New Review of Vodou Money Magic

Gesigewigu's, a regular contributor at Spiral Nature, recently posted a review of Vodou Money Magic. While the review was generally quite complimentary, G. had one criticism:

This book seemed like it was advocating a personal devotional religion for financial aid. It just seemed to be going the wrong direction, imagine “Join the Church, learn how Jesus can get you money” as a parallel, and that’s what felt off with the book. The religion is one of dedication and personal relationships, and I think undertaking such a relationship only for financial gain is the wrong path.

I think G. may be overemphasizing the dichotomy between a religion of dedication and one for financial gain. Many Vodouisants love their lwa: they praise them effusively, build enormous and elaborate shrines for them, hold ceremonies in their honor and show their respect in a number of direct and tangible ways. But as they provide for their lwa, so they expect that their lwa will provide for them.  Nor is this attitude unique to Vodou, as we can see in this excerpt from J.G. Frazer's classic The Golden Bough:

In April 1888 the mandarins of Canton prayed to the god Lung-wong to stop the incessant downpour of rain; and when he turned a deaf ear to their petitions they put him in a lock-up for five days. This had a salutary effect. The rain ceased and the god was restored to liberty. Some years before, in time of drought, the same deity had been chained and exposed to the sun for days in the courtyard of his temple in order that he might feel for himself the urgent need of rain. So when the Siamese need rain, they set out their idols in the blazing sun; but if they want dry weather, they unroof the temples and let the rain pour down on the idols. They think that the inconvenience to which the gods are thus subjected will induce them to grant the wishes of their worshippers.

The reader may smile at the meteorology of the Far East; but precisely similar modes of procuring rain have been resorted to in Christian Europe within our own lifetime. By the end of April 1893 there was great distress in Sicily for lack of water. The drought had lasted six months. Every day the sun rose and set in a sky of cloudless blue. The gardens of the Conca d’Oro, which surround Palermo with a magnificent belt of verdure, were withering. Food was becoming scarce. The people were in great alarm. All the most approved methods of procuring rain had been tried without effect. Processions had traversed the streets and the fields. Men, women, and children, telling their beads, had lain whole nights before the holy images. Consecrated candles had burned day and night in the churches. Palm branches, blessed on Palm Sunday, had been hung on the trees. At Solaparuta, in accordance with a very old custom, the dust swept from the churches on Palm Sunday had been spread on the fields. In ordinary years these holy sweepings preserve the crops; but that year, if you will believe me, they had no effect whatever. At Nicosia the inhabitants, bare-headed and bare-foot, carried the crucifixes through all the wards of the town and scourged each other with iron whips. It was all in vain. Even the great St. Francis of Paolo himself, who annually performs the miracle of rain and is carried every spring through the market-gardens, either could not or would not help. Masses, vespers, concerts, illuminations, fire-works—nothing could move him.

At last the peasants began to lose patience. Most of the saints were banished. At Palermo they dumped St. Joseph in a garden to see the state of things for himself, and they swore to leave him there in the sun till rain fell. Other saints were turned, like naughty children, with their faces to the wall. Others again, stripped of their beautiful robes, were exiled far from their parishes, threatened, grossly insulted, ducked in horse-ponds. At Caltanisetta the golden wings of St. Michael the Archangel were torn from his shoulders and replaced with wings of pasteboard; his purple mantle was taken away and a clout wrapt about him instead. At Licata the patron saint, St. Angelo, fared even worse, for he was left without any garments at all; he was reviled, he was put in irons, he was threatened with drowning or hanging. “Rain or the rope!” roared the angry people at him, as they shook their fists in his face.

There are many people for whom a love spell or a money spell serves as an introduction to the religion of Haitian Vodou. There are many others who keep a strictly business relationship with the lwa, making offerings in exchange for their assistance in material matters. Neither approach is wrong. What is wrong is treating the lwa (or other spirits) as what Raven Kaldera has called "the Big Barbie who gives you stuff." The relationship between serviteurs and their spirits is a reciprocal one. The lwa do not offer unconditional love and unlimited abundance. They bless those who bless them and expect payment for services rendered. If one is unwilling to pay for those services - and the tab can be steep! -  then it is best to avoid the lwa altogether.

Kenaz Filan appearance in Princeton, New Jersey (October 2, 2010)

I will be speaking on Vodou Money Magic at Crucible on Saturday, October 2, 2010. Crucible is a gathering of magical practitioners from various traditions and backgrounds, Its organizer, Arthur Moyer, is a friend of mine and the founder of Omnimancy, an interesting school of energy manipulation and non-ritual magic. I look forward to meeting some of my online correspondents there and hope at least some of you can make it!

Response on "Spiritual Occultist" re Voodoo Dolls

This is a response I recently posted to the Yahoo group Spiritual Occultist concerning the use of "voodoo dolls" in New Orleans Voodoo. (The original essay, which was reposted to Yahoo, can be found at Haunted American Tours).

Popular among slaves, some speculate that making voodoo dolls and sticking them with pins was one method by which the slave could exert some control over the master: from the very start white plantation owners, mostly of European descent, feared this and its obvious connection to the more familiar poppet magic of their cultures. More often than not, however, the voodoo doll was employed as a weapon against other believers in voodoo, or vodusi, who did not hesitate to use it and immediately recognized its consequences. Primitive dolls, often bound with twine or cat-gut and stuck through with everything from pins to fish bones, have been unearthed on several plantations in South Louisiana, evidence that the concept of vicarious punishment through use of an image doll was firmly in place among the African slave populations of 18th and 19th century Louisiana.

1) Sticking pins in poppets to curse someone is almost exclusively a European practice. There are definitely some hair-raising African and African-American curses, but they are typically transmitted through the feet i.e. by sprinkling powder in your opponent's path or on his doorstep, or by getting some dust from her footprints and mixing it with various noxious substances.
2) There WAS a Kongo tradition of sticking nails and pins into a power object (nkisi) but it was not intended for curses: rather, it was meant to wake up the spirit indwelling in the object. Sme pictures of nkisi nail fetishes can be found here.

But the idea of using voodoo dolls and other forms of hexes such as gris-gris and mojo,

Gris-gris and mojo bags are generally built not to hex but to bring good luck to their owners.

The lore of 19th century voodoo is filled with the tales of victims of this vengeful magic who awoke after a fitful night’s sleep to find bones, graveyard dust and the inevitable voodoo doll laying on their porch steps — placed there in the darkness by Marie Laveaux herself. The tales would otherwise be a footnote in New Orleans history were it not for the fact that, according to reliable sources, nearly all the voodoo Marie Laveau performed actually worked.

So far as I know, there is only one fairly reliable tale connecting Marie Laveau to a doll - the records of a court trial wherein Mme. Laveau and another Voodoo Queen had a dispute over the ownership of an "ugly fetish" which was almost certainly a Kongo nkisi. See Carolyn Morrow Long's excellent book A New Orleans Voudou Priestess: The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau for more information on that.

Some proponents of Voodoo as a religion attempt to distance themselves from the voodoo doll cursing tradition and there are many examples of dolls created for more positive purposes such as healing and spiritual enlightenment. These practitioners claim that use of voodoo dolls for vengeance and punishment is a form of Bokor (Black) Voodoo that has contributed to the bad reputation the religion has had to bear over the centuries.

The word "Bokor" only appears in Haitian Vodou and in later-period (post 1970s) New Orleans Voodoo. It describes a particular type of sorcerer and has nothing to do with blackness (which would be "neg" in Kreyol and "noir" in French). And there is a long tradition of using dolls for benevolent purposes, or as homes for benevolent/protective spirits, in African Diaspora traditions.

But it remains a fact that most, if not all, people who seek out a Voodoo practitioner for the creation and manipulation of a Voodoo doll is usually bent on vengeance, at a minimum, or often genuine, irreversible harm. There is something viscerally satisfying about pricking and puncturing an effigy of your worst enemy; the natural expansion of this concept lends itself easily to the act of greater harm and the consequent feeling of control one can obtain from this.

Among people seeking a modern day New Orleans Voodoo practitioner, this may be true. In Haitian Vodou someone seeking a doll is more likely trying to provide a home for a spirit.

More than just consecrating the doll as the image of a certain person, a lot of the “magic” of making voodoo dolls, especially “black” voodoo dolls, comes from the person creating it. Traditionally, the maker is instructed to concentrate all her thought and effort into the making of the doll, envisioning during the construction all the evil that can possibly be heaped on the victim. Some practitioners will spend days in the creation and “charging” of their doll, keeping it in sight and venting their anger and frustration at the doll until, when the time comes, the doll is finally given the name of the intended victim and the ritual abuse of the voodoo doll can begin. This process, according to experts in the field, rarely fails, unless the will of the creator falters at some point. The resulting humiliation or punishment of the victim may then be less potent than otherwise intended.

This is a common way of charging a poppet in European witchcraft. While it can be quite effective, it once again owes more to European folk customs than African ones.

A form of positive (though still manipulative) magic for which the voodoo doll is excellently suited is the traditional magic “binding.” In this instance, the practitioner ritually binds the voodoo doll, charged and named for the individual in question, from doing harm or evil toward others. Thus bound, the ill-intentioned efforts of that person will come to nothing; the person whom the practitioner has protected will experience no harm at the hands of a person thus bound. Conversely, a person can be bound with evil intent and although this is often used in Bokor Voodoo the tradition is an ancient one.

This is an interesting issue. In many Kongo traditions one "binds" a spirit by tying it with thread or string. The idea is not that you are capturing or enslaving the spirit. Rather, you are helping the spirit to stay comfortably in its new house, much as you tie your shoes so you can walk in them.

“Just don’t name it unless you really intend to use it.” This is the warning given by most reputable mambos or priestesses who provide such items to the public. Obviously, how a voodoo doll is used depends on the person who owns it, but there have been instances where even the most garish-looking tourist trinket voodoo doll has ultimately caused harm — however minor — after arriving at its destination. The lesson here should be obvious.

I am inclined to agree with this. Someone with the right degree of anger and will can use just about anything as a focus, and it's not all that difficult to catch the attention of the spirit world. When you put out a bright shiny "voodoo doll" beacon, you may well find something that wants to inhabit it - and said "something" may not be benevolent or easily controlled.

Other dolls available are rendered in synch with devotion to a particular Lwa but are designed to invoke the power of the Lwa in the owner’s life. These devotional dolls are created more for actual use than for display, and since most are one of a kind, created from an intimate consultation with a practicing mambo or priest, the dolls are highly prized and extremely personal. These dolls are also kept very secure because any ill-intentioned person possessing such a creation can produce no end of aggravation and harm to the devotee it represents.

This is actually the most common way that dolls are used in Haitian Vodou and other Afro-Caribbean traditions.

Another use of dolls in authentic Vodou practice is the incorporation of plastic doll babies in altars and objects used to represent or honor the spirits, or in pwen, which recalls the aforementioned use of bocio and nkisi figures in Africa.

The bottom of this page features some excellent examples of Haitian doll sculpture from the master of the craft, the late Pierrot Barra.

Neopagan Voodoo (for Houngan Aboudja)

Houngan Aboudja, a longtime acquaintance, recently posted a link to my Patheos article on the future of Vodou.  Aboudja and I differ on some issues and have occasionally butted heads. He is much more a stickler for tradition and reglamen than I am: he is also considerably more knowledgeable about many traditional details and secrets. I respect his opinion even if I don't always share it, and have frequently taken advantage of his wisdom. 

From Aboudja to another poster:

to the comments in your last post ref: "people wanting options", there seem to be a number of people (read White folks) who would, ummm... like to take the Black out of this thing, the reason for which I take SERIOUS issue with

I have certainly met people who were fascinated by Vodou but reluctant to go into "bad" neighborhoods and spend time with dark-skinned Haitian-Americans.  (Public Enemy was onto something when they talked about Fear of a Black Planet!) While we are seeing more Neopagans of color, the religion remains overwhelmingly white. And though racism is generally seen as taboo among modern Neopagans, their version of "multiculturalism" can sometimes be problematic. Often it involves using the trappings and traditions of other people without actually going through the effort of meeting said peoples. I would encourage non-Haitians who are interested in Vodou to learn about Haitian culture and to make some Haitian friends and acquaintances. It is impossible to understand the lwa and their service without knowing something of the country and the people from whence that service began.

That being said, I would note that "learning about Haitian culture" may involve more than spending a couple of weeks in a resort which caters to Vodou tourists. I'd rather see a circle of well-meaning Pagans invoking La Sirene for a Healing the Gulf of Mexico circle than see overprivileged Newagers presenting themselves as Vodou clergy when they've only been to one Vodou ceremony - the one where they received their asson. The former may not be doing Vodou, but at least they're not treating their vacations as spiritual experiences or pretending to be authorities on a tradition they barely know.

Later in the thread, Aboudja replied:

how are the mysteries reacting? On the one hand, I cannot say what is in someone's heart! That is between them and GOD. So how can I judge that? On the other hand, as spiritual people we all know there are "other spirits" more tha...n happy to "play along" with someone who doesn't otherwise know what they are doing. When the High Schmoo of such-n-such coven tells me she is a "Priests of Ursula Freeda" and I look and find this so-called "Freeda" served smoking cigarettes and eating pineapple... I call BULLSHIT!


Now, you bring up several points... is it my job to point out that at best these people are fooling themselves or at worse they have some random spirit (prob from the cemetery) playing "Ursula Freeeda dress-up" and making them feel important while it gets fed by them for its own agenda? No, it is not.

One of the advantages of working within a tradition and learning from an elder is the ability to determine whether or not one is doing things correctly. As Houngan Aboudja correctly states, there are spirits who will take advantage of the naive. If you don't know the lwa - meaning you haven't seen them manifest in possession and interact with the congregation - it's hard to tell the difference between a phony and a real lwa. And without a guide one's road to Gineh may be a very convoluted one: a lot of the available public information on the lwa is misleading or flat-out wrong.

Here's a concrete example: I regularly see people going to Erzulie Freda for love spells, because she is the "love goddess of Vodou."  For one thing, Freda is more connected to luxury and beauty than to love: I would compare her to Lakshmi, Hindu goddess of wealth and fortune, rather than Aphrodite. For another, going to Freda for love is likely to get you a tumultuous, drama-filled affair with a gorgeous diva than a solid relationship with a life partner. And to top everything off, Freda can be one of the most difficult and dangerous lwa to work with. She is easily offended and demands the best offerings you can give her. But by her nature she is impossible to satisfy: our reality can never measure up to her ideals.

Still another example: in Haitian Vodou practitioners have certain lwa who "walk with them." Some lwa follow the Vodouisant since birth: others may have been introduced to the Vodouisant by a Houngan or may have followed the Vodouisant home from a sacred place. One who does not "have" Agwe or Azaka by birth or introduction may call on them until the manatees come home and get no response - or get snookered by a trickster spirit. To discover one's lwa, one typically attends fets or consults a Houngan or Mambo. Serving any lwa that strikes your fancy may work by process of hitting and missing - but it's an awfully inefficient way of going about things.

I also run into many people who say things like "I am totally a fighter and a ladies' man, so of course I've got Ogou on my head" or "I'm a big ol' flaming queen, so you know Erzulie Freda owns me."  And it very well could be that by serving those spirits these well-meaning people are unbalancing themselves. It could well be that scrappy Ogou-lover would do better to serve Damballah and other spirits that would cool his head, while our flamboyant fashion designer might need the grounding and common-sense approach of Mama Danto. What we want and what we need may be two different things.

I expect to see continuing interest in African and African Diaspora practices among Neopagans. This is not necessarily a bad thing. One need not be clergy to serve the lwa. In fact, for most people, a kanzo would be an expensive and arduous process that would bring them more obligations than rewards.  And I expect to see continuing tensions between traditionalists and more free-form practitioners.  I also hope to see greater dialogue and respect between the two factions: there are many different roads by which a sincere and dedicated servitor can find the way to Gineh.

Even More Not All Fun and Games: Danger, Death and Assassination

My earlier post on Gods and their demands has inspired a lot of intelligent commentary and a fair bit of controversy - just what one wants in a blog post. I wanted to follow up on some of the issues raised and see if we can keep this discussion going a big longer.

Jack Faust made this point about my interview with Galina Krasskova: while I can't speak for Galina, I can provide my thoughts:

You've discussed taboos, Godslavery, and ordeals. I'm re-reading these entries now as I watch this...

... I've yet to see you discuss a majorly positive influence that's come out of your godslavery, or your ordeals. You've discussed it all technically, and discussed why people object to it, and I've felt plenty of "modernist" disgust in your words. So, if it's made you better and stronger... why isn't this the last thing you cover every single time you discuss one of the things that will trigger people?

There are many websites which will promise you prosperity, good health, love and all-around bliss if only you buy their spells or sign on to their metaphysical agenda. (The latter is often far more expensive than the former!)  There is far less emphasis on the costs and hazards of spirituality and mysticism. Enlightenment often comes at a very steep price: if you let the Gods into your life, they may well renovate it to suit Their designs. And I think it is important to let aspiring mages and mystics know that up front. If we seem at times to accentuate the negative, it's only because we want to provide a counterweight.

I have known many serious and competent magicians and mystics. Most have felt the knowledge and skills they attained through training were worth all the effort. Those who have actually attained the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel or set foot in Nirvana find that the experience is an ample reward for all their hard work and sacrifice.  But there has always been a price for this knowledge, frequently a heavy one. Tiresias becomes a great diviner and prophet after being blinded: Agave gains ecstatic knowledge of Dionysus - and then rips her son Pentheus to shreds: Aleister Crowley spent his inheritance and died in a shabby boarding house.  Let us not cheapen their, and our, victory by minimizing its costs.


Frater R.O., meanwhile, said:

Hermetic doctrine teaches that we're supposed to get in harmony with our fates and work with the gods to create the world, to manifest the things that begin in the Mind of God (Nous) as Ideas within our spheres of influence.

If the Idea is our death, the Gods are to administer that "fate" and make it happen, and our personal opinions on the matter don't... matter.

But the magician accomplishing the Great Work would be in harmony with the Idea naturally, and would agree with their death, in theory.

They would also see it from the perspective of eternity, a perspective we can share with our god brothers and god sisters. It wouldn't seem like a capricious act by an arrogant slave owner treating us like useless property to be broken and thrown away at whim.

Many people have willingly gone to their deaths for a Cause. The urge to be swallowed up in Something Greater is hard-wired into us: we're descended from a long line of pack animals.  And contemplation of Eternity helps us to avoid thoughts of our own mortality, not to mention that instinct which says "Wait a minute. I could get KILLED doing that..." By passing down our blood or aiding our herd, we hope to cheat the reaper and continue on after the demise of our flesh. This has given the desperate and dying much comfort in their final hours: it has also been used by clever leaders to inspire mighty armies.  

A magician who has accomplished the Great Work, like a magician who has not, will one day confront the mystery of bodily Death.  Both will need to find some sort of meaning to their impending end, and both will learn that which we do not and cannot know.  Presumably both will also seek to give their lives, and the way in which they end their lives, as much meaning as possible. But whether they go gentle or raging into that good night, the dusk will fall on them nonetheless.

And Arxacies noted: 

I think that's the rub. You are assuming that what the Gods are asking you to do is "right". In light of the lore that we have I think that assumption is very much open to question.

What if someone is a devotee of Ares and he wants his devotee to kill a group of anti-war protesters? It could very well really be Ares that is asking for that(he has done far worse, as have almost all of the Gods we know of), but is it right? From what you have said in past posts it could be argued that he is a God and can force the devotee to comply. Would his might make the devotee killing the protesters right?

This brings us to an interesting point. Søren Kierkegaard wrote an excellent book on the ramifications of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac and the "Bog People" found throughout northern Europe suggest a long history of Gods demanding human sacrifice.  And there are plenty of historical and legendary examples of individual and even collective murder for violations of the social and religious order. So what do we do if our Gods decide that some idiot, or some group of idiots, needs to die - and we need to be the agent of their divine will?

While "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is frequently presented as an absolute, in practice it has a footnote saying "This does not apply in the case of military personnel or law enforcement operating in the line of duty.  Nor does it apply in case of executions performed according to laws of the subject jurisdiction.  There is varying case law on questions of abortion and euthanasia: consult your spiritual professional before proceeding further."  And though assassinations and terrorist attacks are distasteful, they can certainly be effective - and may arguably save lives in the long run. (Remember the old saw about "what if you could go back in time and kill Adolf Hitler as a baby?") 

We are in deep waters here. I do not wish to advocate violence. Nor do I minimize the danger of misinterpreting or misrepresenting the will of the Gods.  But still I can't help but wonder: if our Gods might ask us to die for a worthy cause, might they not also ask us to kill for one?

Myths of America II: American Mythology in Theory and Practice

In response to my earlier post about Myths of America, Nutty Professor asked:

It could be that American myths are only as important as the ways that they are enacted. They may be internalized, true, but how are they "played out" in the cycle of eternal return where myth inhabits the social/lived realm?

Discussing all the ways in which American myths and preconceptions shape our spirituality would require several thick and carefully referenced volumes. But there are a few recurring themes I've noted on various forums: as a partial answer to the Professor's question, I might offer a few talking points on some of them.

Many American Pagans have jettisoned the coven structure altogether, choosing to act as their own High Priests and Priestesses. Their spiritual development comes not through membership in a faith-based community but through their own individual efforts. Sometimes they radically reinterpret their lives to incorporate their new spiritual paths: more often they reinterpret various spiritual paths to suit their lives. This plays into our Protestant distaste for clerical hierarchies, our frontier/colonial emphasis on self-reliance and our immigrant love of self-reinvention.  One's relationship to the Divine is preeminent, not one's relationship with our fellow worshippers or loyalty to a spiritual teacher.

Contrast this with the views cherished in many other traditions. In Hinduism one is expected to learn at the foot of a guru with an appropriate lineage. That guru is afforded a veneration which might make many Westerners very uncomfortable. A HPs or trance channeler who expected students to kiss hir feet and burn candles before hir picture would be scorned as a demagogue and wannabe cult leader. We give the Dalai Lama all sorts of humanitarian awards, but tap-dance around his claim of being the latest incarnation of Avalokitesvara. And while we have innumerable guidebooks for solitary practitioners, a Yoruba proverb reminds us that "a knife cannot carve its own handle."

The New Age and neo-Shamanic movements have created industries dedicated to repackaging indigenous movements for Americans. To be fair, this didn't necessarily start on our side of the Big Pond. H.P. Blavatsky adapted Hinduism to suit Victorian tastes. But then much of the American New Age is the bastard child of a coke-fueled gang bang between Madame Helena and various New Thought figures. (A long-suppressed film reputedly shows a double penetration scene featuring Norman Vincent Peale and Napoleon Hill... ). Given our status as a former colony, it's not surprising that we have internalized many colonialist ideas. It is not surprising that we may see other cultures primarily in terms of their usefulness, or that we wish to export our ideals (be they "Christianity" or "Democracy") to the world.

This is not to say that America's myths are entirely misguided or completely wrong. (Few myths are!) We have committed many sins in fulfilling our manifest destiny, and we have often failed to live up to our own standards. But the same fervent moralism that inspired the Puritans has driven many of our most ardent reformers. The culture which gave the world Jerry Falwell  and Carrie Nation also produced Martin Luther King, Susan B. Anthony and Eugene V. Debs: it inspired both Glenn Beck and Noam Chomsky.  While we should be aware of our shortcomings, let us not minimize our triumphs.

"Face Jugs": Kongo pottery in the New World

Last night the PBS program History Detectives had a very interesting program about a "face jug" found in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. While detectives Gwendolyn Wright and Tufuku Zuberi were not able to ascertain precisely how this jug made it to the City of Brotherly Love, they were able to trace it to one of the last American shipments of African slaves.

On the evening of November 28, 1858 the Wanderer docked at Jekyl Island, Georgia. Its cargo hold contained 409 men, women and children - the survivors of the 487 slaves purchased in Benguela, a river port in modern-day Angola. A number of these slaves wound up laboring in the pottery industry in Edgefield, South Carolina. There they became famous for their alkaline-glazed stoneware and for their grimacing, wide-eyed face jugs.

Among the people Dr. Zuberi interviewed was Jim McDowell, an African-American potter who makes contemporary face jugs (also known as "ugly jugs," since they, like medieval gargoyles, are supposed to be ugly enough to scare the devil).  Dr. Mark Newell of the Georgia Archaeological Institute pointed out the similarities between these jugs and Kongolese minkisi, power objects which provided homes for spirits.

It is especially noteworthy that the Georgetown jug was discovered while the present owner's grandfather was digging a ditch. These jugs were frequently buried at the threshold of a home to protect the family against evil. Compare this to the baka of Haitian Vodou, a guardian spirit created by a process which involves burying sacred objects and animals. Mr. McDowell also noted that these jugs were used to mark burial sites. Those who have read Robert Farris Thompson will recognize similar Kongo-inspired burial decorations found on African-American gravesites. And while Edgefield is particularly famous for their face jugs, the cover of John Burrison's Brothers in Clay: the Story of Georgia Folk Pottery suggests that this art form could be found throughout the slaveholding United States.

This was one of the most interesting installments yet on a consistently interesting program, and is well worth a viewing.