Voodoo magic

Legba or Elegba, Eshu, Ellegua

Attributes: God of the crossroads, singer, warrior, jester, guardian of the door to the world of spirits. He often appears as a child or a crippled old man.
Sacred places: The crossroads of the world
Day: Monday
Colors: Black, red
Number: Three
Favorite food: Sweets, maize, and rum
Planet: Mercury
Ritual place in the house: Behind the door
Salutation: Ago Ellegua
The worship of Legba has its origin in Dahomey, present-day Benin. There, Legba was seen as a radiantly beautiful, young god and, therefore, he was often pictured with the cosmic phallus, a symbol of his life-conferring attributes.

In the Haitian Voodoo cult, Legba is worshiped in both his contrasting incarnations: the child, and the crippled old man, walking with a cane. In both incarnations, Legba is quick and unpredictable. He is regarded as a trickster and as a personal messenger of fate. As a child, he is rebellious; as an old man, wise. In some myths, he also portrayed as a thief, because he is said to have stolen some divine secrets and revealed them to human beings.
According to legend, he is the youngest son of Lisa and Mawu. Lisa is the sun god who brings the day and the heat, and also strenght and energy. Mawu, the moon goddess, provides the cool of the night, peace, fertility, and rain. Thus, Legba combines all these attributes, and in his role as god of fate, he can bring great fortune but also unspeakable sorrow to man.
Every ceremony begins with his invocation and ends with his dismissal. It is only through contact with Legba that it becomes possible to contact the other gods, for he is the guardian at the door of the world of spirits. During an invocation, he mostly appears as the messenger of another god, translating the words of the supernatural into the language of humans.
The holy center of each Voodoo temple is a column decorated with consecrated signs. It embodies the cosmic channel through which communication with the world of the spirits becomes possible. Legba is the guardian of this bridge between worlds, which also connects the place of the living with the realm of the dead. Therefore, with Legba's consent it is possible for the dead to return to the world of the living. Ghosts of these ancestors return either to preotect their families, or to take revenge if they have been neglected.
Legba's veve is sketched on the ground at the beginning of every ceremony. In Haiti, it includes the symbol of a crutch. His invocation is sung by the participants in unison:

Atibon Legba, opet the gate for me.
Papa Legba, opet the gate for me.
Open the gate that I can enter.
God Legba, open the gate for me.
When I return, I will thank the Loa.
Abobo!

Meanwhile, the Voodoo priest runs again and again to the door to symbolically open it, until finally Legba takes possession of one of the people present. then it is said that the Loa „rides“ him. The person possessed by legba takes on the appeareance of an old man, twisted in such a way that he is indeed temporarily crippled. In this manner, Legba demonstrates the terrible strenght he posseses, despite his appereance as a weak, old man.
After Legba has manifested himself in this way, the other gods can be called.
Legba's altar is on the ground, in a box, or a closet behind the entrance to the house. He is supplied with food items that are associated with him, and also with fabrics and pearls in his black and red colors.
When a person turns to him, Legba is first greeted with the ritual „Ago Ellegua!“ He is mostly called upon when the person seeking help has to make a decision and can no longer clearly see his course. The god can then lead him and open the way for him.

Voodoo talismans

Some of the Loa veves and their powers. Talismans can be made by drawing the Veve on parchment paper with the blood of the voodooist. They can also be engraved on an emerald or a ruby. The talisman must always be carried on the person inside a red flannel bag.

Loa Danh

Loa Guede

Loa Aida Wedo

Loa Simbi

Loa Agasou

Loa Erzulia

Loa Bakula Baka

Loa Legba

SEXUAL SEDUCTION SPELL




On the night of a full moon light a red candle while thinking of your intended. Repeat the following three times:

Light the flame

Bright the fire

Red is the color

Of desire.

A SPECIAL LOVE CHARM


Women who are believers in Voodoo make much use of plain rice powder. This is most commonly utilized for a body rubdown. It is believed to strengthen their sexual attractiveness und to heighten passion during lovemaking sessions. A female coated with rice powder is said o be more alluring, while the male is made much more potent.

FOR LOVE




Two garlic bulbs are punctured with a steel nail which is left in to hold both bulbs together. The top bulb represents the individual making the charm, and the bottom bulb represents the desired lover. Hide in the corner of a dark closet until the one you care begins to respond. This garlic charm is said to make a lover overflow with passion.

Foot Track Magic




Foot track magic is one of the hallmarks of hoodoo. It involves

throwing powders and such in the path of a target, who will suffer from

abnormal maladies and a run of bad luck once they have walked on it. The

belief is that the toxic properties of the powder will be absorbed through the

foot and “poison” the individual. Ailments such as back problems, difficulty

walking, water retention, especially in the legs, and difficulty concentrating are

some of the complaints of those who have been victimized in this fashion.

The only cure is removal by a rootworker.

Foot track magic occurs in two ways: the direct method, and the

sympathetic method. The direct method is when the powder or other

substance is thrown on the ground or a bottle is buried and the person’s foot

actually touches or walks over it. Some folks take care and throw down the

mess in an X pattern. I was always told you just throw it where you know the

person is going to walk. The second method involves capturing the person’s

foot print by gathering the dirt from an actual foot print of the target, or by

taking an old sock or shoe and doctoring it with some other powder to jinx or

cross a person.

Floor Washes

Floor washes are used to remove negativity from the home or

business or to bring good fortune, increase the number of customers, or to

attract love. Florida Water is commonly used as a floor wash. A ritual floor

washing typically starts at the back of the premises and end at the front door

step. The top floor is washed from the ceiling to the floor, and this is

repeated on each floor until one reaches the front door, where extra time is

spent scrubbing the doorway. For the best results, wash your floors, corners

of the rooms, closets, doorsteps, and spray a little on the walls, fabrics and

furniture. To dispose of the left-over wash water, throw it out the front door

or into the front yard, toward the East, if possible. Hardcore hoodoos will use

their own urine or the urine of a child as an ingredient in a floor wash.

Initiation




Vodou initiation ceremonies are never undertaken lightly or routinely. Almost always it is trouble with the spirits, manifesting in problems in the individual’s life, that lead a person to undergo initiation. In the temples of the Port-au-Prince area there are four levels of initiation possible. Each level involves a period of seclusion that may vary from three to twenty-one days, and most temples have a small interior room set aside for such purposes. Persons tend to be initiated in small groups. The men and women in these groups become “brothers” and “sisters” in a special way. Above all, they are committed to helping each other with ritual duties. This is the case even when the groups contain individuals who are seeking different grades of initiation.

All grades of initiation have public rituals that occur intermittently in the exterior temple dancing area as well as rituals reserved for the already-initiated members of the house that occur within the inner chamber. The first level of initiation is called the lave tet (head-washing) and involves cooling and soothing as well as feeding the spirits in a person’s head. The second level is kanzo, a word that refers to a rite in which initiates are briefly removed from the initiation chamber in order to undergo a ritual trial. In the semipublic part of the kanzo ritual, small, hard dumplings are snatched from boiling pots and pressed into the palm of the left hand and the sole of the left foot of the initiate. When this ceremony is completed, the initiates are told: “Now you are kwit [cooked]; no one can eat you,” that is to say, no one can do harm to you. They are also admonished: “Never say hot again, say strong!”.

The third level is called sou pwen, on the point. Pwen is a complex, multivocal concept in Haitian Vodou, as it is in Haitian culture in general. Within the general culture, “singing the point” or “sending the point” refers to a socially appropriatemeans of indirect communication that is especially useful for conveying difficult messages. For example, one young man in Haiti told me this story: he was courting a young woman who came from a family as impoverished as his own. The girl’s mother decided that the match offered neither one any chance of advancement, and yet she was loathe to insult her daughter’s suitor. So when he visited, she went about her household tasks singing a popular song, the refrain of which was “Dč mčg pa fri,” (Two lean [pieces of meat] do not fry). The young man got “the point” and broke off his relationship. In and out of the temples, it is often Vodou songs that are used for the purpose of singing the point. These songs have a sparse, even cryptic quality to them that lends itself to communicating several different, sometimes contradictory, meanings at once. The person who “sends a song” in the Vodou temple, that is, the one who suggests the next song to be sung by the group, is not only following a closely prescribed ritual order in which each important lwa is saluted in the proper order with his or her own songs and rhythms, but quite frequently is also sending the point, pwen, to a person or group of persons present at the ceremony. Such an observation both reveals the extent to which Vodou ritual intertwines with and comments on the life of the community and suggests a preliminary definition for the troublesome word pwen. At a level of abstraction uncharacteristic of the way people who serve the spirits speak, pwen may be said to mean the condensation or pith of something. At a concrete, ritual level pwen are charms or medicines composed of words, objects, gestures, or some combination of the three. They may be drawn on the earth, spoken, sung over a person, placed under the skin, or ingested; they may be buried at the crossroads, in a cemetery, or in the courtyard of a house. When one is initiated “on the point,” the reference is to the condensation of the power of a particular spiritwho has been diagnosed as the met tet.

The fourth and final level of initiation is the one that gives a person license to begin practicing as a healer. It is called assogwe, literally, “with the asson,” the beaded rattle that gives priests and priestesses some measure of leverage in the spirit realm.

In Haitian Creole, the verb kouche (to lie down, to sleep, to make love, to give birth—less commonly, to die) is the general word used to describe initiation. Entering the initiation chamber is like dying. Friends and family members cry as they line up to kiss the initiates goodbye. Shortly after this genuinely emotional leavetaking, the initiates are blindfolded and led through a dizzying dance of spirals and turns before being taken into the small room where they will kouche. As in many other sorts of initiation around the world, to kouche is to be forced by ritual means to regress, to become a child again, to be fed and cared for as a child would be, only to be brought rapidly back to adulthood, a new kind of adulthood, again by ritual means. When the initiates leave the inner chamber after days of seclusion and ritualizing, they have their heads covered. Initiates must keep their heads covered for forty days. Like newborn babies with vulnerable soft spots, new initiates must protect the ops of their heads. The spirits within have been fed and are still changing and strengthening day by day. On an altar inside, the initiates have left their po tet (head pots), residues of the internal externalized, the self objectified, the spirits concretized.

These po tet generally remain on the altar of the priest or priestess who performed the initiation and who will be ever after the initiates’ spiritual mother or father. Thus, through initiation rites, bonds among the living—as well as between the living and the spirits—are reinforced.

The Voodoo Pantheon

The spirits that comprise the Voodoo pantheon are the result of the forced mingling of various tribal groups during the institution of slavery. In an incredible feat of psychological and spiritual survival, the tribal groups were able to combine their very different religious practices into one Voodoo practice that is no longer “pure” according to African standards. However, in the throws of slavery, the stolen people created new rites that incorporated not only their own rites and deities, but the rites and deities of other cultural groups. The original African rites spread to Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, the West Indies, the Dominican Republic, and other parts of the United States, where they began to take on characteristics of the local cultures. There are literally hundreds of spirits, and the list is ever growing.



The spirit forces in New Orleans Voodoo and Haiti are referred to as Loa (lwa). The Loa are also referred to as the Mystères and the Invisibles. In Santería they are known as Orisha. They are somewhat akin to saints or angels in Western religions in that they are intermediaries between Bondye (Bon Dieu, or good god)—the Creator, who is distant from the world—and humanity. It is not uncommon to refer to spirits, saints, angels, and archangels as loas. In fact, it is not uncommon for New Orleans practitioners to acknowledge the loas found in Haiti, the orishas of the Yoruban tradition and Santeria, as well as Catholic saints, the spirits of ancestors, zombie spirits, Native American spirits, archangels, and spirits that are uniquely New Orleanian in origin.



Unlike saints or angels however, the loa are not simply prayed to; they are served. They are each distinct beings with their own personal likes and dislikes, distinct sacred rhythms, songs, dances, ritual symbols, and special modes of service. Contrary to popular belief, the loa are not deities in and of themselves; they are intermediaries for a distant Creator. In the Yoruban tradition, the Orishas are emissaries of God, ruling the forces of nature and the fortunes of mankind. Their aspects are generally determined by their elemental natures. Thus, the Orisha of lightning is also the Orisha of sudden inspiration, vengeance, and dance; the Orisha of the Ocean is the Orisha of motherhood, femininity, and creativity. In this way, the orishas represent ancient archetypal forces, a concept reflected in the phrase “Las Sietes Potencias,” or the Seven African Powers.

THE NATIONS

There are a number of Voodoo traditions, or nations, that are related according to a common origin or theme. Two of the major nations are the Rada and Petro. The Rada loa spirits like Damballa, Erzulie Freda and Papa Legba -- are said to come from Africa, from the former Dahomean empire. Some mistakenly refer to the Rada loa as "good" and the Petro loa as "evil." This is misleading; the Rada loa can be used to make malevolent magic, while the Petro loa can heal and do beneficial workings. They are more accurately referred to as "cool" and "hot," respectively. You will find that the hoodoo spells have little if anything to do with the Voodoo nations. It is for the sake of being thorough with regards to the religious aspects of Voodoo that I have provided this information.



Rada Loa



The Rada Loa are a major family of loa in Haitian vodou. They include older, beneficent spirits who can be directly traced to Dahomean Vodou. They are generally the older, more beneficent spirits. Rada loas are guardians of morals and principles and related to Africa, whereas Petro loas

are connected to the New World. Rada loas include Legba, Loko, Ayizan, Damballa Wedo and Ayida Wedo, Erzulie Freda, La Sirène, and Agwé. Some loas (such as Erzulie) have both Rada and Petro manifestations. Their traditional color is white (as opposed to the specific colors of individual Loa) and they are associated with the element air.





Petro Loa



The Petro Loa are generally the more fiery, occasionally aggressive, and warlike loa. The story is that they originated in Haiti, under the harsh conditions of slavery. Their rites feature whip cracking, whistles and ignited gunpowder. In addition, Petro drumbeats are swifter and more syncopated than the Rada rhythms. The Petro rites are an integral part of the initiation ceremony (Kanzo), the rite by which serviteurs are initiated as priests and priestesses (houngans and mambos) of Haitian Vodou. Erzulie Dantor is considered the "mother" of the Petro nation and is one of the most important Petro loa. Petro loas include Erzulie Dantor, Marinette, Ogun, and Kalfu (Carrefour). Their traditional color is red and they are associated with the

element fire.





Congo Loa



Originating from the Congo region of Africa, these spirits include the many Simbi loa, as well as the much dreaded Marinette, a fierce and much feared female loa. They are associated with the element water. The entire Northern area of Haiti is especially influenced by Congo practice. The Congo loa are thought to descend from the Lemba, an ethnic group in southern Africa who claim a common descent belonging to the Jewish people.





Nago Loa



Originating from Nigeria (specifically the Yoruba speaking tribes), this nation includes many of the Ogun spirits.





Guede Loa



The Ghede are the spirits of the dead. They are traditionally led by the Barons (La Croix, Samedi, Cimitière, Kriminel), and Manman Brigit. The Guede are loud, rude, crass, sexual, and a lot of fun. Their traditional colors are black and purple.