James Duvalier

The 19th of April is the Feast of Saint Expedite, one of my favorite patron saints. He is the patron saint of speedy resolutions and is called upon when one needs his or her prayers to be answered quickly. Expeditus was a Roman solider who, upon receiving a vision, converted to Christianity immediately on the battlefield after which he was promptly martyred. His willingness to convert immediately and not put it off earned him the reputation as…
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In the last blog post, we examined in general the practice of making food offerings to spirits and discussed making an ancestor feast, which is the cornerstone ritual of New Orleans Voodoo. In this post, I would like to expand upon this topic and share a few specific offerings that are traditional to various lwa or saints. The following list of saints and spirits are not specific to any one spiritual pantheon but are rather an eclectic…
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In many spiritual traditions around the world as seemingly disparate as Chinese Folk Religion, Haitian Vodou, Brazilian Candomblé, European Faerie Magic and various forms of Native-American Shamanism and Hinduism you will notice one common trend: The Feeding of Ancestors and Spirits. In all of these traditions and many others, elaborate feasts are prepared for different categories or pantheons of spirits depending of the time of year or celebration being observed or the spiritual assistance one is attempting…
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It is a common feature of the many Afro-Caribbean religions born as a result of colonization and the slave trade (Vodou, Candomblé, Santería, Obeah etc.) that each element of nature and of the human condition is represented by a spiritual force. In Santería and Candomblé these spiritual manifestations of the natural world are called Orishas or Orixas and in Vodou they are known as “lwa.” The Orisha that is the embodiment of the ocean is Yemaya, known…
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In many countries in Europe, Saint Nicholas’s Day, the 6th of December, is seen as an early Christmas celebration and indeed the kickoff to the Christmas season, much like Thanksgiving Day in the United States. On the night before his feast day, children will lay out their shoes by the front door, next to the fireplace or under their beds and the next morning they will be filled with candies, cookies and small toys after a supposed…
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