Their Eyes Were Watching Legba

So, lots of kids in New York public schools and elsewhere read Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, a book much praised though I myself have not read it. However, what I have read of ol’ Zora is far more fascinating to me for what it tells us about this headstrong and amazing woman that is left out of the cleaned-up biographies one might read in the so-called schools. Much like Helen Keller, whose strong faith in socialism never made it into any of elementary or secondary classrooms I attended, what you won’t hear about Zora Neale Hurston is that she took initiation into the secrets of African-American rootwork (Hoodoo) and Hatian voodoo during the course of her work as writer and folklorist. No, for this Zora, the Hoodoo Zora, the Zora who learned the Old Religion in Haiti, you’d have to go to two of her other books: Mules and Men and Tell My Horse.

The Rain Bringer

Mules and Men is split into two sections. The lengthier, first section recounts folktales and jokes that were told to Zora as she went story-collecting through the south. (And the majority of these stories, despite their abundant wisdom, good humor and historical importance won’t be read by kids due to the language of the working class and rural blacks who told them—why let cultural consciousness, history and traditional wisdom get in the way of the false idol of political correctness? Dog forbid anyone get hurt feelings (especially those suffering from white guilt!) But enough ranting.

The second section of Mules and Men deals with her encounters with and initiations under a number of hoodoo rootworkers, men and women alike. This is the section that interests us here.

One of Zora’s initiations came from Luke Turner, a nephew of Marie Leveau. When Ol’ Zora first comes to learn from Turner, he has absolutely no interest in her:

He was cold. In fact he showed no eagerness even to talk with me. He feels sure of his powers and seeks no one. He refused to take me as a pupil and in addition to his habitual indifference I could see he had no faith in my sincerity. I could see him searching my face for whatever was behind what I said. The City of New Orleans has a law against fortune tellers, hoodoo doctors and the like, and Turner did not know me. He asked me to excuse him as he was waiting upon someone in the inner room. I let him go but I sat right there and waited. When he returned, he tried to shoo me away by being rude. I stayed on. Finally he named an impossible price for tuition. I stayed and dickered. He all but threw me out, but I stayed and urged him. (191-192)

Already, this begins to remind me of the trials of potential monks entering Buddhist monasteries, which process was recreated and recontextualized in Fight Club. You wait for days awaiting permission to enter. You are berated. You are ignored. You are in all other ways psychologically dissuaded from seeking entrance and if, after three days, you’re resolve remains, only then will the monks allow you inside as a novitiate.

Hurston continues her account:

I made three more trips before he would talk to me in any way that I could feel encouraged. He talked about Marie Leveau because I asked. I wanted to know if she was really as great as they told me. So he enlightened my ignorance and taught me. (192)

The Hoodoo Man Turner recounts the life of his famous aunt, her exploits and power—including walking on water. He tells Zora of his own call, received via a strong glance by Marie Leveau (shades of shaktipat), to become a conjure doctor. After Zora has sat in sufficiently respectful silence, embibing the story of the great hoodoo woman, only then is Zora’s training assured:

Turner again made that gesture with his hands that meant the end. Then he sat in dazed silence…After a long period of waiting I rose to go. “The Spirit say you come back tomorrow,” he breathed as I passed his knees. I nodded that I had heard and went ou. The next day he began to prepare me for my initiation ceremony, for rest assured that no one may approach the Altar without the crown, and none may wear the crown of power without preparation. It must be earned. (198)

And here Zora gives us a reminder of a truth about the crowning, that it is the strength of the ritual and its deep, existential symbolism wherein the crowning power resides:

And what is this crowning power? Nothing definitie in material. Turner crowned me with a consecrated snake skin. I have been crowned in other places with flowers, with ornamental paper, with cloth, with sycamore bark, with egg-shells. It is the meaning, not the material that counts. The crown without the preparation means no more than a college diploma without the four years’ work. (198)

We then learn that, akin to many a great spiritual undertaking, one must enter through the gates of the Hoodoo path purified:

This preparation period is akin to that of all mystics. clean living, even to clean thoughts. A sort of going to the wilderness in the spirit. The details do not matter. My nine days being up, and possessed of the three snake skins and the new underwear required, I entered Turner’s house as an inmate to finish the last three days of my novitiate.

…I was made ready and at three o’clock in the afternoon, naked as I came into the world, I was stretched, face downwards, my navel to the snake skin cover, and began my three day search for the spirit that he might accept me or reject me according to his will. Three days my body must lie silent and fasting while my spirit went wherever spirits must go that seek answers never given to men as men.

I could have no food, but a pitcher of water was placed on a small table at the head of the couch, that my spirit might not waste time in search of water which should be spent in search of the Power-Giver. The spirit must have water, and if none had been provided it would wander in search of it. And evil spirits might attack it as it wandered about dangerous places. If it should be seriously injured, it might never return to me. (198-199)

And here I’m reminded of the contours of many a shamanic journey, the particulars of which may vary though the overarching structure remains amazingly similar, across cultures and across traditions. The journey through the lands of the spirit, the trials and dangers encountered therein—it could be the Epic of Gilgamesh; it could be Jesus’ in the desert and the temptation of the Devil. It could be your story or mine.

For sixty nine hours I lay there. I had five psychic experiences and awoke at last with no feeling of hunger, only one of exaltation. (199)

Turner then calls to her, in the presence of five witnesses. As Ol’ Zora approaches, Turner in trance asks the spirit how she must come before the altar (the answer is across water); and the proper circumstances are put in place (a tub of water which she must step into and out of before reaching the altar). Then, the name that Hurston is to bear is asked of the spirit.

And the medium utters the reply:

I see her conquering and accomplishing with the lightning and making her road with thunder. She shall be called the Rain-Bringer. (200)

This naming ceremony has correspondences to many mystery religions and spiritual traditions of ancient times, including the Yoruba-based religions of Africa, from which Hoodoo may ultimately stem. In that regard, one may make a guess that the name given Hurston by Turner may connect in some way to Oya, the female orisha who presides over storms or, perhaps, to her husband Shango, god of thunder. In this regard, perhaps we might find an impulse to read into what follows immediately upon the bestowal of Ol’ Zora’s initiation name:

With ceremony Turner painted the lightning symbol down my back from my right shoulder to my left hip. This was to be my sign forever. The Great One was to speak to me through storms. (200)

As to corroborating the Oya or Shango connection, it must remain a guess. If Hurston received any details to validate this theory, she chose not to set it down in Mules and Men. But we are just getting started with the orisha or, more precisely, their Hatian equivalents, the loa.

Tell My Horse

Zora kept certain things close to her vest, including the details of her personal spiritual practices, but we do get a hint from this article, which quotes from her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road:

I went Canzo in Voodoo ceremonies in Haiti and the ceremonies were both beautiful and terrifying. I did not find them any more invalid than any other religion. Rather I hold that any religion that satisfies the individual urge is valid for that person. It does satisfy millions, so it is true for its believers… What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than the gestures of ceremony.

For those curious as to the significance of going “canzo”, you my refer to the following passage from an online glossary of voodoo terms:

The first level of initiation is the grueling ritual called canzo, which serves as a rite of passage and symbolizes death and rebirth into the religion. Not every practitioner of vodou has to go through the ritual; usually only those devotees who are training to become priests or who would like to take a larger part in the rituals do so. [emphasis added] The canzo initiation requires a significant financial sacrifice, strict discipline, and the acceptance of moral obligation, so no one undertakes the ritual lightly…

Certainly, as an anthropologist and folklorist, Hurston had her academic reasons for wanting to participate in and witness the deeper rituals and mysteries of Hatian voodoo, and she does a good job of describing these to us throughout Tell My Horse. As for any extra-anthropological reasons for Hurston’s voodoo initiation, you may need to read between the lines.

From Tell My Horse:

I was under the wing of Louis Ramon and his wife, who is herself a Mambo and they were extremely kind and considerate of me. Louis has the gift of making you understand in one sentence more than most people can with a page. I found every word he ever told me to be true. Never once did he attempt to mislead me. He saw to it that I went places and saw things. He was preparing me to “go Canzo” myself. That is the second degree of initiation in the department of the West. It is the second step towards the priesthood. (174)

So, while Hurston contradicts the previous quote, the point is the same, but her words brings it home more forcefully. She was definitely on the path to greater spiritual initiation in the Voodoo tradition; and given the preparations required, one couldn’t be faulted in seeing a more-than-academic motivation for going so far.

Continuing:

The usual routine is this:

The spirit enters the head of a person. He is possessed of this spirit and sometimes he or she is troubled by it because the possession comes at times and places that are, perhaps, embarrassing. On advice, he goes to a houngan and the spirit is identified and the “horse” is advised to make food for the loa who is the master of his head. As soon as the person is financially able, he or she goes through the ceremony of baptism known as “getting the head washed.” Three days before the reception of the degree, the candidate presents himself to the houngan, who receives him and makes crtain libations to the spirit who has claimed the candidate. The libation varies according to the god. It is a sweet liquor if it is Damballah, rum for Ogoun, Loco or Legba. The candidate is dressed in a long white shirt with sleeves to the wrists. The head of the applicant is wrapped in a large white handkerchief and he is put to bed on a natte where he must remain for seventy-two hours. The last day, which is the day of consecration, his head is washed, and he is given something to eat and drink. He usually rises possessed of his loa, who conitnues the service in place of the houngan. Then his is a hounci bossal, the first step of the way to the priesthood. This does not mean that all houcis become houngans. Far from it. Only a small proportion ever take the second step, which is the Canzo. (174-175)

Did Zora continue to practice voodoo and hoodoo beyond her anthropological excursions? Did she continue to work on behalf of others and herself through the use of folk and African-diasporic magick till her dying days? If so, she kept that information close to the vest, which only seems reasonable, given the era in which she lived. I’ve left quite a bit out in my description of Tell My Horse, including her accounts of voodoo ceremonies, Zombies, the Sect Rouge (a secret society of murder and cannibalism that, according to Hurston, liked to hide under the cloak of voodoo despite having nothing to do with it), houngons (the “good” magicians) versus bocors (the “bad” magicians) and the gray area between these two sets of practitioners, and much, much more.

I’ll leave you with this passage regarding Dr. Reser, the white American convert to Voodoo who Ol’ Zora met in Port-au-Prince. It underscores the transcendent and mysterious nature at the core of all things spiritual, plus bringing is round again to another suggestive trace of “Rain-Bringer” Zora’s possible guiding Spirit:

Dr. Reser began to tell of his experiences while in the state known as possession. Incident piled on incident. A new personality burned up the one that had eaten supper with us. His blue-gray eyes glowed, but at the same time they drew far back into his head as if they went inside to speak. He told of marvelous revelations of the Brave Guede cult. And as he spoke, he moved farther and farther from known land and into the territory of myths and mists. Before our very eyes, he walked out of his Nordic body and changed. Whatever the stuff of which the soul of Haiti is made, he was that. You could see the snake god of Dahomey hovering about him. Africa was in his tones. He thorbbed and glowed. He used English words but he talked to me from another continent. He was dancing before his gods and the fire of Shango played about him. Then I knew how Moses felt when he beheld the burning bush. Moses had seen fires and he had seen bushes, but he had never seen a bush with a fiery ego and I had never seen a man who dwelt in flame, who was coldly afire in the pores. Perhaps some day I shall visit his roomy porch again and drink his orangeade and listen to him discourse on Aristotle, but even in the midst of it, I shall remember his hour of fire.

Ah Bo Bo!! (217)