Missing Witches - Missing Witches - Mama Lola：＂Spirit For Everybody!＂

00:00:00.000 Warning. The podcast you are about to hear contains coarse language and tells stories of witches.

00:00:06.680 Email us at missingwitches at gmail dot com if you want to be heard. And blessed be.

00:00:12.880 You might not expect to hear the name Tori Spelling on the Missing Witches podcast,

00:00:18.840 but she might just be the reason some of you have heard of our next witch.

00:00:22.880 This is the story of how Marie-Thérèse Alourdes Masséna Champagne-Lavinsky,

00:00:27.920 Born in Haiti, pregnant at 14, former singer, sex worker, and tobacco inspector,

00:00:34.060 a woman whose own face did not appear on the first edition of her biography,

00:00:38.140 became the most famous voodoo priestess living in the United States today.

00:00:42.440 This is a woman who was given her last rites twice and lived to tell.

00:00:46.740 If you know her, you likely know her as Mama Lola. 1.00

00:00:50.340 You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:53.160 Be a witch. 1.00

00:00:54.420 Be a witch. 1.00

00:00:55.220 Be a witch. 1.00

00:00:55.700 Be a witch. 1.00

00:00:56.020 Be a witch. 1.00

00:00:56.540 you must be a witch. Mama Lola's biographer, Karen McCarthy Brown, describes her as a strong 0.95

00:01:02.640 woman who provides the main financial and emotional support for a hard-pressed family.

00:01:07.120 She's also a fighter, a survivor who has had a hard life, but nevertheless shows little trace

00:01:11.940 of bitterness from her suffering. She is a presence to be reckoned with, someone who commands the

00:01:16.780 respect of others. But Lola is also a giver, a caring and empathetic person who takes pleasure

00:01:21.800 in helping others. By necessity, she has become adept at balancing this desire to help with the

00:01:27.080 need to care for herself. If you are a woman, an empath, or especially if you are a witch,

00:01:33.560 heck, if you are a decent human, you know that this balance is not easily attained.

00:01:39.420 Some go their whole lives without ever coming close to the kind of compassion and fierceness

00:01:43.900 and awareness and, yes, arrogance in the style of Ippecita Roy Chakraverti that is required to

00:01:50.180 balance self and other. Worse, some never consider that maybe the two, self and other, are one,

00:01:57.820 going their whole lives without ever knowing what it means to truly care.

00:02:04.220 Mama Lola was born in 1936 in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. Conceived at a not

00:02:10.600 altogether unfinished time when Haiti was going back and forth, fighting for the power to define

00:02:15.240 its national identity, legalizing and criminalizing and legalizing what were called in the law

00:02:20.760 superstitious practices. There had been a long-standing prohibition of spells as a result

00:02:26.220 of colonization, the Catholic Church, not to mention the near 20-year U.S. military occupation

00:02:31.900 of Haiti that ended in 1934. Stenio Vincent, Haiti's president at the time, maintained a ban

00:02:38.740 on some public ritual, but in 1935 affirmed the right to popular dances. And then Mama Lola was

00:02:45.360 born. Her mother, Philomise Massena, known as Philo, was also somewhat of a reluctant mambo. 0.99

00:02:54.020 Mambo, sometimes mambo, is a term for high priestess in the voodoo religion. They are 0.99

00:02:59.880 physical and spiritual healers. They give blessings, songs, prayers, and advice, clear hexes,

00:03:06.100 lead and perform rituals and ceremonies. One can study and train and go through a complex set of

00:03:11.400 protocols to reach the status of Mambo, or one can become Mambo, chosen via a dream dragged

00:03:18.080 underwater, a calling to serve the spirits that cannot be ignored. Any woman who is called or

00:03:24.200 calls herself Mambo or Curandera or Yogini or Ayurveda or Bruja or Sangoma or Witch is sure to

00:03:31.340 have a personal history, rich with complexity and depth. And the history of voodoo itself is

00:03:36.100 infinitely more rich and deep. We've all come across the racist, outdated Western portrayals

00:03:41.520 of voodoo as a dark and evil conjuring of bad spirits and sacrifice to the devil, zombies,

00:03:47.420 bloodlust, black magic. As Milos Rigaud says in his book Secrets of Voodoo,

00:03:54.040 to the uninitiated, voodoo has long been thought of as a primitive form of magic and belief in

00:03:58.500 ghosts. Most of what the average layman knows of voodoo comes only from misleading use of it in

00:04:03.700 Hollywood horror movies and in paperback thrillers that emphasize witch doctors or sticking pins in

00:04:09.140 voodoo dolls. Beyond Rigo's mention of Hollywood, these images, based on racism and control,

00:04:15.660 demonizing the ancient ways and painting them as bloodthirsty, sick, and savage,

00:04:19.880 have infiltrated Western culture in a very real and tangible way. One particularly troubling

00:04:25.200 example comes from Mama Lola's daughter, Maggie. A patient in the medical office where Maggie once

00:04:30.820 worked, upon learning she was Haitian, refused to allow Maggie to touch her. The reasons the woman 0.68

00:04:37.200 gave were voodoo and AIDS, reasons still used against Haitians today. When you brush away the

00:04:46.000 dirt and cobwebs of religious racist propaganda, the passion, wisdom, and oneness of this universe

00:04:52.700 is revealed. Rigo continues, the fact is that voodoo encompasses an exceedingly complex religion

00:05:00.680 and magic with complicated rituals and symbols that have developed for thousands of years,

00:05:07.840 perhaps longer than any other of today's established faiths. The believer in voodoo,

00:05:12.980 and there are millions of blacks and some whites who practice it, centers his hopes and fears as

00:05:19.360 strongly on it as does a follower of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, or Islam. Indeed, the Haitian

00:05:26.020 atmosphere seems ever impregnated with it, as if with a rich, mystical aroma of Africa, to the 0.95

00:05:32.280 extent that individuals as well as families are conscious of Voodoo's effect upon their lives

00:05:36.460 with a curious mixture of glory and dread. And so it is that we approach this episode with the same

00:05:44.120 curious mixture of glory and dread. Here we are learning the story of Mama Lola, and we find

00:05:49.580 ourselves in the story of voodoo itself, and thus Ifa, Yoruba, Kemet. It's extremely vast and

00:05:57.220 beautiful, powerful, intimidating territory. So we went looking for the witches we needed to guide us

00:06:03.100 on this journey of discovery, and wow, did we find them. You'll see links to all our teachers

00:06:08.560 on this leg of our path in our show notes, and we encourage you to read their books.

00:06:12.000 to quote Queen Afua from her sacred text Sacred Woman. By necessity, Sacred Woman training provides

00:06:21.160 only a brief introduction to ancient Khamit, for indeed the serious study of this civilization

00:06:26.780 could take a lifetime. I offer it to you in hopes that you will be so fascinated by the truth of its

00:06:32.300 teachings that you will be inspired to explore more deeply into our rich cultural treasures.

00:06:37.200 we couldn't have put it better

00:06:39.800 like Maria Sabina's mushrooms

00:06:41.980 this podcast will only take you so far

00:06:44.340 as McCarthy Brown writes

00:06:46.360 in Mama Lola, A Voodoo Priestess

00:06:48.220 in Brooklyn 0.98

00:06:48.720 a lourdes is a superb storyteller 0.81

00:06:52.460 but her stories

00:06:53.900 as she tells them do not lend themselves

00:06:55.960 to reproduction in a written text

00:06:57.800 each story has a theme

00:06:59.720 better a refrain

00:07:01.240 with which she opens and to which she returns

00:07:03.900 time and time again as the story is woven

00:07:06.680 never in a simple logical or chronological fashion.

00:07:09.780 Each time the refrain is repeated,

00:07:11.680 it signals a new attempt to tell a story.

00:07:14.280 Each attempt seems to capture the whole story.

00:07:17.180 Yet none succeeds because the connections, the meanings,

00:07:20.200 the layers of possible interpretation are too dense

00:07:23.480 to be caught in a single telling.

00:07:26.020 Thus, a Lourdes moves in a spiral fashion,

00:07:29.160 over and over the same ground

00:07:31.160 when telling an important ancestral story.

00:07:34.060 Each pass over familiar turf creates redundancy,

00:07:37.660 but it also brings some additional nuance or detail.

00:07:41.940 To listen, it is necessary to relax with the rhythm

00:07:45.300 and to trust that it will eventually bring her around to fill in the gaps.

00:07:50.780 And it seems like her story must be told in the same spiral fashion.

00:07:55.700 We'll keep coming back to McCarthy Brown's book

00:07:57.760 because it's the most thorough biography of Mama Lola to date,

00:08:00.820 drawing on her, at the time of most recent edition, 36-year friendship with and study of the mambo.

00:08:07.380 But even McCarthy Brown reminds us in her afterword that Mama Lola once said,

00:08:11.640 I hate that book because I change and it doesn't.

00:08:16.420 But Mama Lola also said, I got plenty confidence in myself. You want some too?

00:08:21.300 So with a yes, please, and thank you, Mama Lola,

00:08:24.860 we present our humble opening of the gateway and spiral back to the beginning of all consciousness.

00:08:31.640 the source of voodoo and its many siblings, Ifa.

00:08:36.980 There's been an eternity of discussion on the birthplace of this great and sacred collection of knowledge.

00:08:42.340 Perhaps the Yoruba of Nigeria are descended from a people who were living on the banks of the Nile in Egypt.

00:08:47.900 Others claim the ancestors had traveled west from Ethiopia.

00:08:51.060 We are definitely not the authority on this subject.

00:08:53.980 But we do know that Western culture has done its weird, racist best to separate in our minds

00:08:59.340 the venerable Egypt from its rightful place in the continent of Africa.

00:09:03.540 So we're way more likely to know something about Kemet than we are about Ifa.

00:09:08.320 Whether the two religions, for lack of a better word, of Ifa and Kemet are sisters,

00:09:13.600 or mother-daughter, they definitely share the same blood,

00:09:17.160 a blend of history, philosophy, medicine, and folklore.

00:09:21.100 And we're looking for witches we've been missing, 0.77

00:09:23.460 trying to learn something new and not fuck it up too much.

00:09:26.340 So let's leave the pharaohs in their tombs for now and just dive on over to the clear blue waters of the Gulf of Guinea and the dream dragged underwater.

00:09:35.120 Our favorite book on Ifa is Ona Agbani, The Ancient Path, by Ialosa Apetibi Aloaomi Osunyemi Akalatunde.

00:09:50.420 She writes,

00:09:51.540 Ifa has been in practice for some 20,000 years.

00:09:55.520 At the time of this writing in the Western year, 2002, according to its annual calendar,

00:10:00.560 the Anago Yoruba Nation itself is 10,045 years old.

00:10:05.740 Those prehistoric civilizations that later merged and became the Anago

00:10:09.520 were the first to practice this ancient way of life.

00:10:12.480 As such, Ifa is the result of thousands of years of painstaking research

00:10:16.940 and observation of nature and humans' relationship to it,

00:10:19.980 as well as humans' relationship with the divine and other humans.

00:10:24.200 The information gathered in this research is compiled in the sacred oral scripture of Ifa known as Odu,

00:10:29.680 and in the DNA of each melanated person as part of their genetic history,

00:10:33.680 the storehouse of information passed from parent to child.

00:10:36.720 According to the primordial observations of our ancestors, all things are part of the divine whole.

00:10:43.520 All things includes objects that most would consider inanimate.

00:10:47.000 There is no spiritual line of demarcation between the so-called sacred and the so-called secular.

00:10:53.140 Everything that is granted the power to exist is wholly a part of the divine whole.

00:11:01.720 In her glossary, which she refers to as a note about bara or the use of word sound power in this book,

00:11:08.740 Akala Tunde makes a distinction between holy, holy, and her spelling holy, w-h-o-l-y,

00:11:17.380 which is kind of a mix of the former too, part of the divine whole, part of the all. She says,

00:11:24.340 our ancestors Africanized elements of English so that we can retain the power of the spoken word

00:11:29.420 called bara in the Yoruba language. I also take the liberty of spelling some words differently

00:11:34.760 so that they will house the vibration that I am trying to create with them.

00:11:38.740 Hopefully our reading will house that vibration that Akala Tunde seeks with her words when she

00:11:44.720 writes, Ifa is known simply as Yoruba here in the West. Ifa and its spiritual siblings from

00:11:50.880 neighboring cultures have many bicultural offspring as a result of the Maafa, a key Swahili term 1.00

00:11:56.740 meaning great disaster, used to denote the rape of Africa and the resulting slavery and colonization.

00:12:03.400 Some of the more well-known and often misrepresented progeny are Santeria, Lukumia, Voodoo, Obeya,

00:12:10.560 Hoodoo, Conjure, Rootworking, and to a much lesser degree, Black Church.

00:12:15.420 These offspring represent the mixture of African culture with Native American culture, 0.99

00:12:20.640 with elements of Eurocentric Christianity thrown in.

00:12:24.820 Our enslaved ancestors used these spiritual systems to protect themselves and their families during captivity.

00:12:30.820 Therefore, hoodoo, voodoo, root-working, and any other practice that contained African spiritual elements

00:12:36.420 were deemed wicked and evil by the slave masters.

00:12:42.140 Akalatunde goes on later in the book to explain the presence of Eurocentric Christian elements,

00:12:46.500 these being particularly visible in Santeria, where Catholic saints with relatable traits

00:12:51.080 were used as substitutes for orishas to allow for a more public worship.

00:12:56.000 She writes,

00:12:57.120 With the ma'afa, in which millions of Africans were captured and placed in captivity,

00:13:01.900 our ties to our villages were severed and the priests and priestesses were thrust together. 0.87

00:13:06.380 This catastrophe forced them to merge all of their wisdom into one common practice. 0.64

00:13:10.860 Ma'afa marked the beginning of Ifa in its current Western state.

00:13:14.560 This form is known as Orisa worship, Santeria, worship of the saints,

00:13:19.840 Sangobaptiste, Lukumi, Makumba, and a myriad of other names.

00:13:23.860 Many of these practices also added Native American elements

00:13:26.580 that were introduced to the practitioners on these shores.

00:13:29.840 These new practices were also forced to include Euro-Christian elements,

00:13:34.140 which allowed the ancestors to camouflage their practices 0.98

00:13:36.880 and thereby survive in an environment created to destroy them. 0.58

00:13:42.740 And so it went that MAFA exported IFA across the world in the most terrible way,

00:13:48.040 through the bodies and spirits of the slave trade. 0.64

00:13:51.560 Ifa has always been passed down via practice, DNA, and Odu, the oral tradition.

00:13:56.980 But with Mafa, the necessity of an oral tradition became especially important.

00:14:00.720 Because of this, many words have a variety of spellings and pronunciations.

00:14:05.240 Spirits go by many names.

00:14:06.900 Mixed up and redistributed, the words and names may be different,

00:14:09.520 but the concepts are largely the same,

00:14:11.520 and in fact have much in common with the Western contemporary notions of paganism and witchcraft

00:14:16.420 that they no doubt influenced or more likely begat.

00:14:20.500 Herbalism, meditation, earth and sky-based spiritual systems, offerings, gratitude, manifestation, and dreams.

00:14:28.900 But Aoife, and especially Voodoo, have their faith woven into a complex and deeply public, personal, whole-life relationship with Loa. 0.95

00:14:37.340 The Loa must be paid. 0.82

00:14:40.440 Loa, also known by many other names, including Les Mystères and The Invisibles, are spirit realm representatives of the One.

00:14:47.960 Oludumare, bondie, the sum total of all consciousness.

00:14:53.620 Some speculate that it was an ancient foreign misunderstanding of this notion of oneness

00:14:58.120 that led to the monotheisms of what we know today as Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.

00:15:04.780 Lawa can be understood as kind of akin to spirit guides from all cultures.

00:15:10.580 Jinn and Islam, for example.

00:15:12.700 Not angels, because the binaric opposition of good and evil doesn't hold as much space here. 0.67

00:15:17.420 so not angels, but ancestors? More like messengers receiving and delivering messages to and from

00:15:24.200 bondi? Messages are sent from humanity to the divine via service, prayer, offerings, dance,

00:15:32.200 drums, and many multitude of other thoughts and actions. But again, the loa must be paid.

00:15:38.360 A lot of the ritual of voodoo takes the form of specific offerings to specific loa.

00:15:42.860 They each have their own tastes.

00:15:45.120 There is much contemporary discussion of Orisha and Lawa, as they are not synonymous, or they

00:15:50.460 kind of are, or they definitely aren't.

00:15:52.760 Again, the necessity of oral tradition after Mafa means there is no one set of rules, or

00:15:58.080 of spellings, or of names, or terms, or gods.

00:16:02.220 As Nigerian Babalawo, high priest in Ifa, Osuniyye Alajide Ifatunmo, writes,

00:16:10.060 People often ask me if there is a complete written copy of the Odu Ifa.

00:16:14.620 However, within the Odu Ifa, it explains that there is no Babalawo who knows all of the Odu Ifa,

00:16:20.820 because the pages in the Odu Ifa are infinite.

00:16:23.900 It is like asking if there is a complete written copy of the science of the universe.

00:16:28.660 No such book could ever be written.

00:16:30.580 However, that doesn't mean that there aren't books about science, or condensed versions of the Odu Ifa.

00:16:36.120 of ifa's connection to voodoo karen mccarthy brown writes it can be argued that haitian voodoo is

00:16:43.260 closer to its african roots than most other forms of new world african religion voodoo's closer ties

00:16:49.360 to its african origins are primarily a result of haiti's virtual isolation from the rest of the

00:16:53.900 world for nearly a century following its successful slave revolution haiti has a truly remarkable

00:17:01.180 history of survival, magic, and resistance. Legend has it that it was the Orisha Ogun who planted

00:17:07.800 the idea of a revolt into the heads of Haitian slaves and maroons, a term for Africans who had

00:17:12.880 escaped from slavery mixed with indigenous people and formed independent settlements. And it was 0.85

00:17:18.280 Ogun aka Papa Ogu who helped them to victory in the Haitian Revolution of 1804. If you want a 0.55

00:17:26.160 primer on the Orishas, maybe check out Seven African Powers, the Orishas by Monique Joyner

00:17:32.280 Sidlak. It's a great quick jumping off point for study. She says, collectively, these seven

00:17:38.820 Orishas symbolize a force that offers guidance and strength during all our troubles and hardships.

00:17:44.140 She writes of Ogun as having the status of a protective father figure. Ogun is the Orisha

00:17:49.180 of tools and weapons. Ogun gives strength and protection to individuals with a conflict to

00:17:54.740 battle. This conflict is a power and identity struggle that dates back to 1492 when Columbus

00:18:01.700 and crew arrived on Haiti, original land, mountain land, and renamed it Hispaniola,

00:18:07.780 and having brought no women on their ships, took the women of Haiti by force,

00:18:12.820 and finding no gold, turned to agriculture and human trafficking.

00:18:17.300 this pushing pulling toil and trouble of oppression and rebellion leads us forward

00:18:25.740 through the layers of space and time back to the haiti of 1936 and the birth of mama lola

00:18:33.160 a baby girl born a lourdes with all the wit and fire of her people's history in her blood

00:18:38.820 she comes from a line of healers manbos and hugan and most have stories of trying to ignore the call

00:18:45.240 but when Loa or Orisha make contact, attention must be paid. They manifest in visions,

00:18:54.000 coincidences, but most likely and profoundly through dreams and even possession. Her grandfather

00:19:01.700 and grandmother, Philo's mother and father, were legendarily magical. Grandpa was prone to drunken

00:19:08.220 rage and specialized in revenge magic. He only spoke to the spirits when he wanted something.

00:19:14.780 The story goes that when he died suddenly in the street,

00:19:17.740 Sina, Mama Lola's grandmother, said,

00:19:20.920 It is better this way. I know the spirits want me.

00:19:24.080 Before I always said no. Now everything has changed.

00:19:27.320 Now I will serve the spirits. They will take care of me.

00:19:30.740 I do not need a man.

00:19:33.220 This may have been a prophecy for the generations of women to come in her family line.

00:19:37.840 Philo's gift of healing at first showed itself exclusively through dreams.

00:19:41.820 Solutions came to her, appearing in her head as spirit messages.

00:19:45.320 But the vocation of healer, a job that for her could only be successfully performed

00:19:49.680 upon receipt of a message in a dream that may or may not come,

00:19:53.280 didn't exactly make for financial stability.

00:19:56.500 Over time, though, Philo owned her craft, eventually becoming knowledgeable enough

00:20:00.380 so she no longer had to wait for dream state instructions before counseling a client. 0.70

00:20:05.000 She makes a name for herself as a mambo, 0.79

00:20:07.040 at one point even counseling future president François Duvalier. 0.89

00:20:10.180 but her generosity kept her from attaining wealth, giving money away, paying others overdue rent,

00:20:16.160 feeding their children. These were all common practices for Philo.

00:20:20.380 Mama Lola's daughter, Maggie, says, work with the spirit run in my family, my grandmother,

00:20:25.340 my mother, people coming in here to see my mother all hour of the day and night.

00:20:29.820 She never too tired to see people, just like my grandmother, always helping people.

00:20:35.120 They don't ever have no money, they just giving, always giving.

00:20:38.840 Mama Lola claims that her mother never spoke of her father until one day, walking,

00:20:43.220 a friend of Philo pointed to a man and told Elordis,

00:20:46.000 That's your daddy.

00:20:47.900 The child had never seen this man before in her life.

00:20:51.060 When she questioned her mother, Philo told her that her father hadn't given one penny toward her upbringing.

00:20:57.280 Mama Lola claims that the man didn't admit that he was her father until shortly after she won a small lottery.

00:21:03.080 But his was also a family of Huguen, so perhaps by DNA, if not upbringing,

00:21:07.220 Mama Lola had magic on both sides of her family tree. At seven years old, Mama Lola had one of

00:21:12.560 the most defining experience of her life, which is funny because she says she doesn't remember it

00:21:16.980 at all. One day, she was badly bitten by the neighbor's dog. That night, leg carefully bandaged

00:21:23.180 by her mother, Alourdes woke in a panic. Her head was spinning. Something was dreadfully wrong. She

00:21:28.140 had to move. She got out of bed and walked and walked and walked. The frantic need to escape

00:21:32.760 was the last thing Mama Lola remembers about the incident.

00:21:36.360 She went missing in every sense.

00:21:39.200 Trying to diffuse Philo's desperate fears, a friend joked,

00:21:42.100 perhaps the spirits have taken Elourdes below the water.

00:21:45.100 Maybe they want to make her mambo. 0.99

00:21:47.060 There are stories about the voodoo loi La Sirene, 0.99

00:21:50.120 that she will pull people down under the water, en bas de l'eau. 0.89

00:21:53.820 If you speak French, you might understand this as en bas de l'eau,

00:21:57.760 literally underwater, 0.98

00:21:58.720 and she might force you to live there with her,

00:22:01.700 connecting you through the water to all knowledge, all life.

00:22:06.120 McCarthy Brown describes,

00:22:08.180 The stories have a common pattern.

00:22:10.280 A person, usually a woman, disappears for a time.

00:22:13.740 Three days, three months, three years. 0.99

00:22:17.060 When she returns, she is a changed person.

00:22:19.920 She has gained sacred knowledge.

00:22:22.200 Living below the water where spirits instructed her in the arts of diagnosis and healing.

00:22:27.340 I once met a rural priestess, and when I asked her who had initiated her, she responded that no one had.

00:22:33.820 Her instructions, she said simply, had come on Badalow.

00:22:40.000 At seven years old, a Lourdes disappeared for three days.

00:22:44.320 This, combined with all these other weird bits of evidence that you should go and read about,

00:22:49.700 suggests that maybe Mama Lola gained her true title of Mamba on Badalow during those three days.

00:22:56.940 In the end, she was found unharmed by the water.

00:23:01.440 Her first job at age 16 was as a singer in Haiti's Troupe Folklorique,

00:23:06.360 and not much is made of this time except that her singing career was well-paid and ended when she got married.

00:23:11.620 We do know that it was popular at the time for tourists visiting Haiti to want to see a voodoo dance,

00:23:16.360 so this was maybe another prophetic time in her life, drawing her slowly to her past and to her future.

00:23:23.420 Spiral forward and Mama Lola is living on her own with two children in Port-au-Prince. 0.99

00:23:28.260 She looks for work, eventually gaining employment through the government-run tobacco industry.

00:23:33.380 She said, let me tell you something.

00:23:36.080 When you go to the office and ask for a job, that man, the inspector, the one in the head office,

00:23:40.980 if you say, yes, I'm going to give you the job, you have to sleep with him first.

00:23:45.260 You say, no, you don't have no job.

00:23:48.100 Sometimes they make love to you and you still don't have no job.

00:23:51.720 Sometimes when I think back, I get angry.

00:23:54.360 But that's life. I can't help it. That's life.

00:23:57.400 When she loses her job as a tobacco inspector, 1.00

00:23:59.920 she's forced to sell sex more directly and frequently. 1.00

00:24:02.900 Though she's quick to make a distinction between her role as a Marie-Jacques, 1.00

00:24:06.280 or, like, escort, and a bouzen, or street prostitute. 0.98

00:24:11.160 She goes on dates with men, dinner, dancing, and then sex. 0.98

00:24:15.500 Interestingly, she would approach payment in the same way she would later as a Mambo. 0.65

00:24:18.980 she gives what she can and accepts what she's given in return. Back then, there was no other 0.96

00:24:24.420 way for her to buy food or pay her rent or her children's school fees. Sex work is not the 1.00

00:24:30.060 defining moneymaker in her life, certainly, and we might have glossed over it, if not from Mama

00:24:34.000 Lola's own words to Karen McCarthy Brown. You gotta put that in the book, because it's the

00:24:39.540 truth, right? Women gotta do all kind of thing, right? I do that to feed my children, and I am 1.00

00:24:45.220 not ashamed. Of course, women having to sell their bodies is nothing new. One woman McCarthy Brown 1.00

00:24:52.420 met in Haiti joked that she was going to market to sell her land. When asked what land, the woman 0.63

00:24:57.720 hooted and grabbed her crotch laughing, I can sell my land anywhere. But the power and resilience of 0.80

00:25:04.420 Haitian women is also notorious. No more notorious than anywhere else. Perpetua Cherry writes in her 1.00

00:25:11.600 essay, Feminist is a Dirty Word in Haiti, on April 3, 1986, shortly after the end of the Duvalier 1.00

00:25:17.820 regime, more than 30,000 women from diverse backgrounds took to the streets of Port-au-Prince 1.00

00:25:22.820 to demand to be included in Haiti's return to democracy. The 1986 march, organized by more than

00:25:28.280 a dozen grassroots groups, called attention to sexual and gender-based violence, women's financial

00:25:33.740 exclusion, lack of access to health and education, among other issues. For many women who participated

00:25:39.840 in this march, including my mother, it was the first time they felt socially empowered.

00:25:44.240 Despite a few critics, the event was well-received and marked the renewal of Haiti's women's movement,

00:25:49.480 eventually contributing to the creation of the Ministry of Women's Affairs and Women's Rights,

00:25:53.620 Haiti's participation in the 1995 Beijing Conference, and the ratification of the

00:25:58.360 Bel-Homme d'Opara Convention. When Alertus was in her 20s with two children in Port-au-Prince,

00:26:05.020 life was hard. She had become pregnant for the third time, not by a client, but by a dear

00:26:09.680 and trusted friend and lover. He deserted her when he found out she was carrying his child.

00:26:15.060 She says she and her children went to bed hungry on more days than she'd like to remember.

00:26:19.640 This third child, a son, William, was born with meningitis. Mama Lola took him to the hospital

00:26:24.980 and was given a prescription for drugs she couldn't afford to buy. The lights turned off

00:26:30.320 from non-payment. She sat in the dark, cradling her sick child in her arms, weeping. So when she

00:26:35.800 asked her brother living in New York for money and he instead gave her the option to join him,

00:26:40.160 she packed her bags and arrived in Brooklyn in 1962 with stars in her eyes. Before she left,

00:26:45.580 she told her mother, I'm going to that city. A lot of stars. Beautiful. Oh boy. And I don't think

00:26:50.940 I'm going to need no spirit in New York. She laughs. And I was wrong. Even her first attempt

00:26:57.560 to apply for a visa was greeted by the American embassy official with a sneer. How do I know

00:27:02.720 you're not going there to work as a prostitute. How do I know if this man is your pimp and not 1.00

00:27:06.500 your brother? So maybe this unwelcome should have tipped Mama Lola off to what was to come.

00:27:12.180 She leaves her three children in the care of her mother, Philo, and arrives in Brooklyn in 1962.

00:27:17.420 By December of 1963, she's dying. Before Christmas, I feel sick. My stomach, my chest.

00:27:26.340 Oh boy, I can't sit down. I can't lay down. I can't stand up. I can't breathe also. I feel

00:27:32.140 I'm going to die. I say, God, please save me. God, what happened to me? Then I think of my three

00:27:38.800 children in Haiti, my mother, my family. They bring me to Jewish Hospital in Prospect Avenue.

00:27:45.860 I got fever of 106, and they put me in emergency room. I was so sick, and I don't get better.

00:27:53.480 On January 8th, the priest arrives in her room to give Mama Lola her last rites. Diagnosed with an

00:27:58.060 infection in her intestine she's operated on, kept in hospital for a couple more weeks, then

00:28:02.420 discharged. Or as she put it, I feel all right. They put me out. You know, when you come from

00:28:07.800 the hospital, you're supposed to go back for treatment, but I don't go back because they ask

00:28:11.520 me, bring your passport and alien card. They ask me, where your family live in Haiti? They ask me

00:28:16.760 that. Hmm, they ask me that. And I give the address, but when I tell my friend Carmen, she say,

00:28:21.160 oh yeah, if you go with your alien card and your passport, they go and write the government in

00:28:25.040 Haiti, make them pay. Because when you operate, it's very expensive and I don't have no money to

00:28:29.920 pay. She'd say, they're going to send you back to Haiti. I get scared, so I never go back.

00:28:36.420 That time, I don't know what is welfare. I don't know about welfare at all, and nobody don't tell

00:28:40.940 me. No, nobody don't tell me if you're sick, you're not working, you can go someplace, they can help

00:28:46.040 you. Nobody tell me that. But everybody friend helped me. You see me, you give me $2, $3. If I

00:28:54.240 come in your house, you give me a plate of food, you know? That's the way I survive. Mama Lola

00:28:59.180 continues, when I leave Jewish hospital, I'm okay. I eat until I got my strength back. That time I go 0.80

00:29:06.220 back to work. But three months after, I get sick again. I get sick again. Same system, same time.

00:29:12.880 They call priest again. They give me last rite again. That's twice I got last rite. Twice. This

00:29:19.620 time they tell me I got bad heart. I got all kinds of sickness, but it's not true. When I come from

00:29:26.700 Wyckoff Hospital, I got no place to live because I don't have no money. I can't pay no rent. So I

00:29:31.420 meet a lady in the street, Yvonne Constant. She know my family in Haiti. She say, how come you're

00:29:36.980 so skinny? Poor girl, come into my house. That lady give me a big plate of food when I reach her 1.00

00:29:42.560 house. Boy, rice and bean, a big fish, boiled plantain. I eat, sweetheart. She give me food. 0.99

00:29:52.000 She give me a place to live. I sleep in her house and she give me food. I don't know what happened. 1.00

00:29:58.060 I always sleeping and I can't work. One day somebody tell me, Beatrice want to see you.

00:30:05.060 Beatrice, my sister-in-law. Sunday afternoon, I got clothes on me and I go there. When I first

00:30:10.940 come to New York. I live in her house, but we don't get along too good, and I don't see her for a long

00:30:15.300 time. Long time. You know me. I don't go to people I know to ask or beg for nothing. So I see her. I

00:30:21.660 just say, Aunt Bebe, people tell me you was asking for me. What happened? My mother? Something in my

00:30:26.760 family? She say, no, nothing don't happen in your family. I want to see you because I got a dream 0.96

00:30:31.960 about you. I say, oh yeah? I'm very serious. She say, I don't know if it's serious or not. She say, I dream

00:30:38.740 I see a mountain man on 42nd Street.

00:30:43.660 She say, in that dream, she have to cross that street

00:30:46.680 and everybody's standing just waiting for the light.

00:30:49.760 She look at that man.

00:30:51.040 She say, they got mountain man in New York too?

00:30:54.760 When they give the green light, she just walk 0.97

00:30:56.800 and one lady behind her say, 1.00

00:30:58.880 hey, madam, madam, madam, that man call you. 1.00

00:31:02.840 Baby say, what man?

00:31:04.400 When she turn her head, she see the mountain man.

00:31:07.100 She went to the mountain man, and she told the mountain man,

00:31:09.540 Hi.

00:31:10.300 And he said, Hi, cousin.

00:31:12.700 And Bebe said, You want to speak to me?

00:31:15.100 And he said, Yes, cousin.

00:31:17.380 And he told Bebe, You know Philo?

00:31:20.140 Bebe said, Philo, yeah.

00:31:22.460 Did you know Elourdes?

00:31:24.460 Bebe said, Yeah, I know Elourdes.

00:31:26.440 And the mountain man said, Tell Elourdes,

00:31:28.320 if she dressed like me, everything is going to be beautiful.

00:31:32.300 Bebe said, Really?

00:31:33.620 And that man walked maybe three or four steps.

00:31:36.360 And baby don't see him no more.

00:31:39.080 And boom, the clock.

00:31:41.820 And she say, what time is it?

00:31:43.900 It was 6.30 in the morning.

00:31:45.460 And when she wake up, baby say, ah, I understand that dream.

00:31:49.220 I understand.

00:31:50.280 I have to see a Lourdes to explain her that.

00:31:53.480 Because she know my mother has spirit, you know. 0.90

00:31:56.340 So she say, maybe a Lourdes mother's spirit come and talk to me.

00:32:00.540 Maybe that man, Kuzan Zaka.

00:32:04.840 Kuzan, Creole for cousin. 0.78

00:32:06.360 Zaka is a Haitian lois. Baby recognized him because his color is blue, especially blue denim,

00:32:12.280 the outfit of a Haitian peasant. He's excellent to talk to in regards to herbs and herbal medicine.

00:32:17.520 So when Mama Lola heard her sister-in-law's dream, she knew what she had to do. She had to return to

00:32:22.880 Haiti. But we gotta stop and talk about zombies, because white supremacist patriarchy creates and 1.00

00:32:30.040 feeds fears, and we gotta name and shame them every time we see them. Witch, zombie, mummy, 0.99

00:32:36.360 These are the creatures that populate our nightmares.

00:32:38.840 Through fright tales and horror movies, ancestors and their beliefs are turned to monsters,

00:32:43.540 to be feared but not revered.

00:32:46.360 In her book, Haitian Voodoo, Mambo Chiritan gives us a brief history of the zombie.

00:32:50.440 She writes,

00:32:50.920 In the West African language called Kikongo, the word Nsambe means God or Spirit.

00:32:58.480 Haitians believe that in addition to the physical body and the animate force that makes a living body different from a corpse,

00:33:04.480 There is also a special spirit within a person, their eternal soul.

00:33:10.400 Members of the secret society are believed to know how to dislodge a person's soul from his body.

00:33:15.840 This dislocation renders that person barely living, incapable of anything other than basic function.

00:33:21.660 The term zombie has come to mean either the soul that has been stolen and enslaved before or after physical death,

00:33:28.280 or the living person whose soul has been stolen and enslaved in such a manner.

00:33:32.600 so it's especially heinous that colonizers should enslave people and then demonize even the word

00:33:40.100 that came to denote a soul also stolen and enslaved we're reminded of a drug derived from

00:33:46.440 seeds and essentially weaponized by columbian criminals known as the devil's breath the drug

00:33:51.280 puts people into a zombie-like state they lose both their memory and free will blindly following 0.53

00:33:56.200 instructions to empty their bank accounts or give up their keys to their homes or cars waking up in

00:34:02.060 apart two or three days later with no memory of what they'd been led to do. If you're feeling

00:34:06.700 cynical about voodoo or zombies, you might not be as safe as you think, because the capture of a

00:34:12.320 soul doesn't just happen through magic or voodoo or crime or even math. A soul can be enslaved by

00:34:18.440 any constant cutting down from the all-too-real world we live in. The person who had been so

00:34:24.740 beat up and put down that they no longer have the strength or energy to care. For the science-minded

00:34:31.480 among us, let's cite The Atlantic from an article titled How Poverty Changes the Brain.

00:34:37.120 The brain's limbic system processes emotions and triggers emotional responses, in part because of

00:34:41.800 its storage of long-term memory. When a person lives in poverty, the limbic system is constantly

00:34:46.720 sending fear and stress messages to the prefrontal cortex, which overloads its ability to solve

00:34:52.160 problems, set goals, and complete tasks in the most efficient ways. So maybe we should be less

00:34:58.540 afraid of being eaten alive by walking dead zombies, and more afraid of what happens when

00:35:03.520 a mind and soul are enslaved. Lucky for Mama Lola, or as Zaka, Lois, and Bondier would have it, 0.98

00:35:12.720 someone did care. Many did. And Yvonne Constant paid Olorzis' passage back to Haiti when it was

00:35:19.300 her turn for Hans. Hans is a community-based financial exchange, a sort of good-natured,

00:35:25.520 well-intentioned relative of the pyramid scheme. If there are ten of you and you each put in ten

00:35:31.420 dollars a week, then each week for ten weeks someone gets a hundred dollars, except in hands

00:35:35.960 there's no pyramid, just a circle of protection and love. When Elourdes arrives unannounced in

00:35:42.800 Haiti, her mother sees her and faints. Philo had also had a dream about her daughter returning,

00:35:48.500 broken, from the United States. Within a few days of Mama Lola's return, Philo had been possessed

00:35:53.780 by Papa Ogu. This is not uncommon among Mambos, when the priestess becomes what's known as a horse 1.00

00:35:59.340 and the loa becomes the rider. Not dissimilar to the concept of the zombie, but this time it's a

00:36:04.680 temporary possession, not sinister, used only to deliver a message or instructions from the divine.

00:36:10.100 This time the message was from Mama Lola. She said, Papa Ogu come in my mother's head and tell

00:36:15.580 me I'm supposed to see with card. You know, do spirit work, help people. That I don't like. I say,

00:36:21.140 oh boy, how am I going to do that? Because to help people, you got to know a lot of thing.

00:36:25.720 I say, how am I going to put all that in my head? My mother tell me, don't worry, you'll manage.

00:36:32.780 Mama Lola followed this instruction and still today uses an ordinary or extraordinary deck

00:36:37.980 of playing cards as her primary tool for divination. Karen McCarthy Brown describes

00:36:42.920 the process of initiation and Mama Lola's part in it. She writes,

00:36:46.560 Initiation into the voodoo priesthood involves an elaborate set of rituals,

00:36:51.500 the core of which is a long period of seclusion,

00:36:53.860 in which a person is said to kush, literally to lie down or go to sleep.

00:36:58.280 These rituals are commonly referred to as taking the ason,

00:37:01.580 that is, taking up the beaded rattle that is said to give priests and priestesses

00:37:05.540 a certain amount of leverage in working with the spirits.

00:37:08.600 The initiation rituals for a lourdes could not take place right away.

00:37:12.080 Money had to be saved for drummers, sacrificial animals,

00:37:14.880 food and drink for the spirits. Several sets of ritual clothing had to be sewn.

00:37:20.080 Thus, on this first visit, only a simple ritual, called a lavtet, a head-washing, was performed.

00:37:26.320 The head-washing was a promise, a lourdes made to the spirits, indicating that she had heard

00:37:32.040 their request and intended to honor it. The ritual also cooled the rest of spirits in lourdes' head

00:37:37.780 and fed and strengthened them. After two weeks, she returned to New York, but before she left,

00:37:43.000 she promised the spirits that she would return to Haiti to Cush as soon as she had $700.

00:37:49.760 The spirits eased their discipline, and although life in New York continued to be demanding,

00:37:54.360 there was a noticeable turn in her luck after this first trip to Haiti. Before she left New York,

00:37:59.620 Alertus had been unable to find employment, but on the day after her return, she found a job in

00:38:04.000 the laundry at the Brooklyn Hebrew Home, a position she held for two years. During this

00:38:08.880 interim period, a Lord has also moved step by step into the role of healer. I start to help

00:38:14.900 people, you know, little by little, start to do things. You my friend, you got trouble, you know,

00:38:20.600 anything, love, sickness, you come to me, I help a little bit. I try to help. Everything I do for

00:38:26.160 them is good. No complaint. People start to give me money, you know, $5, $10, because they're

00:38:32.600 grateful. So one day I say to myself, I don't have no time to go to that job. So I quit that job and

00:38:39.080 I just work in my house. I read card. I help people. During this time, Lourdes drew on skills

00:38:46.220 acquired during the short visit with her mother on her awakening memory and on the help of spirits

00:38:51.840 who began to speak to her more directly through her dreams. My mother tell me, now you're going

00:38:57.480 to see the real person. Somebody come in your house, they happy, you know, dancing, drinking,

00:39:02.420 Even if they do that, you're going to see if they're sad.

00:39:05.300 They got something bad inside them, you're going to see that. 0.99

00:39:08.380 Finally, when Elorda said saved $700, she returned to Haiti to take the ass on. 0.98

00:39:13.840 Second time I go, I pass one month in Haiti. 0.98

00:39:16.800 Nine days inside that little room where they kush me. 0.97

00:39:20.580 Then I mambo.

00:39:22.260 When I come back to New York, people pouring all over me.

00:39:25.480 People who lose job, I make them find job.

00:39:27.660 People who's sick, I treat them.

00:39:29.780 Their husband or wife leave them, I make that person come back.

00:39:33.080 After I come back from Haiti second time, I do not have to go to work outside again.

00:39:37.360 My mother showed me how to do good.

00:39:39.320 Never do bad in your life, because when you do bad to people, that return to you.

00:39:43.480 That return right on your back.

00:39:45.920 I remember every single thing she'd tell me, because that's in my family.

00:39:50.200 My great-grandmother served spirit, and my grandmother, then my mother, then me.

00:39:54.400 some people got spirit in their family but when they grow up they think they too big shot to

00:39:59.860 serve that spirit they too ashamed about that but i'm not ashamed at all because i love spirit

00:40:05.680 because they help me that's my belief by the 1970s mama lola is a renowned mambo

00:40:13.280 called upon by people in need both in haiti and the u.s or by her initiates when a case

00:40:19.420 proved too tough to crack. The black mambo dressed all in white, trekking across cursed fields and 1.00

00:40:25.580 broken hearts with her pale Florida water, limes, ashes, indigo, molasses. This is the Mama Lola 1.00

00:40:31.740 that Karen McCarthy met and studied. The first edition of Mama Lola, a voodoo priestess in 0.55

00:40:36.560 Brooklyn, came out in 1991, and the book served to fuel Mama Lola's already growing fame. Each

00:40:42.100 edition after the first would feature her proud, beautiful, wise, do no harm but take no shit 0.95

00:40:47.480 expression. Mama Lola accompanied McCarthy Brown on educational tours, in fact finding missions 0.99

00:40:53.080 for years. She would continue to go back and forth to Haiti from time to time, from Brooklyn to

00:40:58.200 Port-au-Prince and around the world, speaking, helping, building her reputation, building her

00:41:03.980 power. Her last trip to Haiti was in 2009. A magnitude 7 earthquake struck Haiti on the afternoon

00:41:10.700 of January 12, 2010. More than half a million people were injured or killed, with millions

00:41:18.000 more displaced. One more disaster in a country that continues to suffer from centuries of

00:41:24.520 political, economic, social, and environmental injustices and setbacks and inequalities.

00:41:31.740 The earthquake was a disaster that would cause Mama Lola to claim she would never return

00:41:36.340 to Haiti, her mother's home. Holy space and family altar destroyed, she said, there is nothing left.

00:41:43.420 In the new millennium, Mama Lola took up practice at Voodoo Authentica, a voodoo shop, museum, and

00:41:48.720 spiritual center in New Orleans, giving blessings and readings and performing other Mamboli duties

00:41:53.480 with her daughter Maggie and goddaughter Brandy, a role the shop calls voodoo ambassador. Brandy

00:41:58.960 says, Mama Lola just has this presence that says, I know who I am and I am voodoo. If you come to

00:42:04.400 Mama Lola, you are part of her. We reached out to the staff at Voodoo Authentica, who told us that

00:42:09.760 as of 2016, Mama Lola is officially retired. She's no longer performing any kind of spiritual work or

00:42:15.640 readings, at least not for the public. But the staff assured us that they are in frequent contact

00:42:20.240 with Mama Lola, and she is well and living with her family. We can't leave New Orleans Voodoo 1.00

00:42:26.040 without spiraling past one of its most famed practitioners, Marie Laveau. Both Amy and I have

00:42:31.820 visited her grave in St. Louis Cemetery on separate occasions. And there's always evidence

00:42:36.620 of the faithful who have passed by before leaving offerings, as we did, of tobacco, marijuana,

00:42:42.140 crosses and cards, flowers or coins. At some point, drawing X's on her grave became the habit of those

00:42:47.700 visitors seeking Marie Laveau's help from beyond. But this damages the tomb and is discouraged by

00:42:52.620 preservationists. In 2014, a restoration of her tomb was completed. A large find is now in place

00:42:58.060 for any visitor who attempts to write on the grave.

00:43:00.400 You've been warned.

00:43:03.360 So let's spiral this story backward one more time to 2007,

00:43:07.500 at the doors of a sprawling California starlit mansion.

00:43:11.760 Maybe as you enter, you roll your eyes 0.99

00:43:13.340 and wonder what Mama Lola is doing there.

00:43:15.860 On this day, in this place,

00:43:17.400 a Lourdes might say to you, as she has said in the past,

00:43:20.320 I just do what I want.

00:43:22.780 Nobody don't tell me my business.

00:43:24.860 What they mean, white people can't have no spirit?

00:43:27.160 spirit for everybody. While it's clear that Mama Lola's relationship with Tori Spelling deserves

00:43:33.580 no more than a footnote in her rich history, we can't help but remark on the absurd balance that

00:43:38.640 life and magic can produce. And it's frankly glorious to see Tori, the poster child for

00:43:43.920 moneyed white privilege, trusting and recognizing the power of the Haitian mambo. And maybe we can

00:43:49.240 admit to getting a bit of a postmodern thrill from watching Mama Lola pelt Tori with her special

00:43:54.260 blend of herbs, oils, and ice-cold water. We'll link you to the video in the show notes.

00:43:59.780 But the best part of Mama Lola's interaction with the star of Beverly Hills is the manner in which

00:44:04.300 Alertus replies to Tori's complaints. It's cold, Tori shrieks. It's not cold, Mama Lola states back, 0.67

00:44:11.260 matter-of-factly and with authority, as if her speaking the words quite simply makes them true.

00:44:16.720 The water is not cold. Tori stops complaining. Mama Lola's words have changed reality.

00:44:24.260 Your words, you know, can change someone's reality.

00:44:28.900 We all know this.

00:44:30.600 And we all need help sometimes.

00:44:32.800 We all need to care and be cared for.

00:44:35.380 And we should all aspire to a Mama Lola level of balance

00:44:38.620 between caring for ourselves and caring for others.

00:44:43.140 So as we send you off to praise your ancestors

00:44:45.640 and ruminate on the notion of care and your own healing journey,

00:44:49.060 we ask Alegba, safekeeper of Ashe, ruler of doorways,

00:44:54.260 Standing at the crossroads of human and divine to bless us, and you, as we offer up a splash of Florida water and a quote from Mama Lola one last time.

00:45:06.140 I help all the people. Big people, small people, poor people.

00:45:11.760 I'm there to help anybody, anybody, and all the people I help become my friend, my family.

00:45:18.780 Papa Legba, open the gate. 0.99

00:45:24.260 You must be a witch. 0.99

00:45:26.600 Thanks for listening to the Missing Witches Podcast. If you like our podcast, please share

00:45:32.560 it with your witchy friends or your witchy aunts. Like, subscribe, follow us on social

00:45:38.360 media at Missing Witches. And as always, don't forget to join us on Wednesday for another

00:45:43.620 episode of Witches Found. This week, I continue my conversation with Phoenix. So that's Missing

00:45:49.860 Witches Sundays, Witches Found Wednesdays, MissingWitches.com at Missing Witches.

Missing Witches - October 21, 2018

Missing Witches - Mama Lola：＂Spirit For Everybody!＂

Episode Stats

Transcript

Missing Witches - October 21, 2018

Missing Witches - Mama Lola： ＂Spirit For Everybody!＂

Episode Stats

Transcript

Missing Witches - Mama Lola：＂Spirit For Everybody!＂