"Kebyesou badji-m anwo
Badji-m anba!"

@

My temple is above
My temple is below!
--Vodou song

I make sure to wear only really comfortable clothing and take just enough money to get a small treat if I see something I have to get. Always the day before I hem and haw about how this time I will not make the journey. It takes too long. It is too onerous. It will not be worth it. But the morning of the trip I am excited, and as I make my way to the bus stop, prepared to end up in strange places, face holdovers and delays and find something totally new, there is a certain magic in me. I feel a little like I am flying.

Part of shamanic practice is the celebration of the full moons and the dark moons. For me the most time consuming and now the most rewarding is the journey to some place I’ve never been, the day that is blocked out so that I can have time to travel, to find, to be lost and to find a connection to the universe that, in this age, it is easy to lose.

A woman across from me had a look on her face that said she’d given up on life. Everything about her expression was sullen and sour. I saw, for just a little more money than I had, an alabaster chalice. It’s a good thing I only brought a few dollars with me or I’d steal be arguing with myself about buying it. Ah, but it will be there whenever I’m ready for it. Passed Dean’s apartment. He may have been there. Or maybe not. Passed over the highway and saw it stretching out, all the cars going east, going west. Breathed in and breathed out. Breathed out all the stale air and unclenched from so much of what I begin to cling to these days. Saw the sky overhead, grey and then pale and then blue and then grey again. It is a beautiful world, full of good people. And also full of sad people who would be looking for something if only they could just get the spiritual energy to begin the search.


“America and England are wealthy countries… but your people are starving in ways they do not even know. You have no community and no real love in your countries and so crazy things get made and the people get greedy and sick. Wars begin because people are hungry in their souls for power. They want only their ideas and dreams to rule the world. But thye do not know what to do with their power or how to use it when they have it, except to create more sickness and war. Their hunger is never fed because they do not know how to feed their souls.”

-- a houngan's comment taken from Voudou Shaman by Ross Heaven