Carcosa Bound

New Orleans is famous for a lot of things – foremost among these is its particular expression of Voodoo.

This was one of the things that struck me about New Orleans on previous visits, and now, with a deal more supporting knowledge, I was keen to learn more about.

I'm also frequently surprised at the degree to which this, and other religions in this family, is misunderstood, misrepresented, and maligned, particularly within media.

This enormously nuanced, evocative, embracing practice provides a simultaneously pragmatic and deeply mystical approach to entity and agency, causality, event and time.

In terms of wider context for the religion itself, Wade Davis' phenomenonal text The Serpent and the Rainbow offers some leads, and insights. Though addressing Haitian Voodoo, and not its New Orleans relation, it elegantly wraps up an anthropological survey with a great adventure yarn, with hints at deeper initiations and secrets between the lines. The book opens with an ethnobotanist's mission to uncover the secret chemical compounds used in Haitian zombi-making rituals (for possible application during interplanetary space voyages), before proceeding to more expansive horizons, including on the natures of the soul.

William Gibson's novel Count Zero presents a cyberpunk sci-fi angle, drawing parallels between the forces within the religion and those represented by digital intelligences. It's also a good read, especially at this time when this scenario may have a non-zero possibility of coming to pass.

Out of the books, back in New Orleans:

We enter the small shop, and are greeted by the man behind the counter.

We look around; the place is marvelous and stocked with all sorts of beautiful things that would be a nightmare for getting past biosecurity with.

I'm not sure about the place – it feels extremely powerful, but it really doesn't feel at all familiar, in any way I'd recognise.

We're asked if we want any help. I initially balk, say I'm fine and just looking. My wife calls me on my bullshit dissembling.

“Sure, yeah, actually, is the priestess available? We are just passing through, and...”

The shopkeeper: “Oh, we hear that a lot. She's just finishing up.”

I have no idea where this is going, or how this even works.

The priestess is having a telephone conversation, in another room. She finishes up, comes into the shop, looks at us (reads is immediately) and asks me directly what I want.

She slightly bristles when I initially ask for a “reading” – exploring what I meant by this, before quickly working out that I didn't know what I wanted, other than to speak with her, and learn something.

I now think the term “spiritual consultation” is more correct – and covers the vast scope of what happened.

My paraphrase of the session, and the guidance, leaving out some details to protect the sanctity of the experience:

We were invited to the temple. It was incredible – a precise engine of relation, intention; absolutely full of extremely powerful symbols that seemed either directly en-souled or inhabited.

A glance at an object – a photograph, a statue hung with beads, a carved mask or an antique doll – would turn into a reverie – before the priestess would pull you back to attention with the barest movement, the rustle of her dress, or the the tightening of the focus around her eye.

Sitting with her, in this space, the priestess herself appears impossible – seemingly almost constantly shifting in age and aspect; after, I could only provide the most general description of how she looked.

My wife initially wanted nothing to do with this “reading”, but, on being invited in to look at the temple and trancing out before an altar, was quickly brought into the session also.

While apparently physically small, the priestess had an enormous charisma, and she follows up on this invitation with a rapid series of strikingly accurate comments on projects, family situations, and assorted current challenges. It's awesome to see someone do this, so well – the cynical part of me wants to say sure, cold reading, but there is so much more going on here.

Her use of language was most striking, also – she riffs over and around words, plays with them; they arise throughout the flow of conversation – and, not a few times, prompted from something I'm thinking, or from somewhere that seems behind and to the right of her.

I can see why jazz started in this city, and how the impulse that created it just suffuses everything here.

The session runs over, and careens through deep and pragmatic wisdom, philosophical insights, as well as direct instruction on actions to take.

What the Priestess said

My incomplete paraphrase, on the tone and tenor of some of what she said, that hit like a ton of bricks in the context they were being given:

Everything is confusion. Peace is illusory, because that would mean everything had stopped. Nothing can grow when there is no movement.

How you handle this confusion – the sense you make from it – may be of use to others. So embrace the confusion, weave the strands of it together, be useful, and do your damn job.

Work hard, then rest when you're tired; you do your work, and let the angels do theirs.

The soul provides specific circumstances to teach the mind what it needs to know; it's a case of being open to the lesson. Whatever you are going through is a course of instruction, from your soul to your mind; this challenge is the precursor condition of evolution.

It was a profound experience – and one I'm deeply grateful for. In any epic tale, an oracle is consulted at the early stages of the adventure; I feel this was both paying homage to this mythic trope, while directly engaging with skilled practitioners of a powerful and very-much-living current.