12/07/2025
I’m coming out of the broom closet… again. I wasn’t going to make a post about this because I didn’t want it to come from a place of ego. Still, I feel called to, in order to protect the integrity of the spiritual practice which has helped shape me into the person I am today, and to explain myself because let’s be real- a white person practicing Vodou takes some explaining.
I’ve been working with Haitian spirits since I was about 14 years old, although I didn’t know it at the time. I had recently learned a technique to enter the other world to communicate with the spirit realm. There waiting for me under a tree as tall as the sky was a man wearing nothing but a cloth and holding nothing but a walking stick. Every time I journeyed to this world, he was there. He was my guide, my friend, and even though he never said a word for many years, he conveyed what he needed to through nonverbal communication, images, and feelings. Many years later and to my great surprise, he revealed to me that he is Papa Legba.
How or why he found me is hard to say. It may have had to do with the fact that my parents were spending a lot of time in Haiti for work, bringing me home trinkets and souvenirs that I cherish to this day. It may be due to the only past life I have some memory of, but I don’t remember it well enough to speak on it with great clarity or confidence. In Vodou, you come to accept that some things can ever be fully comprehended by our limited minds.
By the time I was 18 or 19, my Houngan Asogwe, the greatest rank available to men within the structure of Vodou had found me as well, and told me that I would initiate one day. I was excited by the idea and it made me feel important. A feeling he swiftly drove out of me. Through the practices and rituals he instructed me in and the corresponding relationship to my spirits that it fostered, I came to love Vodou, as much if not more than anything else in my life. But I was young and distracted by all that glitters and sparkles, and I decided to pursue what felt at the time to be a promising career as a yoga instructor. For years, my spirits took a back seat and went largely ignored, save for the occasional crum of a rarely lit candle. My life suffered for it, and the small amount of success I had managed to accumulate crumbled before my very eyes, my own spirit, as parched as the ones I once fed.
Somehow, by Gods grace and the Lwa, I was saved from a pit of pain, despair and addiction that I was begging to swallow me whole. The Lwa then came through, stronger and softer and sweeter for me than they had in years. “It’s not your time child. There’s work yet to be done.” After all they had blessed me with and how I had thrown it in their face but, oh! The Lwa have shown me the true meaning of grace, compassion, and forgiveness. Of second chances. They picked me up gently and softly and landed me in the heart of Miami. Little did I realize how strong their energy was there. Shortly after arriving, their voices became so loud I couldn’t have ignored them if I wanted to! Not without some heavy tranquilizers, which of course the doctors tried, but I didn’t need. They gifted me with revelation after revelation, insight after insight, and still to this day. I have often questioned why. Why me of all people would they choose? But it is not for me to question their will. Since I accepted their love and this path with open arms and joyous gratitude, my life has taken on a different meaning. They have taught me the value of hard work, and its rewards. Is it an easy path? Not at all. It comes with as much responsibility as it does joy. Is it a rewarding and fulfilling path? More than I ever could have dreamed in a thousand lifetimes.
Sometimes I’m still afraid of persecution, being judged, or misunderstood in a culture that has taught us that white is right, and that love and light is the only acceptable form of spirituality when in reality all traditional cultures embraced the darkness as much as the light, as Vodou does. This isn’t an excuse for those that would use such forces for negative intent (as any power may be wielded with responsibility and respect or recklessness and neglect), but a reason not to deny the darkness inherent within ourselves. In a world that is crying out for wholeness, we cannot risk denying any part of ourselves, unless we wish to lose ourselves in the process.
All this is a really long winded way of saying that I didn’t go looking for Vodou, Vodou came looking for me. You cannot wake up and choose to start working with spirits from the African diaspora any more than you can wake up and choose your skin color. To do so not only risks causing further harm to a community that has already suffered more than any single person can even comprehend but it is also reckless and dangerous. At best, it will not work and at worst you could be taking a terrible risk. Even if you are chosen by such spirits, it is dangerous to work with them without the proper guidance, knowledge and wisdom of someone who can teach you the correct protocols. If you believe such a path is for you then it is your responsibility to consult a priest or priestess of that tradition to have it confirmed and to be shown how to walk it.
Ayibobo
