Caught Up By The Spirits
“Oya: Queen of the Winds” Painting by Barbara Fisher Acrylic on Canvas
Recently, I was talking with Greg Bishop about my experience with being "caught up" by the Orisha, Yemaya, along with two friends of mine in the 1990's, and it made me think about our experiences.
It was intense., and led to spirit possession. We would have had no good idea as to what to do, had the four of us not found Luisa Teish's book, Jambalaya: The Natural Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals.
Decades later, I read in Jacques Vallee's "Forbidden Science Volume 2" (or 3, I can't remember which), that Luisa Teish is a friend of his, and he had urged her to publish that book, saying it was an "important work." (And just today, June 11, I found out that a new updated version will be released on June 29th, and I am thrilled. Dr. Vallee was absolutely correct that this is an important work.)
That was a very strange, unexpected connection: to find that two authors who have had profound influences on my life were friends.
At any rate, the four of us, two African-American women and two white women, sang together, created altars, did divination, performed rituals and gave worship to Yemaya. We even put on a large public ritual, a “love feast” in honor of Yemaya at the local Unitarian Fellowship, which had around 40 participants.
For that rite, we built a beautiful sprawling altar draped in blue and white cloths, with white candles, a large iridescent blue bowl of water at the center with a statue of Yemaya in the center, with quartz crystals and white flowers floating around her. Piled on platters around her were fruits and little cakes iced with rosewater frosting all in bite sized pieces for us to feed to each other as we danced and chanted to the beat of drums. No one fed themselves; we fed each other, with love and devotion, just as Yemaya feeds her beloved children.
It was a beautiful time, and it lasted for over two years.
The climax to that period in my life was a ritual at the Starwood Festival where Mambo Miriam of the Rampart Street Voodoo Spiritual Temple and her people joined forces with Babatunde Olatunji and his drummers and the usual, very accomplished drummers who came to Starwood every year. The Fire Keepers of Starwood, and most of the attendees,, which that year was well over 1,000 people participated and together, we performed a ritual in honor of Ogun, which culminated in lighting a several stories tall bonfire that had been build carefully over the entire week of the festival.
Ogun is the Orisha of iron, blacksmithery, hunting, forestry, war and his colors are red and black, and one of his symbols is a knife or more typically, a sword. Because of his association with metal arts, he is often associated with fire, but in its creative, not destructive aspect.
By that time, my devotion had widened to include Ogun and Oya, the female warrior spirit of the winds, and of change, fierce protectress of women.
My first experience of Oya was being possessed while chanting with a group of drummers, that culminated in riding a thunderstorm into the area, with winds fierce enough to blow open the doors of the fellowship hall where we had gathered.
The participants in the ritual gathered in a large group at the top of the hill at the entrance to the campsite. Most of the people had never participated in an African ritual, and so there was much speculation as to what would happen. When Babatunde and his drummers and dancers showed up, they taught us a chant to Ogun.
After we had gotten the words, melody and the rhythm of the chant, Babatunde led us all on a procession through the site toward the ritual ground. We sang as we wound our serpentine way through the camp with torchbearers,.
Babatunde ‘s voice projected easily over us all. He and his dancers and drummers wore red and black, and they kept us singing and marching in time, the stamp of our feet on the well-worn paths seeming to shake the earth.
Babatunde was a master of building energy.
Just before we got to the bonfire site, we could hear Mambo Miriam's and the Starwood drummer's start up in syncopation with Babatunde's percussionists, and her voice soared like a wild bird over the thunder of drums.
We waited and watched Miriam give smoke and rum to Papa Legba, the keeper of the doorway between the worlds. This is done at the beginning of every ritual, because Legba must open the gateway between the world of mortals and the world of the spirits.
We kept singing, swaying in place. All of the questions about what would happen had been chanted and drummed and marched away, and everyone, whether initiates or neophytes, were moving and singing as one. And we were all calling Ogun.
And then the gate was opened, the torch-bearers barring the entrance to the circle parted, and we were led inside, still swaying, still singing, still moving with the heartbeat of the drums. The torchbearers circled the gigantic pile of wood, and danced, while we still chanted around the perimeter, swaying, clapping, stamping our feet.
Now Miriam and Babatunde were singing together, and the drummers added their cries to the nearly overwhelming waves of sound that spiraled up and around and over us.
When Miriam and Babatunde called the spirits, they CAME.
They were there.
We could all feel it. It was visceral. Electric.
And when the torches went into the bonfire, it went up with a wild whoosh we could feel as well as hear and see, and Babatunde’s and Miriam’s dancers began the dance, drawing us all in with them.
And we started to dance and still chanting, we were all at one with each other and the fire. It was nearly indescribable in its raw power.
The African spirits are not shy. They are not mental constructs or ideas or wishy-washy feel-good crystalline gods and goddess that people talk about in a very intellectual way and worship in the hands-off ways that many American Pagans are used to.
They are powerful.
They are real. They are strong. And they will gather you up in their embrace if they want to. And they do not seem to care who you are or what color your skin is—if your spirit is compatible with theirs, they will reach out for you.
There were possessions that night. I saw it happen, often with people who were not initiates. People fell entranced and were taken to Mambo Miriam to be tended to.
I was, if not ridden by a spirit, was held and embraced by one. I could still think through it, my body could still move, I could feel everything--but it was at a remove. I could feel there was another consciousness present, close, her energy ancient, wild and fierce, our arms moving together, our feet spinning our body, tracing the ancient spiral of great whirlwinds, cleansing storms. We threw our heads back, she and I, and laughed to the night sky.
My consciousness of time passing was...compromised.
We all shone with sweat as we danced ecstatically, moving as close to the fire as the Fire Keepers would allow. They were very good at keeping everyone safe, as we danced right outside of ourselves, our consciousnesses merging with each other, with the Earth, with the Fire, with the Spirits, with the Wind that whipped around us,, with the Drums, with the water that was offered to us by those standing on the perimeter.
I have no idea how long I danced, but I remember the drumming went on all night. And at dawn, when I woke up and wandered out of my tent to find the latrine, the embers were still warm and smoke still rose, swirling up to the lightening sky.
There were still drummers, Fire Keepers and singers there, and a few dancers came, to greet the clear light of morning.
What was impressive to me that morning was that I realized that I had danced and chanted for well over an hour, and my asthma, which is induced by things like smoke, and exercise--did not play up at all. I was able to move and sing and breathe smoke without a problem.
I suspect that was a gift of the spirit, who I believe to have been Oya, who danced along inside me.
Looking back on my time with the African spirits, I found them to be the most vital,, living, viscerally aware non-human intelligences with whom I have worked. Unlike the European deities I worked with off and on in other Neo-Pagan and Wiccan contexts, the Orishas were present, self-aware, deeply real beings—not airy mythical constructs or memories of gods from another time.
I think this comes from the Orisha having an unbroken lineage through time where they have been worshipped, communed with and conversed with continually by humanity. The Orisha have become part of syncretic religions where African traditions are wedded with Christianity and combined with European and Native American traditions, which has kept them vital and alive, evolving with the times.
The only other spirits I have felt so strongly have been the Good Folk (Fairies) and the Native Spirits of North America. Traditions surrounding these spirits have continued alongside Christianity, without being obliterated the way that European Pagan pantheons were as the Continent was converted.
Any doubts I ever had of the reality of spirits, of non-human intelligences, of the Other, of the denizens of other realities, were completely obliterated by my experiences over those years.
The spirits are real. And they do, indeed gather humans up in their embrace and change our consciousnesses and lives forever.
