![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootThis is unlikely to be of interest to anyone other than myself. Do not expect coherence or a rational conclusion to this.
Looking at folk tales and traditions, there seems to be an underlying theme of how to deal with the outsider, or the one who isn't part of the quantifiable world, the community or establishment. Be the outsider demon or fairy or ancestor or animal totem or just the forces of nature/the unknown, much folk religion/'old' magic is about stopping it from doing harm or asking it for help. But no-one works with this kind of thing anymore. And then I look at all this stuff I skimmed before about the loas of Voodoo.
How vibrant they feel! It is odd to think that the slave revolt of Haiti, fought with incredible courage, is the only such overthrow to have completely succeeded, especially when considering the tribulations of the island since. Voodoo/Vodun/whatever its proper pronunciation is so alive, so strong, apparently growing, along with its related religions, Santeria and Candomble.
There are many types of loa in Voodoo but I will mention only two: The Rada came with the slaves from Africa (Dahomey, I think, one possible homeland of the great loa of love, Erzulie/Erzilie) sweeter kinder spirits, who come to more gentle drum beats. Then there are those loas who changed or were born of the revolution, and brought with them ferocity, rage and readiness for blood, those labelled 'Petro.' These arrive to the thicker harsher drums and include that James Bond smoothie, Baron Samedi, called also Papa Gede, lord and brother of the graveyards.
Talking to them begins with creating their special sign (called a veve/vever) on the ground with cornmeal or flour. Gifts etc will be involved, though you must first go through Eleggua, also called Papa Legba. Sometimes he's an old man but he has many forms - classic pagans would see in him a clear parallel to Hermes - and he rules the crossroads and all communications. A jolly, talkative chap, but worth remembering that for all his charm and smiles he comes in to the beat of the Petro drums, not the Rada.
The loa of course, are supposed to possess humans through ecstatic trance - 'riding' is the term used. Being ridden by the loa is wild, lost, perhaps sexy, perhaps beyond description. Then they go. They may return if the presents are cool and you're ready to respect them and groove on down. The coming of the loa is a requested thing, a desired thing.
Consider the contrast with European matings between fairies and mortals; they whisk you off and you never come back or you arrive back centuries out of time, or you crumble to dust, but whatever happens, it's never for a moment. If they turn up at all, they stick around and fry your brain. True Thomas and Tam Lin's Janet are among the very few who go courting love with the outsiders. Janet has to rehabilitate her man away from fairydom, earning the undying enmity of the fairy queen. It's a lot to go through for a bandit whose sole moral qualm is that you don't vandalise the lawn. True Thomas goes the whole hog and becomes a servant in Elfland, lost to his home for seven years.
But only an idiot would do as Janet or Thomas did. Outsiders were outsiders for a reason; the idea was to keep them at bay, not ask them for favours or hold parties for them. Iceland and Ireland seem to be the two northern hemispheric exceptions, where invisible neighbours were(are?)treated with affection and respect.
The Catholic Church is strong in the South Americas, where Eleggua becomes associated with St Peter, and various saints and loas seem to blend. But then wherever the Catholic Church held sway, inquisitions focused on the removal of non-conformist doctrines, rather more than naked nutters capering around a cat in a field: The name of the beast was Heretic, not Demoniac. The early Church had a history of drawing parallels between their pantheon and those of others. Loki's physical change is not so much a sanitisation as a satanisation, from a Christianised rendering of Ragnarok, and between Christ/Mithras/Sol Invictus and Mary/Isis, the tradition of appropriate mutation has venerable precedent. The phenomenon of saintloas in areas of South America is just a continuation.
I am not surprised in the growth of the Alien Encounter phenomenon, indeed, any student of fairy literature would recognise it. Here's the riddle: Sometimes I'm small and ugly, sometimes tall and lovely. Sometimes I live in the sky, sometimes underground, I steal your babies or grab you for sex, I screw with your mind and play with your sense of time. What am I? Four hundred years ago, most English peasants would have answered with ease.
Reading again about the loas of Voodoo made me think of how, despite Gardner's huge distillation of mythologies, despite Frazer, Graves and all the usual suspects, I am not convinced that folk religion was about merging with God or Goddess, beautiful and poetically real as that feels for me. I should make it clear that a lot of my training has been on a Wiccan basis, and I have great affection and respect for the Craft. But the founders saw, in the stories of the classic religions, the merging between Man and Woman and and while I can see the importance of fertility, I am not convinced that's the whole measure of the matter.
I should have named this piece 'The Care and Feeding of the Unknown,' or 'Waffles from the Whiskey House.'
Looking at folk tales and traditions, there seems to be an underlying theme of how to deal with the outsider, or the one who isn't part of the quantifiable world, the community or establishment. Be the outsider demon or fairy or ancestor or animal totem or just the forces of nature/the unknown, much folk religion/'old' magic is about stopping it from doing harm or asking it for help. But no-one works with this kind of thing anymore. And then I look at all this stuff I skimmed before about the loas of Voodoo.
How vibrant they feel! It is odd to think that the slave revolt of Haiti, fought with incredible courage, is the only such overthrow to have completely succeeded, especially when considering the tribulations of the island since. Voodoo/Vodun/whatever its proper pronunciation is so alive, so strong, apparently growing, along with its related religions, Santeria and Candomble.
There are many types of loa in Voodoo but I will mention only two: The Rada came with the slaves from Africa (Dahomey, I think, one possible homeland of the great loa of love, Erzulie/Erzilie) sweeter kinder spirits, who come to more gentle drum beats. Then there are those loas who changed or were born of the revolution, and brought with them ferocity, rage and readiness for blood, those labelled 'Petro.' These arrive to the thicker harsher drums and include that James Bond smoothie, Baron Samedi, called also Papa Gede, lord and brother of the graveyards.
Talking to them begins with creating their special sign (called a veve/vever) on the ground with cornmeal or flour. Gifts etc will be involved, though you must first go through Eleggua, also called Papa Legba. Sometimes he's an old man but he has many forms - classic pagans would see in him a clear parallel to Hermes - and he rules the crossroads and all communications. A jolly, talkative chap, but worth remembering that for all his charm and smiles he comes in to the beat of the Petro drums, not the Rada.
The loa of course, are supposed to possess humans through ecstatic trance - 'riding' is the term used. Being ridden by the loa is wild, lost, perhaps sexy, perhaps beyond description. Then they go. They may return if the presents are cool and you're ready to respect them and groove on down. The coming of the loa is a requested thing, a desired thing.
Consider the contrast with European matings between fairies and mortals; they whisk you off and you never come back or you arrive back centuries out of time, or you crumble to dust, but whatever happens, it's never for a moment. If they turn up at all, they stick around and fry your brain. True Thomas and Tam Lin's Janet are among the very few who go courting love with the outsiders. Janet has to rehabilitate her man away from fairydom, earning the undying enmity of the fairy queen. It's a lot to go through for a bandit whose sole moral qualm is that you don't vandalise the lawn. True Thomas goes the whole hog and becomes a servant in Elfland, lost to his home for seven years.
But only an idiot would do as Janet or Thomas did. Outsiders were outsiders for a reason; the idea was to keep them at bay, not ask them for favours or hold parties for them. Iceland and Ireland seem to be the two northern hemispheric exceptions, where invisible neighbours were(are?)treated with affection and respect.
The Catholic Church is strong in the South Americas, where Eleggua becomes associated with St Peter, and various saints and loas seem to blend. But then wherever the Catholic Church held sway, inquisitions focused on the removal of non-conformist doctrines, rather more than naked nutters capering around a cat in a field: The name of the beast was Heretic, not Demoniac. The early Church had a history of drawing parallels between their pantheon and those of others. Loki's physical change is not so much a sanitisation as a satanisation, from a Christianised rendering of Ragnarok, and between Christ/Mithras/Sol Invictus and Mary/Isis, the tradition of appropriate mutation has venerable precedent. The phenomenon of saintloas in areas of South America is just a continuation.
I am not surprised in the growth of the Alien Encounter phenomenon, indeed, any student of fairy literature would recognise it. Here's the riddle: Sometimes I'm small and ugly, sometimes tall and lovely. Sometimes I live in the sky, sometimes underground, I steal your babies or grab you for sex, I screw with your mind and play with your sense of time. What am I? Four hundred years ago, most English peasants would have answered with ease.
Reading again about the loas of Voodoo made me think of how, despite Gardner's huge distillation of mythologies, despite Frazer, Graves and all the usual suspects, I am not convinced that folk religion was about merging with God or Goddess, beautiful and poetically real as that feels for me. I should make it clear that a lot of my training has been on a Wiccan basis, and I have great affection and respect for the Craft. But the founders saw, in the stories of the classic religions, the merging between Man and Woman and and while I can see the importance of fertility, I am not convinced that's the whole measure of the matter.
I should have named this piece 'The Care and Feeding of the Unknown,' or 'Waffles from the Whiskey House.'
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Grins..
Date: 2004-10-21 03:40 am (UTC)*Grins back*
Date: 2004-10-21 12:36 pm (UTC)The Rada came with the slaves from Africa (Dahomey, I think,
Date: 2004-10-21 09:31 am (UTC)Re: The Rada came with the slaves from Africa (Dahomey, I think,
Date: 2004-10-21 12:34 pm (UTC)