As some of you in the diaspora are aware, awhile back, a “beef” had arisen between two Haitian spiritual people. I won’t mention their names here, not to be passive aggressive, but simply not to add energy to the specific strife. You know who you are, or who knows of it knows who they are. What I will say of their identities is that one is a Bokor and the other fancies himself a Haitian priest in his way, and attached to a well known and formerly well regarded woman who fancies herself a priestess.
What seemed to be the most intense issue at the time was that the clergy had been diversifying into the domain of the mage, and throwing shade on what are normal and legitimate practices born of war and survival. While they seemed to have had a specific target for this criticism in mind, the shade that was thrown cast a shadow on many other practitioners at various places in the spectrum between magic and priesthood, myself included.
Now recently one of the former allies of the afore mentioned Bokor, a certain Brujo, nothing fancying about that, the real deal, instigated what has to be the most nerdy dispute that I have ever witnessed in my lifetime, in African diaspora spirituality. Take note, we are talking about the diaspora here. It was over, of all things, astrology.
The whole dispute was around an understandable misunderstanding. Because he was not specific, the Bokor understandably thought the Brujo was in the old Greek/Tropical astrology, whereas the Bokor relies more on Sidereal astrology and Afrocentric astronomy. The Bokor wasn’t sure if the Brujo was taking certain things into account, and warned their mutual viewers to update. Instead of just clarifying, it turned into a back and forth and egos flared.
Then life happened. Everybody doesn’t have time for everything. Bokors are not known for their patience. The Bokor made a post that made it clear he was done with the issue. He was probably aware that this Battle of the Astrogeeks was not doing either of them any favors image-wise, and regardless of what people may pretend, if one is on YouTube and gets any money from it, image is important in that. So one has to pick their battles.
There is also the issue of web skills and experience. Being good at magick doesn’t make one a webmaster. It doesn’t make one an experienced webmaster. It also doesn’t make one aware of the fakery and phuckery that has been going on since endless September and the central figures in the sh*tshow that followed in soc.singles, then WordPress blogs, and then the Trump campaign. Not everyone is aware that now there are basically businesses with thousands of paid “cubicle” trolls and quite a few bots. A bit of that is dedicated to destabilizing African communities.
So if there is a “beef” then the first people you want to suspect is anyone you don’t know in the flesh who is egging it on. Even if it is someone live, you want to vet your friends carefully. I mean who actually loves you who would want you to be in a conflict with a Bokor or a Brujo?
Take a moment.
So when we are done, the worst thing you can do is start taunting us for being done. It’s not a bad thing to not look for unnecessary trouble. This is not something that indicates a victory or loss because for the witch, well, mortality is a real thing. Our done-ness is your cue to back off. Once the talking is done, we are over it, and it is then in the hands of the Spirits because we don’t have the time for it. We have decided there are more important things than ego, not that ego in and of itself is so bad. It’s just that our ego isn’t riding on what someone who isn’t in our family, paying our bills, and definitely not ending our enemies has to say. The be-ings in those categories are more important.
We don’t make the lanes. The Spirits do. Nature does. Their width tends to end where someone else’s begins, and their length, well, always ends somewhere. We all have our appointment with Iku. Anyone who has met her knows we meet her one of two ways: screaming or laughing.
Because I prefer laughter, I am going to say this once. As a curator of news and knowledge, this is the last post I’m going to make about lanes and staying in them. I will just remind everyone to be kind and polite to one another, and when you can’t do what the Bokor did and just disengage. When your content proportion reaches more than 20% bullsh*t, I will no longer consider you a credible news or knowledge resource. I will not announce it. I will simply move onto people who are providing content that readers actually need. We have actual issues and actual enemies doing actual harm to our communities.
Now, this may not mean much to some, but ModernTraditional turned 18 this year. Last month was the first time it didn’t break even, but it was quickly remedied. I am the sort who will occasionally post about moments of “weakness” just to see what people will do. That’s part of my staying in my lane. I don’t need to lie, just to be human, but many people in this business are so afraid of their humanity one would think that they think their sh*t doesn’t stink.
All sh*t stinks, and everybody sh*ts. So let’s all stay in the humane lane.
Blessings and Ashé!
