How to make a zombi

[smokingboot]

So midsummer is tomorrow and the weather is crud; pouring drab cold rain on a drab cold world; and all around us are the bad guys, the media, the government, children and other criminals, gameplayers and parents, friends who desert us, exes who won't, doctors who laugh at us, bosses who burst into tears when we smile at them, work colleagues who sneer at us when we smile at the boss, neighbours who think we're above ourselves just cos we kicked their goat/rusty bike/wife out of the garden and told them that faking pikeydom was not cool. I know you can't bear it any more. There's only one thing to do.



There seem to be many different kinds of zombi, but the stripped to the bone version, so to speak, is the making of a zombi cadavre, a zombi of the flesh. All this info comes directly from Wade Davis' The Serpent and the Rainbow which was a first hand, apparently factual account which then got made into a rather unfortunate film. There is so much more to the culture of Haiti and the loas, so much magic and history, pain and corruption and spiritual beauty lost in a sea of bond film villains, I would recommend the book for a less facile understanding, even though some mysteries are never solved. But this is a mere lj post, and if you just want some lumbering idiot to work on your plantation as an act of vengeance, all you need are the basics...

'The bokor, *[evil sorcerer] in creating a zombi cadavre may cause the prerequisite unnatural death ...by means of a slow acting poison that is applied directly to the intended victim. Rubbed into a wound or inhald, the poison kills the corps cadavrek slowly, efficiently and discreetly. That poison contains tetrodotoxin *[available from pufferfish also known as blowfish, crapauds de mer and sea-toads ] which acts to lower dramatically the metabolic rate of the victim almost to the point of clinical death. Pronounced dead by attending physicians, and considered materially dead by family members and even by the bokor himself, the victim is in fact, buried alive. Undoubtedly in many instances the victim does die either from the poison itself or by suffocation in the coffin. The widespread belief in the reality of zombis in Haiti, however, is based on those cases in which the victim receives the correct dose of poison, wakes up in the coffin and is taken from the grave by the bokor. The victim, affected by the drug, traumatised by the set and setting of of the total experience, is bound and led before a cross to be baptised with a new name. After the baptism or sometimes the next day, he or she is made to eat a paste containing a strong dose of a potent psychoactive drug, the zombi's cucumber, which brings on a star of disorientation and amnesia. During the course of that intoxication, the zombi is taken away into the night.' - p. 187 The Serpent and the Rainbow, Wade Davis 1997

*Bracketed inserts are mine, not the author's.



So there you go. Pufferfish, datura, perhaps with a few optional bones and lizards, bish bosh, sorted. Don't feed your zombis salt, it helps them recover faster. In the meantime, leave something out for the fairies tonight/tomorrow night or when your local bokor sends his minions for you, you'll have no-one to help you except that boomstick of yours - and we both know you're short on ammo already.

Here's to midsummer, and tomorrow's dawn:-)

Comments

[jennifermc.livejournal.com]

Well up here we've decided to celebrate the Solstice by hiding the Sun behind a blowing gale and driving rain.

But all is not lost, for APOD has provided this lovely picture to make up for it. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060621.html

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that's a lovely photo - it's been too long since I spent solstice at Stonehenge.

Our celebrations started last night with a roaring gale, and have carried on throughout the day, voices on the wind howling without cease. I will try to placate them with some whiskey at twilight.