Peace be with you, my friends! It is with great pleasure that I write this post after having completed my annual St. John's Eve service, which I feel was an amazing success. I made thirty seven different offerings in total and performed a service called the Brule Marinette, which is extremely powerful and intricate. This was only the forth one that I have conducted in my years of service as a Voodoo priest. I plan to elaborate on the Brule Marinette in a future post. St. John's Eve is of course the most powerful night of the year to perform any kind of spiritual work in the Voodoo tradition and the energy of the night itself is overwhelming. I was presenting offerings and invoking the lwa non-stop from 9 pm until dawn and then slept until 4 pm in the afternoon on Friday. This time of year is draining for any Voodoo Doctor or Queen, but there is also a euphoric rush that comes from doing service on St. John's Eve and the blessings that follow are most fulfilling.
Erzulie Freda is an important lwa to serve and often blesses her devotees with unexpected wealth and torrid, passionate love affairs.
Through the course of the night the lwa Maistresse Erzulie Freda Dahomey, called Erzulie for short, popped up numerous times while I conducted various forms of divination and fell into possession. Erzulie is extremely beautiful, flirtatious, capricious and intoxicating as well as elegant, refined and full of class. She is an important lwa to serve and often blesses her devotees with unexpected wealth and torrid, passionate love affairs. During the course of my St. John’s Eve service, I felt her energy constantly and have thus been prompted to write this post. I have touched upon Erzulie as well as other lwa in previous posts, but today I would like to go more in depth regarding this most beautiful and intense spiritual entity and in following posts I will do that same with other lwa.
Erzulie Freda is one of the original lwa brought from Africa during colonial times. This origin is indicated in her full title Maistresse Erzulie Freda Dahomey, Dahomey being an ancient kingdom of Western Africa that covered what is today Togo, Benin and parts of Nigeria and included people from the Fon, Yoruba, Wolof and various other ethnic groups who contributed to the development of Vodou in the French colony of St. Domingue, which today is known as Haiti. Erzulie is the embodiment of wealth, luxury, pleasure, sensuality, and flirtatious capricious love. In art she is often depicted as a light skin Creole woman who dresses in pink. Her Catholic image is the Mater Dolorosa, who in popular iconography appears surrounded by gold yet still in anguish with tears flowing down her cheeks and a dagger piercing her heart. This is perhaps symbolic of the human condition of insatiability. At times there is never enough to keep us satisfied and we all want more and more of good things. Erzulie represents this desire for luxury and often cries when her wishes are not fulfilled. People often make the mistake of thinking that Erzulie will bring them love, while this is true, she tends to bring love and is passionate, torrid, yet short lived. Erzulie is always ready for the next lover. So when making a service to her for love, one would be wise to also invoke Ogun to bring about stability. True to her personality, Erzulie’s offerings include champagne, sweet cakes and expensive French perfume. Her colors are pink and pale blue. When taking possession of a Vodou priest or priestess, Erzulie prefers to speak French, the language of the elite, rather the Creole, the language of the masses.
As with all the lwa, there are many tales regarding Erzulie. Despite being capricious and highly flirtatious, Erzulie will not tolerate disrespect or abuse of her children. During the 1960’s in a town not far from Port-au-Prince, there was a popular shrine to Erzulie centered around a magnificent palm tree where she was said to materialize and rest in the palms branches high in the tree. A local protestant pastor was angry that people were giving attention to Erzulie so he ordered the tree to be chopped down. The next day his church was hit by lightening and he was haunted by vivid dreams that eventually drove him insane. Such stories are common regarding those who disrespect Erzulie and Voodoo in general.
I would like to share with you a simple ritual that you can perform to feel the energy of Erzulie and request her blessings. Simply take a warm bubble bath with the fragrance of your choice and add the petals of one pink rose. Light a pink candle next to the tub and as you soak sip a glass of champagne or sparkling wine. Talk to Erzulie as you would a friend. Ask for her guidance and request whatever favor you’d like and be sure to thank her by offering a glass of champagne when you get out of the tub. It is always surprising to see how Erzulie works her magic in our lives!
Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog and I hope you will be able to try the Erzulie invocation at home. If you are interested in having an Erzulie service performed for whatever purpose, please do not hesitate to contact me. Until the next time, I wish you peace, happiness and the sweetest of blessings!
