Possession, Safety, Law, Mental Illness and Mass Murder: More on the Spirituality of Spree Killing

Kudos are in order to Elizabeth Vongvisith and Del Tashlin for writing excellent blog entries which inspired me to finish this one.  Before parenthood intervened, I wanted to respond to a (now weeks-old) Wild Hunt post on James Holmes and the "demonic possession" narrative wherein Jason Pitzl-Waters stated:

The truth has always been that humanity needs no external spiritual help to do gross and inhumane things to one another, for reasons that can seem as opaque as this current case. We should collective reject any attempt to place a demonic possession narrative, especially a Catholic possession narrative, on these killings and instead focus on practical prevention and using our faith(s) to comfort those affected. Anything else is cynical, self-serving, and unneeded.

Jason rightly castigates the Catholic exorcist for his facile treatment of the issue.  Explaining away atrocity with a pat "the devil made him do it" is intellectually and spiritually unsatisfying: using atrocity to poke jabs at Harry Potter and Tarot cards is just gauche.  But I wonder if we might use possession not as a conversation-stopper but as a topic for further discussion and exploration.

I should note that I am not making any kind of pronouncements on James Holmes' mental or spiritual state.  As my wife Kathy Latzoni (Mambo Zetwal Kleye) pointed out, diagnosing possession on the internet is like trying to diagnose schizophrenia based on a few newspaper articles.   I have not been hired as a spiritual counselor by the prosecution or the defense and I have no way of knowing what spiritual forces, if any, drove Holmes to his terrible act.

But as one of the two people who wrote the book (OK, a book) on possession,  and as a hard polytheist who believes that the spirit world is a diverse and densely populated place, I cannot dismiss the possibility of violent possession out of hand. There is certainly precedent in folkloric and scholarly sources. The Malay "running amok" comes to mind immediately: two mediums and a spirit named Lakwena have instigated decades of bloody, brutal and ongoing civil war in Uganda. If we are open to the idea that spirits can give us good and useful advice we should also consider the possibility that they can lead us into madness, perversity and even murder.

Possession would not exonerate Holmes from the consequences of his actions. Alcoholics have a harder time saying "no" to a drink than someone with ethanol-tolerant genetics. But their disease does not provide a Get Out of Jail Free card when they get into drunken fights or get pulled over for driving under the influence. As Del (who, like yrs. truly, has first-hand experience both with possession and mental illness) says on his blog:

In fact, I take is as a moral imperative that I never excuse behavior that my body does, or words that my mouth utters, by passing the blame onto the Deity in question, even if that’s really what happened. I feel strongly that I am the gatekeeper here – I gave the Deity in question permission to use my body, I am the one who negotiated limits and boundaries, and if the Deity does something hurtful, or even worse, illegal, while wearing my skin, it’s ultimately me who has to pay the piper. I mean, would you actually consider telling a police officer, “Sorry I was running naked with a knife dripping in blood, but it wasn’t me, Sir. It was Kali Ma, who had possessed my body”? I didn’t think so.

The vast majority of possession experiences require planning and an ongoing relationship with the spirit who hopes to ride the horse. Even most cases of "involuntary" possession begin with someone opening a door -- using a Ouija board,  moving into a haunted house, etc. -- and then engaging with what they find on the other side. The spirits may use lies, promises and even threats to gain further access to the individual, but the individual must grant them that access.  (There are occasional truly involuntary possessions, but they tend to occur as mass movements.  The Klikushestvo  or "Shriekers" of imperial Russia and the Tarantella Pizzica of southern Italy are examples of this sort of mass hysteria.  Even here an academic might point out how these arose out of intense social pressures and fractures: a spirit-worker might note that people who are worn down by outside events are just as vulnerable to spirit infestation as to bacterial contagion).

African traditional religions take pains to purify the area before a ceremony and spend a great deal of time and energy on cleansing spaces and people. This is because they recognize the spirit world has some dark and dangerous corners. They understand that there are entities out there which do not have our best interests at heart: they work not for the highest and greatest good but for their own ends.  Not infrequently those ends involve wreaking havoc in the lives of those on this side of the veil.  And just as human sex predators and con artists prey on the vulnerable, these predators are wont to prey on those whose psyches are already fractured.

There's a tendency among many to frame mental illness and spirit possession as either/or.  In practice the lines are rarely so clear-cut.  One well-known Shamanic death/rebirth experience involves treading on the Madness Road -- an intense ego-disintegration and psychic meltdown which resembles garden-variety schizophrenia.  Those who have come back from this path (like yrs. truly) generally come away from the experience with some scars: almost 20 years after my meltdown I still have to keep constant guard lest The Crazy slip in again.  Certain psychological disorders can cause a heightened sensitivity to the spirit world, although they also produce difficulties in distinguishing between signal and noise.  And just as there are mental illnesses which can mimic possession, one can easily write off someone who is spirit-infested as "mentally ill" -- especially when you don't believe in a spirit realm and think that all religious expressions are psychopathologies.

In the Aurora case, we have evidence that Holmes plotted this attack for months. This is not the act of an automaton spontaneously possessed by a devil. If there was spiritual involvement in this, it was a collaborative effort.  Holmes was either the driving force or, at best. a willing participant seduced by something which took advantage of a disaffected, angry loner.  He may very well have planned the entire atrocity on his own. As Jason pointed out, humans are capable of doing all kinds of shitty things to each other without anybody egging them on.  Even if there were spiritual entities involved the evidence at present suggests he was a willing participant in their conspiracy, not a helpless pawn driven to slaughter against his will.

Were we to consider possession or spiritual infestation in a courtroom setting, it's likely that we would apply some variant of the M'Naghten Rule. According to Queen v. M'Naghten (1843) an insanity defense applies if and only if

at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from a disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.

By that standard, and given the evidence to date, it appears again that Holmes would be held liable for his actions.  And given that no remotely competent defense lawyer would mount a "possessed by the Joker" defense in this case for any number of reasons, it's most unlikely that this line of reasoning will ever be anything but speculative.

Yet amidst all these speculations I would raise this important point: the spirit world can be a dangerous place.  Murderous entities may be more common than we think. Richard Ramirez and his allegiance to Satan, Kenneth Bianchi's multiple personalities, the "Ugly Spirit" that William S. Burroughs blamed for Joan Volmer's shooting -- there are many thought-provoking examples that might or might not involve the spirit world.  There are many more examples which appear in myths and legends from various cultures and eras.  The idea that the gods are entirely benevolent and the spirit world is a harmless place is of very recent vintage.  For most of human history we have greeted the other realms with caution and trepidation: we assumed that it contained wisdom which could strengthen us but also poisons which could corrupt us.

If we are going to work with advanced techniques like possession, it behooves us to acknowledge this danger. We need to understand the difference between aspecting and full-on trance possession. We also need to realize that when we open ourselves up to shadowing or aspecting we give the entity in question a toehold into our Being, one which a malevolent spirit can use to our detriment.  There are a reason for the various ritual protections we see in trance-possession cultures. When working with those practices, we make alterations and take short cuts at our own peril.  Your new spirit companion might not urge you to shoot up a crowded theater: it's likely smart enough to know that you wouldn't be amenable to such suggestions.  But that doesn't mean that it can't cause all sorts of other difficulties for you and those around you.

Cultural Appropriation or, "Not This $#!+ again... "

It all started on Facebook, when I posted a link to this photo from F.A.I.R. Media (For Accurate Indigenous Representation).   F.A.I.R. takes issue - and rightly so - with non-indigenous people dressing up as "Indians."

As is often the case when these issues come up, a fair amount of commentary ensued.  Thankfully, none of my Facebook friends rose to the defense of those who wanted to dress up like cigar store Injuns.  Nobody felt that it's OK to name your team the "Washington Redskins" or "Atlanta Braves" even though it wouldn't be all right to call them the "San Francisco Chinks," "Texas Wetbacks" or "New York Christkillers."  But then that old, old issue raised its head -- cultural appropriation, or, more precisely, what is or is not cultural appropriation.  Ben Gruagach chimed in with these observations:

This discussion makes me uneasy because it leads to the question of when is it appropriate or inappropriate to borrow from outside one's genetic heritage? And what about the vast majority of us who are a mix of cultural backgrounds?

****  

Eli -- I understand the feelings and statements about misappropriation but have to wonder where the line is drawn? It could be argued that Voudou misappropriates, converts, perverts, twists, changes, mutates and otherwise subverts Catholicism. And Wicca misappropriates all sorts of stuff, mixing it up and presenting it in ways foreign to the origins of the things borrowed. And Christianity twists and changes not only Judaism but all sorts of pre-existing Pagan ideas, practices, etc. Is all religion wrong then?

Ben's questions raised several important points.  At what point does the mixing and matching of imagery, practices, and beliefs cross the line between eclecticism and cultural appropriation? And who gets to make that call?  We all appear to agree that dressing up as Tonto or Tiger Lily for Halloween is in poor taste.  Once we go beyond that we find ourselves in some very muddy waters.

Matt Deos responded with:

Ben, just so you know you've set up a straw man.... appropriation is something *other* than going through the traditions the way they're made to be worked; stealing is different than earning it (which is the very point many try to hammer home all the time)

While I understand where Matt is coming from, I'm not entirely sure the issue can be dismissed that easily.  A few points which may be grounds for further thought:

There are many devout Haitian and Cuban Catholics who are utterly horrified to see saint and madonna statues used for sorcery and idol worship.  Should we take their opinions into consideration when we are making offerings to Ogou Sen Jak (otherwise known as St. James the Greater, or St. Jacques Majeur) or placing a statute of Our Lady of Fatima on our Obatala shrine? Or it it only cultural appropriation when those offended are of a suitably low cultural and social caste -- in other words, when they are brown enough and poor enough to deserve our sympathy and when their religion is exotic enough to deserve preservation?

There are many "plastic shamans" who are not Native American: there are also a fair number who have at least some Indigenous ancestry and who have figured out that they can make a living selling "Indian ceremonies" to gullible non-Natives.  (Given the rates of poverty and unemployment among Native Americans, who can blame them?)  And there is not always consensus within a community as to what should and should not be shared with outsiders.  There are certainly Haitians who will not initiate non-Haitians into Vodou. Do their opinions matter, or should we only listen to those Haitians who are willing to teach us their secrets?

What constitutes "going through the traditions the way they're meant to be worked?" Who gets to decide what is or is not "the way they're meant to be worked?"Ask a random sampling of Haitian Houngans and Mambos whether or not initiations can be performed outside Haiti.  You will find some who will tell you that no initiation can be performed; you'll find others who will tell you that initiations up to Si Pwen level can be done; still others will tell you that you can make Asogwe in the United States if the proper preparations are made. There's no small amount of controversy about these issues. (And because Vodou is a money-making endeavor, there's also no small amount of "Listen... she says you can only do initiations in Haiti but that's because her cousin is a travel agent who sells you the plane tickets" or "he says you can do initiations here, but you should go to Haiti with me instead..."

And what about practices like New Orleans Voodoo? The Crescent City's spiritual practices have long mixed, matched, blended, and stir-fried traditions from all over the place: many of the "roots" of New Orleans Voodoo go no deeper than the mid-20th century with most dating back to the swinging 70s and Charles "Voodoo Charlie" Gandolfo.  Orisha and lwa are served alongside Catholic saints, Pagan gods and spoon dolls imported from China. And yet despite all that New Orleans Voodoo has become, for many people, a vital and enduring spiritual tradition.  These people may not have been "properly initiated" into the mysteries of Haitian Vodou - yet the lwa seem perfectly happy to answer their petitions.

I don't see any easy answers to these conundrums. But I think it's important that we keep asking ourselves these questions, even if we don't always come to the same conclusions.  I have no doubts about Matt's sincerity, nor do I question the bona fides of Mambo Maude Evans, his initiatory mother. If we disagree here, we do so as fellow Vodouisants, not sworn enemies. (I'll grant you that if you peruse a few Vodou forums it can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference... ). 

Wrapping Up this Round of the Eternal "Validating Initiations" Discussion

Several people have raised interesting points concerning this discussion.  In a comment on the second post  Gypsy Lantern said:

I don't think it's necessarily as black and white as that. I get along quite happily in my relationships with the Lwa without having received initiation. I came to it as a sorcerer, and I am very much a sorcerer, but I also embrace the religion and that is the foundation of everything else that I do.

In my experience, most of the people who work with the lwa do not need an initiation into Vodou. Unless they are called to work as clergy (and Gypsy Lantern states that she has not to date received that call), there is no reason for them to make Kanzo. There is no shame in honoring the spirits and receiving their blessings for your efforts: there is no reason to take on responsibilities you do not want and for which you are not prepared. 

Nutty Professor responded with:

Gypsy, since many, if not most Haitians (in Haiti) serve lwa without priestly initiations, I don't see that this is a problem, unless I am not understanding you correctly. What is not clear to me is why there is so much anxiety in America around these questions: now that is an article Kenaz should explore!

That one is easy to answer. In America we worry so much about these issues because we have to. We (meaning the non-Haitian readers of this blog) come to these traditions as outsiders. We have no way of knowing whether we are receiving a "valid initiation" or getting the Tourist Special. Since we are not (at least initially) a part of the community, we have no way of knowing our initiatior's standing within said community. 

The obvious answer to this is: become a part of Vodou laity before signing up to become clergy. Get to know your prospective initiators: attend ceremonies at their house and at other houses. See if you wish to follow this path and if you want these people to guide you to Gineh. This takes more work than sending in a Paypal payment and purchasing an airline ticket, but it is necessary if you actually wish to work as a member of the community rather than as a title collector.  ("Last year I became a Peruvian medicine man, this year I'm becoming an Houngan Asogwe in Haiti and next year I'm going to Siberia to become a Tungus shaman! Or am I going to Mongolia this year and Cuba the next: let me check my calendar when I get home...").

Commenting on the third post, Brother Christopher asked:

On the other hand, this whole discussion on validating initiations, As I have been reading I wonder to myself, what purpose does this argument serve?

I think it can serve several purposes. It brings up issues of cultural appropriation: when we become clergy of a living tradition, what responsibilities do we incur to its indigenous practitioners? It brings up issues of truth in advertising. It would be easy to write off everyone who ever exaggerated their initiatory status, but some have produced otherwise worthwhile material: Carlos Castenada and G.I. Gurdjieff come to mind immediately. And it reminds us that Scott Adams was onto something when he said "On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog." A fancy website says nothing about one's initiatory status - and initiatory status says nothing about one's morality and trustworthiness. Some of the most brutal members of the Tonton Macoutes were validly initiated Houngans and Mambos. All these things are worth considering.

And speaking of Gurdjieff, on Visionary Shamanism Stephen Kennedy offered this quote from the master of awakening and mustache wax:

Initiation is customarily regarded as some act whereby one man "The Knower" transfers to another man "The non-knower" knowledge and powers hitherto not peculiar to him and without any trouble on his part; assigning it as thing which becomes his inalienable possession. But from all that has been said by me today, you will already be able to understand, that there is no such transfer and cannot be. There is only self-initiation, which is got by constant and stubborn work, by constant efforts. No one conceals the knowledge of truth. It simply cannot be transferred, just as the finest mathematical ideas cannot be transferred to a man unacquainted with mathematics.

Gurdjieff has a point: an initiation ceremony is useless to one who is not ready to receive it. According to one hadith, Muhammed (PBUH) said "Many people who fast get nothing from their fast except hunger and thirst, and many people who pray at night get nothing from it except wakefulness." A proper initiation works on both the interior and exterior individual. It marks one's status in a community and provides an office, but it also leaves a mark upon the individual's personality and alters hir way of looking at the world.  Unless the acolyte puts in the work toward those changes, they simply won't happen.

That being said, Gurdjieff was well aware of the importance of a teacher and a lineage. Consider this Gurdjieff quote, taken down by P.D. Ouspensky on pp. 142-3 of  In Search of the Miraculous.

How many times have I been asked here whether wars can be stopped? Certainly they can. For this it is only necessary that people should awaken. It seems a small thing. It is, however, the most difficult thing there can be because this sleep is induced and maintained by the whole of surrounding life, by all surrounding conditions.

"How can one awaken? How can one escape this sleep? These questions are the most important, the most vital that can ever confront a man. But before this it is necessary to be convinced of the very fact of sleep. But it is possible to be convinced of this only by trying to awaken. When a man understands that he does not remember himself and that to remember himself means to awaken to some extent, and when at the same time he sees by experience how difficult it is to remember himself, he will understand that he cannot awaken simply by having the desire to do so. It can be said still more precisely that a man cannot awaken by himself. But if, let us say, twenty people make an agreement that whoever of them awakens first shall wake the rest, they already have some chance. Even this, however, is insufficient because all the twenty can go to sleep at the same time and dream that they are waking up. Therefore more still is necessary. They must be looked after by a man who is not asleep or who does not fall asleep as easily as they do, or who goes to sleep consciously when this is possible, when it will do no harm either to himself or to others. They must find such a man and hire him to wake them and not allow them to fall asleep again. Without this it is impossible to awaken. This is what must be understood.

And Still MORE on Validating Initiations

Another reader from Spiritual Occultist offered his thoughts (such as they are) on the question of validating initiations.  My response follows:


greetings. you have no idea on what you arte saying for validating is....for of what one person is doing..they are doing what is right and is all the validating is needed. so back off and to understand is what is real to them. and this all for all peoples....blessed be....bob

Well, I have very little idea what YOU are saying. Is English your first language? If not, you might consider using Yahoo Babelfish or Google Translate to put your thoughts in a more understandable form. I find them very helpful when I am working in French: I hope they prove useful to you.

There is a process by which becomes a Lakota medicine man: this process has been preserved for centuries and is an important part of Lakota culture. If you did not go through this process you are not a Lakota medicine man. It doesn't matter if you feel very strongly that you should be a medicine man, that you just know the spirits want you to be a medicine man, or that you have seen Dances With Wolves several dozen times. If you go around calling yourself a Lakota medicine man without those ceremonies you are engaging in lying, fraud, and/or cultural appropriation.

To be a Houngan or Mambo in the asson lineage of Haitian Vodou requires undergoing the kanzo ceremony. If you did not undergo this ceremony you are not a Houngan or Mambo. This is also the case in many African Diaspora traditions. You may not like this: you may think they are all being meanie fascist poopy-heads who don't want to recognize you because they are reverse racists or what have you. But that is the way these religions work. And since you signed off with "BB" -- you DO understand that Wicca began as an initiatory tradition which one could learn only from a teacher with the proper lineage and ordination, right?

Still More on Validating Initiations

On the Yahoo group Spiritual Occultist, one person commented on my earlier post on validating initiations. Since she raised several interestingt issues, I thought I would turn my response into another blog post.

Before I go any further, I should add that I believe Wedosi has spent a great deal of time in Africa and that she is initiated in Vodun.  She appears knowledgeable of Beninois culture and has provided photographic evidence of her attendance at various ceremonies. While we have had our disagreements in the past, I am not casting aspersions on her training or her sincerity. I am simply trying to point out the difficulties in validating the initiatory status of strangers posting on Ye Internets.

I think that in your haste you left out an important point that Wedosi made: that the lineage is validated through divination.

"And after my tour guide checked us in at the Pachamama Bed and Breakfast, the head shaman threw some bones and nuts on the ground.  He examined them carefully, then smiled and said the gods had accepted all of us for shamanic training.  Then he took several thousand dollars from each of us for the initiation ceremony."

There's a long if not necessarily honorable tradition of fortune tellers "discovering" that the querent suffers from a dark curse which can only be lifted by expensive ceremonies.  I am not so naive as to assume that diviners in other countries never interpret their auguries in a way which proves most financially favorable to them.  Initiations and other ceremonies can be a major money-making opportunity in countries where such opportunities are scarce.  An American priest/ess who regularly brings over acolytes and pumps funds into the local economy might be reassured that the village diviners have determined that s/he is Chosen by the Spirits and respected just as much as any other elder - at least while s/he is visiting and s/he continues to bring in business.

I'd also raise the question of "who does the divination and how do they do it?" If someone shows up on one of my mailing lists claiming to be a Tata in Palo Mayombe or a Peruvian Shaman, can I verify his claims using Tarot? What about casting the Runes or theI Ching?  In the case of Wedosi's priesthood, I presume it is validated using Ifa. Alas, I am not qualified to sit at the Table of Ifa - and those Babalaos I know focus on Yoruba, not Beninois religion.  Would they be able to comment definitively on Wedosi's initiatory status, or would they want to?

It doesn't matter who's mamma's who and how many hundred years it has been since they've been to thier homeland and I would imagine, whether or not they identify with being African since all humans were thought to have originated out of Africa anyway. They could be Austrians or Eskimos, Irish or Chinese.

Most forms of African Traditional Religion are local, not world, religions. They do not seek (and frequently do not allow) converts. Their criteria for membership are not based on the relatively modern conception of race but on the much narrower criteria of ancestry. If your parents and grandparents didn't serve Spirit  X, then you don't serve Spirit X and you don't get initiated into the mysteries of Spirit X.  The cult of Spirit X does not exist to bring enlightenment to the world: rather, it focuses on maintaining the social cohesiveness of the tribe, village or ethnic group. (Those who were raised as Christians or Muslims may have difficulty grasping this concept: those raised as Orthodox Jews will likely get it immediately). The fact that your progenitors came from Africa several hundred thousand years ago is not important to these spirits. They are only interested in those who are part of their immediate family, not the extended family of humanity.

The line between these a world religion and a local religion can become indistinct, especially now in this age of global communication. The asson lineage of Haitian Vodou arose as the local forms of sevis lwa were threatened by urbanization and social changes. It began as a means by which Haitians who had been torn away from their villages and their family shrines could serve the spirits and recognize other servants. Today some houses have begun offering these initiations to those outside the Haitian community. I have no doubt that some African houses are also reaching out in a similar fashion. But I would also point out that this is a contemporary development, and not one which is universally accepted within those communities.  There are still many Haitian houses which will only initiate natif natal Haitians, and many tribal leaders in Africa, the Amazon and elsewhere will not reveal the secrets of their culture to those who do not have them as a birthright.

As for confirmation about divination, someone said something about having to have 3 diviners and what not, and that may be necessary for a localized practice or denomination for a lack of a better word but honestly, and objectively, if I can project to the Vodun plane and they accept me, I'm in, no matter what anyone else says.

You are looking at Vodou from the point of view of a sorcerer: one who seeks power from the tradition, rather than one who sees it as a religion.  In that case you don't really need initiation. You are not interested in functioning in a priestly capacity: ceremonies to make you clergy would be, for you, a waste of time and money. There's nothing wrong with this: there are plenty of people, Haitian and otherwise, who work with the lwa on a quid pro quo basis and give them offerings in exchange for services rendered. But it is not the only way to deal with them, nor is it in my opinion the most fruitful and rewarding.

Validating Initiations

This old chestnut (by now it may be a coprolite!) has arisen again, this time on that social networking dinosaur Tribe. Kathy Latzoni (my wife, who is also a Mambo Si Pwen and the moderator of the Vodou tribe) has been engaged in a discussion with Wedosi, an African-American woman who practices West African Vodun and who spent several years in Benin.  Wedosi insists that:

I am sorry moderator..that is INCORRECT! In Tradtional African Vodun ALL person's lineage CAN be verified! Accountability is paramount in ORIGINAL vodun; however, in the diaspora there appears to be problems in that the ORIGINAL hiearchy of vodun IS NOT in place.

While I am not an expert in "Traditional African Vodun," I would assume that said faith would "traditionally" be practiced by local Africans.  A person who comes to "Traditional African Vodun" as an outsider is by definition not  a member of the "traditional" congregation.  These practices were by villagers and for villagers. They were never viewed as part of a world religion by their followers but rather as a series of practices which ensured spiritual and social cohesion within the group.

(As an aside, the "asson lineage" which many people identify as "orthodox Haitian Vodou" actually was developed in the 1920s in response to deforestation and the development of an urban culture in Port-au-Prince. As hungry peasants came to the cities in search of work, they lost touch with their local religion and their local spirits. The asson became a way by which servants of the lwa could recognize each other and gain access to the spirits of a particular house. And because it was designed to accommodate outsiders, this lineage was also open to anthropologists and other curious foreigners -- hence, it became the tradition which was most frequently studied and ultimately became the default setting for "Haitian Vodou").

This is what leads to much of the confusion about "validating initiations." In a small village in Haiti, Togo, or Cuba, people know each other.  There's no question about who initiated whom, or who is practicing the "authentic faith."  These social safeguards are not in place for those who travel to a foreign country to engage in rituals with and among strangers.  They may get a valid ceremony or they may get the infamous "airport initiation" designed to entertain bored and wealthy tourists. 


Unless you are a part of that specific culture, it is going to be impossible for an outsider to tell the difference.  Based on my years of experience among Haitian-Americans and my initiation in Haitian Vodou, I might be able to offer some tentative thoughts on the status of someone who was claiming to be an initiate in Haitian Vodou. I couldn't begin to address the question of whether or not someone claiming to be a babalao, or a tata in Las Reglas de Congo, was or was not the real thing.  While some people would like to turn all these traditions into one big happy blend of Afrocentric mush, the cultures of Africa and the African Diaspora are a diverse and sometimes conflicting lot.  The brutal wars between Hutus and Tutsis and the Sudanese peoples put the lie to the claim that any kind of overarching "African culture" exists outside utopian fantasies.

So how do you determine whether or not someone is "validly initiated"? Basically, you have to take their word for it. If they appear generally trustworthy and sane when describing their daily lives and interests, they are probably telling the truth when they say they were initiated in some foreign country.  If they recognize the benefits of their initation and its limits (in other words, if they don't try presenting themselves as the Grand High Poobah of African Religion, Pope of Santeria or Sole Arbiter of Real Vodou etc.), they are probably not creating these titles to bolster their fragile egos or to sell services.

If you know other people within the community in question, you can also ask them.  Does this Florida "Santero" have any Cuban-American friends in Miami? Does this Massachusetts "Mambo" ever attend services given by Haitian-Americans in Mattapan or Dorchester - or do they ever show up at her events? This means you will have to become at least somewhat plugged into the community yourself - but if you want to be a "valid" practitioner, you're going to have to do that sooner or later anyway.

And of course we get back to the ultimate test: know your initiator.  I am always amazed to see people who will write checks and travel to foreign lands with someone they barely know, simply so they can get  an initiation ceremony and a fancy title.  If you show as much caution in choosing an initiator as you would in choosing a new car, you'll likely avoid the worst rip-offs. This means investing some time and effort, not just money - but there really is no substitute for doing your homework.