroam folkloric concepts

ive had folk in the initiatory traditions tell me i cant do this, i dont have permission

but you can imagine what i think about that, ima do a divination system based on
afroam/hoodoo culture history and destiny, thats part of my ministry on this planet

in the name of the conqueror

i just cant really focus on it strong until i finish my current novel
which i consider just another type of sacred text

in my last literary hoodoo class we were discussing the nature of hoodoo sacred texts as explored in ishmaels mumbo jumbo, the variances between written and unwritten hoodoo sacred texts

i consider this my lifetime projects

and appreciate all suggestions, speculations and advisements
in this matter  - as always my appreciation: papa gedenibo bey lakwa

for your epigramic provocations - i be trying to laylow in the lurk
but yall keep talking bout things dear to my hoodoo heart

a hoodoo divination system/holybook is my thing
and i approach it with all humility  - as something thats just got to be done

i believe its our hoodoo generation got to step up
in the name of the conqueror

rickydoc trickmaster
wouldbe prophet of the hoodoo way
 
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to which papa gede nibo bey replied with encouragement
suggestions about how to make a hoodoo divination chain . . .

and an offer to try to try and make one . . .

---------------------------------

god pop, that would be wonderful

i would really appreciate it, i will try to
do one using your advice but one made
by your hand would mean so much to me

that crabclaw gullahjack hand you once made
me is still one of my primary instruments

should i send you highjohn roots
do you plan to work the roots in

would that mess with the flexibility of a chain toss
(btw: found a new source of bulk highjohn, will tell you if it pans out)

not necessary to have the roots but i love
having the conqueror in the house and that

give me the space for perception of the totality
beyond the 'scientific' given of the progressions

i use flattened cowries in the throw and i try to find
ones that are relatively uniform shaped so as to help
with that tendency to fall asymetrical

i will look at your advice for constructing a chain
but whatever you come up with will be divinely appreciated    

forgive me for macking on but yall got me going now, thinking about how much
i appreciate that crabclaw hand papa gede nibo bey made me sometime back

as some of you know i do hoodoo performance work - on the college circuit mostly
but also in downhome and various sacred environments,

on the college circuit i think more in terms of exposing them to hoodoo as transcendental
communal healing experience, exposing them to the tradition and giving a good show (and getting paid)

but downhome i pull out the stops and do my hoodoo prophecy thing,
depending on how deeply in the tradition the audience is thats how deep i go

when i throw divination for clients or private at home i use a bowl

but when im doing it in public performance i put down a siete potentia eleke
to make a sacred circle, i put my gullahjack crabclaw in the middle of it to sanctify it

then i throw

i got into public hoodoo performance as prophecy thing
cause of reading a book on the prophet diviners of east africa

recently did a string of performancework in kenya back in december
got called mganga maua -  witchdoctor flowers in swahili - god i loved that

specially since i once read a book on the prophetic traditions of east africa
that said the difference between the diviner and the diviner prophet in the traditions of east africa

is that the diviner only throws for clients and self
in private

while the diviner prophet throws publicly to provide guidance for the entire tribe
and since i personally aspire to the prophetic

and since i am trying to position hoodoo as the prophetic tradition in the afrospiritual pantheon
since i am trying to flip hoodoos outsider role into a position of power

make us a more integral part of the afrospiritual traditional family
and still maintain the independence and freedom from subjugation to
other folks dogmas and theologies

that i feel is an integral part of hoodoos magical unique power

the prophet is in it but not of it - the prophet is part of the system
but not subject to it - specifically designated by the culture w/the dispensation
to provide new paths - beyond dogma - in it but not of it

thats why i dont initiate - i serve the conqueror
and the conqueror do not bow

but in order to position hoodoo as the prophetic tradition of the afrospiritual family
i almost have to develop a divination system with the potential of ifa

but based on afroam culture, history and destiny
one designed for a 21st century and beyond mentality

thats why that odu 2007 spoke to me so hugely sometime back

i got a lot of good ideas from that work
bout how to make this work right

one of my biggest problems been maintaining afrospiritual centricity
ive come to learn that i think western, the western part of me has primacy

i struggle with that, i use it and i struggle with it
nurturing my africansoul howsomeever i can

sorry, feel like im hogging the conversation
but this thing of hoodoo divination and prophecy

as 'a science of moral analysis"

a system of tribal guidance and individual life initiation
is one that is truly dear to me

pop i would so much appreciate that chain
to go with my gullahjack crabclaw

in the name of the conqueror
and gullahjack too

rdoc