Yep, even MORE on the Voudon Gnostic Workbook: For Fr. Barrabbas and Kojat

My postings on Bertiaux's Voudon Gnostic Workbook continue to attract controversy and page views. (I should have known better than to fool around with praeterhuman plasmotronic Afro-Zothyrian death computers).  I've been remiss in my responses, and wanted to get back to the ever-interesting Frater Barrabbas and talk a bit about his unflattering portrait of Michael Bertiaux.

I found him to be cruel, manipulative, ruthless, and completely without any human compassion whatsoever. This is not the kind of person that you could trust, believe in, nor would you place yourself into his hands for any reason. I would rather offer my head to the gaping jaws of a crocodile than give myself into the hands of this man.....

... Michael used a form of sexual terrorism to get his students into the right frame of mind for his various occult and magickal operations. He would select an approach that was guaranteed to frighten and unbalance his subject, acting as either a homosexual or a heterosexual lover, as it suited him. His unwanted advances would be rationalized as being the only manner that such occult knowledge and initiatory mysteries could be communicated. It was an excuse to sexually abuse and exploit individuals who came seeking knowledge and special teachings, and Bertiaux had no problem obliging those foolish enough to accede to his desires.

Based on what Frater B. says (and I've found him to be a reliable narrator), Bertiaux sounds like a singularly unpleasant person who is not above using his magical offices to get sexual favors.  This kind of  power-tripping and sexual predation is not uncommon in the magical community.  (Given our debt to Aleister Crowley, it could hardly be otherwise).  But Frater B's account is particularly important because it points to some thorny ethical and practical questions about magic.

Bertiaux's published work on Gnostic Voudon describes a number of sex magic practices.  It is not surprising that at least some GV initiations might involve sexual contact with the initiator.  While this is not done in Haitian Vodou (or any other African or Afro-Caribbean tradition of my acquaintance), there is definitely precedent for it. Did his bishops get anything out of their "initiations" besides a sore sphincter?  Uncle Al certainly experimented with the XIº from both sides of the fence. Was he transmitting esoteric knowledge or getting his rocks off with gullible acolytes? And could the answer to that question be "yes?"

Another question which comes to mind: is it wrong to trade sexual favors for spiritual attainments?  Most consider it acceptable to take money in exchange for teaching, divination and other services.  Why would it be wrong to accept a roll in the hay as payment for magic? If we are spiritual beings on a human path, we might as well use all our assets to better our position.  Is trading our bodies for wisdom more degrading than expecting it to be given to us for free? Again, I don't know if there are any easy answers to that one.  But it's definitely a question which deserves some thought, preferably after meditating on the mysteries of goddesses like Freyja and Aphrodite.

I've said that Bertiaux, like Grant, is a great Surrealist. There's also a healthy dose of Andy Warhol thrown into that mix.  He played the role of obscure, reclusive magician and used it to become an underground celebrity.  You can love him or hate him: you can praise his erudition, excoriate his racist and colonialist preconceptions, or scratch your head in utter bafflement. But sooner or later you end up talking about him - and that may be his greatest magical achievment of all.

Yep, Still MORE on The Vodoun Gnostic Workbook

First: it appears that my blog was busily engaged in comment-swallowing for a bit. Apologies to Gordon and others whose words may have been lost in the aethyr.

Seshat's last comment: my reply follows.

Hi Kenaz,

Thanks for posting a reply to the reply

There are high priests in Benin Voudon, which of course is the cradle of all Voudon.

And as to accusing Bertiaux/VGs of being racist you then say you didn’t know CW was black because he didn’t have a “black name” LOL Now who’s the racist?

As a bisexual woman, I have no problem with nude gay wrestling, do you? …

I think enough has been said and normal service will be resuming on my blog.

Best wishes
Seshat

I had always heard the heads of Beninois temples called “Chiefs” rather than High Priests. But I’d also caution you that there are many major differences between Beninois and Haitian practices. (One friend of mine, a Houngan Asogwe who is currently doing field work in Benin, has noted that Benin Vodoun shares some spirit-names with Haitian Vodou but that Haitian practices have a much stronger Kongo slant than Beninois).

I never said Courtney Willis didn’t have a “black” name – I said that his name didn’t sound Haitian. (i.e. French – although you do have some Haitians with Polish and German last names thanks to interesting accidents of history). As I said, the question would not be “is CW black?” but “is CW Haitian?” If Mr. Willis is indeed Haitian, then my apologies.

As far as nude gay oil wrestling goes, I have no problems with it at all: I might even be inclined to participate if the participants were sufficiently attractive and all parties were using a water-based lubricant that didn’t break down latex But I have not yet run into any Haitian Vodou rituals that involve nude gay oil wrestling: neither have I seen any Afro-Atlantean time travel performed.

Again, I actually rather liked Bertiaux’s work as a Surrealist text and have found quite a few of his magical ideas to be profound and effective. I believe he had some experience with Haitian practices, and that he was a polymath who did extensive research in several fields (his comments on logical philosophy are excellent and suggest he is a very erudite man, for example). But I remain unconvinced that his OTOA/LCN has any kind of a direct, unbroken lineage to current or historical Haitian practices.

Still More on the Voudon Gnostic Workbook

My earlier post on Michael Bertiaux's Voudon Gnostic Workbook provoked a rather heated response from Star of Seshat.  I thought I would address some of her concerns here:

Kenaz, I have rarely read such an ill-informed polemic piece which can only be sparked by someone, desperately trying to sell mediocre books like Vodou love magic to a naive audience, while posing like a Voudon High priest while knowing obviously very little.

I'm not a "Voudon High Priest," nor have I ever heard that term used by any Haitian or Haitian-American. I am a Houngan Si Pwen, initiated in March 2003 at Société la Belle Venus #2 in Brooklyn New York by Mambo Azan Taye (Edeline St.-Amand) and Houngan Si Gan Temps (Hugue Pierre).  I leave judgment on Vodou Love Magic to my readers.  I will, however, note that commentary on Bertiaux and his lineage is a singularly inefficient way to drum up sales for a book on love spells.

You clearly have no idea of Haitian secret societies and their incorporation of martinist and other concepts which are clearly and strongly present in various lineages of zobop, bizango etc. Even a read of Milo Rigaud’s books, an authority on Voudon, would have explained a lot.

I know enough about the Secret Societies of Haiti to know that some of the words which Bertiaux, Beth, etc. toss around as synonyms describe different - and frequently mutually hostile - societies.  "Zobop" is not "Sect Rouge" is not "Bizango" is not "Vingblingding" is not "Sanpwel" etc.  The fact that these groups are often conflated in OTOA/LCN work raises a red flag for me - as does Bertiaux's conflation of Haitian Vodou (Voudon) and African-American "Lucky Hoodoo."  I do have some knowledge of Martinism, since my Mama Kanzo is a Martinist and since I've read a fair bit of Martinist literature in both English and French.  I stand by my original statement that I find little Martinism in Bertiaux's work.

All this being said, I am not an initiate in any Haitian secret society, nor am I an initiated Martinist. So it could well be that I have missed the parts which describe naked homosexual Guede oil wrestling or Afro-Atlantean time travel techniques. If this is indeed the case, my apologies to you, Messrs. Bertiaux, Beth and Willis and the OTOA/LCN.

Regarding Rigaud, take a look at his Secrets of Vodou, particularly the part where he describes the various spirits.  You'll see among his list "Erzulie La Belle Venus:" Rigaud encountered this lwa at the home of Mambo Edeline's grandfather.  And I have no doubt that Bertiaux was heavily influenced by Rigaud's work. (I also provided a link to another possible source in my original post: if you read French, you should definitely check out Her-Ma-Ra-El's book).

To accuse Bertiaux and his school of trying to remove Voudon from the hands of black people is similarly strange as the current head of the OTOA\LCN, C. Willis is black (while you on the other hand are very white :) – also the VGW is full of glowing excitement for African and Haitian Gnosis in various forms and Bertiaux tirelessly attributes all his knowledge to Mstr. Jean Maine, a black Haitian.

The comment about "removing Voudon from the hands of black people" came from Adam McGee, not yours truly.  I thought he raised many interesting points which deserved further discussion, but those were his words, not mine.

As far as Courtney Willis goes, I have never met the man nor have I seen a picture of him so I have no way of knowing his race.  From his name, I'm guessing that he is no more Haitian than I am.  If that is the case, his skin color is irrelevant: while the vast majority of Haitians are black, the vast majority of blacks are not Haitian.  And as far as Lucien-François Jean-Maine, how do you answer Peter Koenig's essay which discusses the difficulties in confirming the account of the OTOA's lineage?

As I said before, I think Bertiaux's work is an interesting piece of contemporary Surrealism and one which has had a great influence on many contemporary magical practitioners.  Like many writers before him, I believe Bertiaux threw in a creation mythos to give his ideas more historical heft.  (Would anyone have taken Gurdjieff seriously if he skipped the whole Meetings With Remarkable Men schtick and said "I came up with this stuff while I was selling carpets in some obscure Armenian market?")  But I think the evidence for the OTOA/LCN's Haitian lineage is shaky to non-existent, creation myths notwithstanding.

The Voudon Gnostic Workbook

Recently a rather heated discussion ensued on a private Facebook group concerning Michael Bertiaux's notorious Voudon Gnostic Workbook. Many participants were outraged with Bertiaux's free and easy blend of sex magic, Reichean orgone work, Afro-Atlantean Transdimensional Algebra, H.P. Lovecraft and deities only know what else.  I opined that Bertiaux's work was useful for practical magicians, and that it owed more debt to Surrealism than Haitian Vodou.  While it most certainly bears little resemblance to anything I've learned from Haitians or Haitian-Americans, it is effective as a thing in itself.

Adam McGee, a scholar at Harvard University, offered an excellent counterpoint:

I have to offer a dissenting view, insofar as I must question the criteria by which you evaluate the system as "worthwhile." Something can be powerful and yet morally repugnant. And morally repugnant it is. Michael Bertiaux's Vodoun Gnostic Workbook presents a vision of Haiti that is infantilizing, colonialist, and racist. Bertiaux writes of Vodou as something that must be lifted out of the hands of Haitians, who do not and cannot understand its complexities. Bertiaux, by introducing a purposely esotericizing language, seeks to "restore" to the control of (white) magi a Vodou that he proposes has Atlantean origins. This has precise historical parallels in the way that some Europeans, upon first viewing the Ile-Ife bronzes, that they had discovered the lost civilization of Atlantis because surely Africans could not have produced such sophisticated art. Having thus expunged from Vodou its most irreducibly Haitian--i.e. black--elements, Bertiaux then reconstructs it as a libidinal space for the performance of lurid sex rituals. This version of "Vodoun" recycles racist stereotypes of hypersexed black bodies and surely draws on H.P. Lovecraft''s depictions of hypersexual, ultraviolent "black voodoo cults." This cannot be defended by recourse to arguments of religious freedom or laissez-faire liberalism.

I agree that Bertiaux's work contains some uncomfortably racist and colonialist ideas and preconceptions.  (It's still better, in my opinion, than Hyatt and Black's truly odious Urban Voodoo). But I felt that the VGW is so outré that few would mistake it for anything save the product of M. Bertiaux's impressively fevered imagination.  In that, I found it less potentially dangerous to the practice of Haitian Vodou than the ever-popular Vodou Initiation Tours. A bunch of sex magicians holding an "oral-anal Guede orgy" aren't likely to be taken as representatives of the tradition.  A plastic shaman who has put a plane ticket and a ceremony on his credit card might be taken seriously by a lazy journalist or a well-meaning but naive seeker.

My major beef with Bertiaux comes from his efforts to claim Haitian roots where none exist.  His OTOA (Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua) claims lineage through a Haitian Martinist, Gnostic Christian and Vodou priest Lucien-François Jean-Maine: L-F J-M is repeatedly quoted as the source for Bertaiux's work.  Yet as Thelemic scholar P.R. Koenig notes:

The reader must bear in mind that there is almost no documentary evidence of the History of the O.T.O.A. There is absolutely no trace of either L.-F. Jean-Maine or of his Gnostic Church, his Memphis Misraïm or his OTO-Version (O.T.O.A.) in any of the 'old' French Gnostic magazines. Obviously the History of the O.T.O.A. and its maze of related organisations seems to be developed by Marc Lully, Michael P. Bertiaux and Manuel C. Lamparter, and maybe Kenneth Grant, in the late 1960s. Bertiaux admitted that his History outline was written from notes drafted by Marc Lully; and those notes had been lost meanwhile.

I do not believe that Bertiaux made this stuff up out of whole cloth, but I suspect his "Haitian roots" come from his local library.  In particular, I suspect he read some early 20th century texts like Her-Ma-Ra-El (Arthur C. Holly)'s Les daïmons du culte vodou.   These works attempted to combine Vodou with other esoteric traditions to establish it as a Respectable World Religion rather than a savage negro cult.  (Their goals were certainly laudable, even if their scholarship was at times questionable...).  Combined with what he gleaned from Hurston, Deren, Seabrook and other Anglophone writers, he was able to create a "Vodou heritage" which would have looked reasonably plausible to readers in the late 1960s, when information on the topic was very scarce indeed -especially for monolingual English speakers.

As more information about Haitian culture and Vodou has become available, contemporary OTOA/LCN folks have begun de-emphasizing Martinism and drawing upon a supposed "Sect Rouge/Zobop" heritage.  This is convenient, as there is little or nothing written on Haiti's secret societies: it's also quite in keeping with the evolution of other origin myths.  (In the 18th and early 19th century Masons and Rosicrucians traced their heritage to Egypt: after the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone and growing knowledge of Egyptian mythology, secret societies began claiming roots in "Atlantis," "Lemuria" and other conveniently sunken continents... ).

I think Adam's comments about Bertiaux's motivation and racist preconceptions are worth exploring.  However, I might take them a step further.  How many foreigners practicing "authentic" Haitian Vodou are looking for Noble Savages and Little Brown Holy Men? How many see this tradition as a source of unsullied and primitive power, something which will free them from the taint of civilization and absolve them of their skin color? All too often I've found the loudest critics of "phony Vodou" are unwilling to question their own motivations or acknowledge their own privilege.  Their efforts to "protect the faith" look suspiciously like efforts by one group of outsiders to gain the moral high ground on another.

In the end, Bertiaux's work will stand as a thing in itself.  You can call it racist, you can call it incoherent, you can call it a brilliant piece of surrealism.  (I could make a case for all three).   I'm satisfied so long as you don't call it Haitian.