Voodoo must have some pretty powerful magick, things that should not be attempted by just anyone. Voodoo dolls can be seriously harmful, right? The voodoo doll by itself is harmless. The voodoo priest/priestess or hoodoo man or woman needs powerful ashe to have those techniques work as they should. Ashe is spirit, and they build ashe through divine providence as well as ecstatic ritual and regular devotions to their patron saint.

Doesn’t the subject also have to believe in the doll? They do not have to believe in the doll. Even contemporary scientific research backs this up. The ritual, especially group ritual, can induce stress death.

How do you harness ashe? Ashe is like the charismatic churches references to the holy spirit, even sharing the flame symbolism. Ashe is strengthened through devotion as well as ritual observances.

So if they call to it respectfully it will be willing to share itself? Indeed. In the tradition known as Petro, it is believed that there is a limited amount of ashe in any environment, and that it can be stolen.

Ashe is more like prana? Sort of a combination of prana and karma. Prana with a purificatory spin to it.

Does it have teeth? Prana? Ah, actually though I think I understand the humour intended, ashe can “have teeth.” You don’t necessarily want to receive ashe you aren’t prepared to deal with. In voodoo tradition, they have a history of some complication with their magick. Sometimes you work the miracle, sometimes the miracle works you.

I prefer the miracle to work me. Well, the miracle working you can result in things you don’t like, because the ashe behaves more collectively than individually. You in the intensity of a ceremony or chant can, due to some oversight on your part, cause a chain of events that leads to huge loss in your life. Do a working to receive a new car, and you can have the story of Job play out in your life.

It sounds like believing, active believing and passive. It’s more like emotional doing. If you were to discuss an event in your life with a gris-gris doctor, which is just another name for a hoodoo practitioner, and tell them all about what you believe and what you believed should happen, they would ignore all that, and instead ask how you were feeling and how you feel now. They don’t relate to ideas or bodies of belief as anything more than explanatory stories.

They see your life events as playing out according to the behaviour of the spirit of spirits, or, if you believe with your utmost devotion but your sense of despair just doesn’t ever leave you, they won’t tell you that you need to believe harder, or sin less, or anything like that. They will insist that you deal with the spirit of despair first. They don’t believe that you despair because of what you think or know or believe. They believe despair operates on its own.

So everyone is wide open to all of these emotions? Yes. They believe that is what gives life, action and structure to reality. So they structure their practices to influence this open world model.

And people cannot control their thinking? They believe that people only partially control their thinking which is backed up by recent neuroscience research.

They are working with outside spirit to deal with this field of energy? Exactly. And these beings are like angels or demons? Take those two things and merge them. They don’t have separate ideas for those things, and they don’t have a category of “evil spirit”, just possibly angry spirits.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~