James Duvalier

Throughout the world, various cultures have ways of honoring departed family members and loved ones.  Many of us in the west are family for All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days, which is a time to clean and decorated family graves with candles and flowers and offer prayers for them at home and in church. In Mexico and Central America altars erected for these Days of the Dead and can be quite elaborate and exquisitely beautiful.  In the…
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In a very short amount of time the entire city was covered by an avalanche of volcanic rock and ash and thousands of people perished.  The city was discovered once again in the early 18th century and has been in excavation ever since.  The victims of Mt. Vesuvius’s eruption were entombed in fiery ash and many centuries later it was discovered that if workers poured plaster into cavities in the earth, an exact replica of a person…
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Peace be with you, my friends!  June was a whirlwind of a month as it always is, with the Feast of St. John.  It was truly a magical night and we ended up making over 200 offerings to the spirits and saints.  After a week of rest and recuperation, I am finally back to operating at full speed. Today I wanted to take the time to mention that I have two books available for purchase on amazon.com – Voodoo Love Magic and The November Vampires.

Last night was another important spiritual holiday, The Festival of the Hungry Ghosts, which is Asian in origin and not a traditional observance in Voodoo, but I have incorporated it into my yearly repertoire of spiritual holidays.  It is a time to honor spirits of ancestors and spirit guides on the other side and also to pray for those forgotten souls who have nobody left on earth to honor them.  There are legends in Taiwan and mainland…
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In fact, the term “Hungry Ghost,” refers to this particular class of spirits who are in most need of prayers, food offerings, incense and spirit money, about which I have blogged extensively in previous posts.  Throughout China, Taiwan and Singapore people gather at temples and adorn private altars at home with such offerings to ensure that the dead are happy in the afterlife and so that they in turn will bless the living with good fortune. Yesterday,…
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