Mysteries and Secrets of Voodoo, Santeria, and Obeah Read online

  A third theory embraces the concept of tulpa, or thought-forms. These are also referred to in psychical research literature as egrigors (spelling varies and includes egrigori and egrigore). The theory suggests that the human mind — especially when collaborating with a group of other minds — can actually bring something physical into existence. A classic example of tulpa creation occurred when Alexandra David-Neel was travelling through Tibet, early in the twentieth century. She worked hard, exerting great concentration and mental energy, to produce an amiable little monk, plump, smiling, and totally benign. There are various accounts of what went wrong, but the tulpa she had created surreptitiously escaped from Alexandra’s control and became what can only be described as some kind of independent entity. It was no longer plump and amiable. The smile became a triumphant sneer. Other members of the expedition could now see it clearly. The tulpa had become decidedly sinister. It took Alexandra a great deal of time and energy to destroy her creation, and in some accounts she also needed considerable help from experienced local lamas.

  In 1972, the Toronto Society for Psychical Research conducted an exceptionally interesting and intriguing piece of research. Their work involved a totally fictitious character named “Philip” whom they had deliberately created. Something purporting to be Philip then answered questions that the group posed with knocks, raps, and table turning. The life story that the Toronto experimenters compiled for the non-existent Philip Aylesford settled him in Diddington Manor in Cambridgeshire, England, a few miles north of the market town of St. Neots. Married to a cold and generally unpleasant wife named Dorothea, the unhappy Philip met a beautiful, young, raven-haired gypsy girl named Margo. Unsurprisingly, he fell in love with her and moved her secretly into the gatehouse of his estate. When the cruel and cunning Dorothea found out about her beautiful and passionate young rival, she accused Margo of witchcraft and had her burned at the stake. The pusillanimous Philip made no attempt to save her. In the story, he had a Catholic royalist background — at a time when Cromwell’s merciless puritans were in power in England. Terrified that any adverse publicity associating him with witchcraft would lead to the confiscation of his wealth, his manor house, and his estates, Philip let Margo die in the flames. Soon afterwards, overcome with remorse, he committed suicide.

  The 1972 Toronto experiment was by no means an isolated case. Other serious psychical research groups in Canada produced beings similar to Philip. These entities included Lilith, who was given the character of a French-Canadian espionage agent of the Second World War; an alchemist named Sebastian, who had practised his profession during the Middle Ages; and a time traveller called Axel, who came from an imaginary future.

  Another experiment along these lines took place in Sydney, Australia, where the imaginary entity was a teenaged girl named Skippy Cartman, who had been seduced and made pregnant by one of her religious teachers, the fictitious Brother Monk. He had strangled her and buried her body under the floorboards of an abandoned shearing shed — in much the same way that the real Foxy Corder had murdered his equally historical nineteenth-century victim, Maria Marten, and buried her body under the Red Barn on his farm in Polstead, Suffolk, England. Skippy’s fictional murderer had moved away long before his victim’s body was discovered.

  Maria Marten, murder victim.

  William “Foxy” Corder, murderer of Maria Marten.

  The fourth theory regards the pantheon of ancient African gods as personifications of abstractions such as beauty, power, love, and fertility, and as personifications of processes such as hunting, agriculture, and harvest. This theory extends to views of the pantheon as the personalized powers within natural phenomena such as volcanoes, earthquakes, storms, thunder, lightning, winds, rain, seas, and rivers. Within yet another subdivision of this theory, every waterfall, every mountaintop, and every tall tree can be thought of as either the manifestation of a divine being or the dwelling place of a divine being.

  A fifth theory speculates on the existence of a range of what might be termed intermediate beings — a lot less powerful than the One Supreme God, but a great deal more powerful than Homo sapiens. The ancient sacred literature of many religions refers to hierarchies of superior spiritual beings: cherubim, seraphim, angels, and archangels. There are also records of various levels and sub-levels of demons and fallen angels. Logically, if there are infinite gradations of complexity and intelligence between viruses and human beings, there could well be infinite gradations of complexity, power, and intelligence between Homo sapiens and the One Supreme God. This fifth theory, therefore, looks at the idea that the gods of the ancient pantheons are more or less as the sacred texts describe them: the African, European, American, Asian, and Australasian gods actually exist.

  The sixth hypothesis retreats into a haze of unknowing — and a passive acceptance that some things are by their very nature unknowable and inexplicable: they are because they are. According to this theory, belief in the existence of gods — ranging from supreme creators to the lowly spirits of trees and waterfalls — is simply something inevitable. It just goes with the territory, given that the human mind and the pathways of human thought are as they are. This theory argues that because Homo sapiens can observe the universe only within certain limits, and because human reason can function only within certain limits, it is more or less inevitable that our observations — and our interpretations of what we observe — will lead to various theological conclusions incorporating the existence of gods. Seeing what we see of the universe, and processing our data with the limited neurological equipment available to us, gods, religion, and magic are likely to be put forward as explanations.

  The seventh theory is ecumenical and inclusive. It argues for toleration, for interpretation and translation of different theological terms, and for a global assortment of divine entities. It suggests that the Supreme Creator, who is called by many different names by many different peoples, is nevertheless the One Supreme Creator God. It also argues that any subordinate divine power with delegated responsibility for thunder, volcanoes, rain, or earthquakes remains one and the same assistant god irrespective of the name that human beings use to label that sub-deity.

  A common factor uniting almost every ancient African religion is the idea of one great, supreme god at the back of everything. In many of the earliest African faiths, this great creator is reckoned to have lived originally on earth. Various reasons are given in the different religions, but there seems to be a general agreement that because of human sins and failings, the all-powerful creator god left to dwell in a Sky Kingdom or Heaven, literally and metaphorically above the problems made by human beings. This supreme god is understood as transcendent, a being of pure spirit, formless and abstract. Despite its immeasurable distance from humanity, the supreme god has left a trace of its divine breath, anima, or spirit within each human being.

  A belief in Cagn, for example, is part of the ancient religious traditions of the San and Basarwa peoples of the Kalahari Desert, which includes areas of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa. Archaeological and genetic evidence suggests that the San and Basarwa tribes, who describe themselves as Bushmen, are among the oldest surviving human races on the planet. For them, Cagn, who is also known as Kho and Thora, is a supreme creator god who once lived with humanity on earth but left for a transcendent place beyond the skies after people became sinful. His people also credit Cagn with being a god of shape-shifting and other types of magic. In any examination of Santeria and similar religions, a thorough investigation of the very ancient belief in Cagn and his association with sorcery is particularly important. His counterpart in the realm of magic and shape-shifting was a sorcerer-god of the Hottentots known as Heitsi-Eibib.

  Lesser gods were created to act as the Sky God’s deputies in various areas. Regions of authority were given to each of them. They were responsible for rain, for seedtime and harvest, for fire, wind, hunting animals, sex, and reproduction. Every aspect of life on earth had a god or goddess in charge o
f it.

  In most ancient African faiths, these minor deities listened to human prayers and those that were benign did their best to listen and answer by granting the individual worshipper’s request. When something was beyond their remit, however, the benign minor gods would act as intermediaries and take the worshippers’ requests to the all-powerful Creator.

  In East Africa this great transcendent deity is known as Mulungu. In the west of Africa the name is Nyambe, a slight variation from the name in Ghana, where it is Nyame (just one letter, the b, is different). Central Africans refer to the Supreme Creator as Leza. Other ancient African names for the Supreme Being include Wamtatakuya, Tumbuka, and Chiuta, who combined his self-created status and omniscience with the role of rain god. Chiuta in particular was also seen as a god who was prepared to help his people.

  The Ibo peoples of East Nigeria refer to their supreme creator deity as Chuku or Chineke: the first great cause. He is also thought of as the father of the earth goddess, and, like Chiuta, he is thought of as a benign and helpful deity.

  The Macouas of Zambezi called their supreme creator god Mukuru, but they also gave him special interests in agriculture, the harvest, and architecture. This singles him out from many of the other ancient African deities. If a powerful being from elsewhere is esteemed for his mastery of architecture, does it link him with the theory that the Freemasons can trace their origins back for many millennia? They address God in their Masonic prayers as “Great Architect of this stupendous universe.” This theory about the earliest origins of Freemasonry is covered in depth in another of our books, Mysteries and Secrets of the Masons (Dundurn, 2006).

  Ancient African versions of the story of creation differ from the six biblical days, followed by the Jewish Sabbath, or Shabbat, regarded as a sacred rest day. The African creation narratives allow four days for the actual work of creation, and have a sacred fifth day that is devoted to the worship of Orisha Nla. The role of Orisha Nla needs careful explanation. In some accounts he is understood as the First Deputy of Mulungu, or Leza. He is regarded as the chief, or leader, of the minor deities to whom the different subordinate tasks were delegated by Mulungu. It was to Orisha Nla that Mulungu gave the special task of creating human beings from earthly soil — just as Adam was created from the dust of the earth in the Genesis account. Although Orisha Nla had oversight of this physical part of the work of creation, it was the Almighty Mulungu who lit the flame of life within them. Just as Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden, so Mulungu placed this new human creation on earth.

  The idea of a transcendent, ultimate, and totally benign spiritual god like Mulungu, who works with a physical god like Orisha Nla, comes very close to the volatile ideas that split the early Christian Church during the first few centuries of the Christian era. Gnostics such as the Paulicians, the Bogomils, and later the Cathars of southwestern France believed that the one great and supreme creator god was a being of pure spirit. According to them, the physical universe had been created by another powerful, but inferior, deity referred to as the demiurge. The Greek δημιουργός, Latinized as demiurgus, simply meant a workman. The Mandaeans referred to the demiurge as Ptahil, and it was also referred to as Yaldabaoth. Gnostics regarded it — and all physical matter — as evil.

  There may well be some connection here with Juok, also known as Shilluk, a god whose worshippers were situated in the area of the White Nile. Juok — like the demiurge — is credited with creating human beings.

  Adroa is another very mysterious and theologically puzzling ancient African deity. He belongs to the Lugbara people who occupy parts of Zaire and Uganda. Like Orisha Nla and the mighty Mulungu, he enjoys a creative function, but he has evil aspects too. Sometimes he is conceived of as being very tall and only partially complete: often an eye, an arm, and a leg are missing from his tall frame. Adroa is thought of as a god of law, order, and justice — as well as a god of death.

  The descendants of Adroa, referred to as the Adroanzi, became nature gods with individual responsibilities for certain territories, for rivers, waterfalls, whirlpools, and trees. Their mixed nature — like that of their divine parent Adroa — gave them a curious relationship with their human worshippers. They would follow and protect their people in dangerous places, defending them from thieves or dangerous animal predators. However, if the protected worshipper looked around to make sure that his guardian Adroanzi was actually there, the former guardian would immediately slay the worshipper instead of protecting him or her.

  The Turkana of Kenya had a deity whom they called Akuj. He was their god of divination, of soothsaying and of peering into the clouded mysteries of the future.

  The ancient goddess Ala, also referred to as Ane, was sacred to the Ibo peoples. Like Orisha Nla, Ala was a creator, who also reigned over the dead. She was the goddess to whom oaths were sworn by her devotees, and, like Adroa, Ala was concerned with law, order, and justice. Harvests were also her responsibility.

  Orisha Shango Yoruba’s double-headed axe.

  Among the 2 million Temne people of Sierra Leone, there are those who refer to Anayaroli as a river god — or demon — and he is also a god of wealth and financial success. For serious students of Santeria, the significance of Oba, sometimes called Obba, another river goddess, must not be overlooked. According to the historical legends, she was the first and only legitimate wife of Shango, second king of the Oyo Empire. He is also the god of thunder and lightning in the complex Yoruba mythology. Shango is in some ways very similar to the Nordic Thor, and is armed with an axe, similar to Thor’s great hammer. Freudian psychoanalysts would be particularly interested in the symbolism of Oba’s offering Shango her ear to eat. When he declined, she was overcome with sadness at his rejection of her, and was transformed into the River Obba. There was a rival wife, named Osun, who also became a river goddess. Where her River Osun joins the River Obba there are dangerous and spectacular rapids that symbolize the furious animosity between the two wives. So important is this Santeria river goddess in the minds of the Iwo people that they are called the Sons of the River Obba in her honour. Ymoja, yet another river goddess, is venerated by the Yoruba peoples and exercises her protective care and blessings over women and children.

  Since the arrival of Islam and Christianity, however, devotion to these local river gods and goddesses like Obba, Anayaroli, and Ymoja has declined noticeably despite the great antiquity of the cults of such river divinities.

  Some of the Akamba of Kenya acknowledge Asa as a “strong lord” or even as a “father god.” He is regarded as a god of intervention and miracles who frequently gives help to his worshippers. They also view him as the deity who helps his followers to survive the impossible.

  The Ashanti people from Ghana in West Africa have a pantheon leader referred to as Nyame, or Nyankopon, who is thought of as omniscient and omnipotent. His wife, the goddess Asase Ya, is an earth goddess, thought of as the creator of human beings and strongly associated with fertility, agriculture, and the harvest. She is also the goddess who receives the spirits of the dead.

  Neptune, also well known as Poseidon, was the sea god of classical Greek and Roman mythology. He was the husband of the sea goddess Amphitrite, who bore their son Triton — part man and part fish. The ancient African religions also include sea gods and goddesses, among whom Behanzin, the fish god of Fon in Dahomey, was prominent. Fishermen in particular would beg him for a good catch when they ventured out. Aquatic gods in these ancient African belief systems suggest possible connections with accounts of Dagon, the fish-god of the Phoenician peoples, mentioned in the Bible. There is some discussion among theologians as to whether Dagon was originally a corn and harvest god who was transformed into a fish-god in the pantheon of the seagoing Phoenicians.

  Oannes was also thought of as a fish–god by the Babylonians. Berossus, a Babylonian writer dating from the third century BC, credits Oannes with having the body of a fish, or the appearance of a fish, but with a human body underneath. Again, according to B
erossus, it was the benign and powerful Oannes who taught humanity wisdom in general and science, literacy, and art in particular.

  There are two main schools of thought regarding the origin of Oannes. One theory suggests that he was based on Ea, a god of ancient Babylon. The weight of current scholarly opinion, however, seems to favour his being derived from Uan, one of the seven wise teacher-guides sent out by Ea to give wisdom and knowledge to humanity. These seven sages were called the Abgallu in Sumerian — from ab meaning water, gal meaning great, and lu meaning man. These intellectual heroes of early civilization were traditionally closely associated with the city of Eridu, generally reckoned to be the oldest in Sumer.

  Another intriguing theory suggests that the Abgallu came by ship, bringing with them great learning from some older, more technologically developed culture — such as the one that existed along the valley of the Indus. But it is equally likely that the Abgallu came over the sea from ancient Africa — wise followers of Behanzin. It has even been suggested that the wisdom of the Abgallu was so profound that they might have been survivors from Atlantis. Another strand of the Abgallu-as-sea-voyagers-from-afar theory is the possibility that Oannes was described as being fishlike because he was wearing disc mail or chain mail. To observers who had never seen such link, or disc, armour before, it would have suggested the scales of a fish. The human mind normally attempts to describe the unknown in terms of the known.

  There are significant links between water and modern Santeria, Obeah, Voodoo, and similar mysterious religions. It is almost as if their ancient connections with sea gods, river gods, water gods, and fish gods were still preserved in their contemporary practices. There is, for example, an eau magique, described as sacred Voodoo water, available from practitioners in New Orleans.