What The Gods Can Do

What The Gods Can Do

A Mystere or Loa can mount a person for the following reasons;

1) To Protect him

2) To confer upon him a power or a Falculty that he needs for the successful accomplishment of a task, and which he does not ordinarily have. To permit him, for example, to swim to land in case of shipwreck, if he does not know how to swim. Many people report that such-and-such a person "did not know how to swim, and when a sailboat on which he was sailing was wrecked, naturally he almost drowned since the accident occurred on the open sea; however Agwe mounted him and brought him to shore"

3) to permit him to remove himself with supernatural speed

4) To give him counsel. In this case, those who speak to the posessed person repeat to him the advice that the Loa gave during the Mounting

5) To cure him of a illness or to prevent him from suffering

6) To punish the "horse" for some offense. In this case, despite the commands and rebukes of the Houngan, the mystere may refuse to leave for hours or days,determined to exhaust him as much as possible.

7) To give some other persona treatment, or simply to prescribe or to compose a remedy

8) To point out some forbidden ritual

9) To give warning of danger threatening an individual or the community

10) To preside over, or to assist at a ritual ceremony

11) To come and get a sacrificial offering.

Because of all these functions - relating as much to the path as to everyday life - the most important consequences for the mystical life as well as the national life follow from the participation of the voodoo loas in human affairs. Thus, in everything that particularly concerns the voodooists life, voodoo is like a superior soul, which acts as a counterpart of the soul as ordinarily regarded, and which accompanies man in all his occupations.