“I love the Unknown” (Eef Barzzelay from the movie Rocket Science)
Sunday, March 28, 2021
Indigenous people have been the beacons of light toward guiding us to an appreciation of the Oral Tradition. They are the main arteries in the quest for understanding the nature religions, the most ancient spiritual traditions on earth.
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was a pioneer in the exploration of one of these traditions: Voodoo. It has been greatly misunderstood and misinterpreted. Her life was an expedition into the unknown realms of the Voodoo practices. Like any writer who delves into taboo areas, Zora paid a price. She remained an “outsider” until her death in 1960.
A Black woman before her time, Zora studied anthropology at Columbia University. Her most famous work, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” was published in 1938. Though voodoo was the underlying theme of this work, Zora devoted most of the book to the historical and political background of Haiti. This seeming ambivalence to strike at the core of the voodoo teachings characterized Zora’ life. In 1937, she wrote, “the proper voodoo book has never been done and it is waiting for me to write it.”
“Voodoo began in the 1700’s with the Maroons of Haiti, an underground culture of escaped slaves…secrets of medicine from Africa were preserved…voodoo flourished as an amalgam of tribal religions and force-fed Catholicism. Voodoo revolves around ritual and possession as the voodoo gods are invoked to administer justice.” (1)
Transcendental dance, spirit possession, and a focus on the reproductive aspects of creation were central themes in Zora’s writing.
“In the beginning, God and his woman went into the bedroom together to commence creation. That was the beginning of everything and voodoo is as old as creation .” (2) [excerpt from “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”]
Although Zora strove to explain and humanize voodoo throughout her life, she was burdened by the fact that as an initiated practitioner of voodoo, she was bound to hold certain traditions secret. During the height of her research while studying secret societies in Haiti, she became ill and left the island. Zora is not alone in her ambivalence to share the secret spiritual traditions while honoring the privacy to which these traditions insist. For example, only recently have Native American Shamans and Kabbalists begun to share their knowledge with the world at large, in attempts to prevent destruction of humankind. Zora would have been understandably conflicted as to how to handle this dilemna during the times when she lived.
So what is the spiritual significance of “voodoo” for our times?
Zora may have experienced a precursor of the cancel culture movement. While her works were not prohibited, she was marginalized by her peers. She was “excluded from the literary circle of early 20th century anthropologists like Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, though she encountered them professionally.” (1) Her folksy style of writing did not meet academic standards. In short, she was snubbed by the academic elite of her time. In a sense, she lived between the worlds of academic Columbia University and the Native culture of Haiti, not fitting in either one. She was a different drummer and her research was criticized as being more “story” than “science”
Mystics, like Zora, are destined from birth to be “the other”.
We are reminded, during this Holy Week of the Easter Season, that Jesus proclaimed to Pontius Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” While most of us strive to be acknowledged by our peers, the mystic must gain acceptance of her fate of having “one foot in each world.” She may be called “The Fool on the Hill” (Beatles song), shunned like “The Elephant Man”, (Joseph Merrick, 1862) or despised by half of the country. The path of the mystic or “other” is not an easy one and Christ said it best, “Take up your cross and follow me.” Zora and those like her are the visionaries of the future and set the spiritual tone for the enlightened, often only after their deaths. Alice Walker, the contemporary Black writer, “discovered” Zora’s works after her death, having found her unmarked grave, and she was inspired to become one of the most acclaimed Black female writers of our time. Zora “served as a kind of bridge for an imaginative matrilineage extending from the tradition of conjure to the literary genius of black women writers in the last two decades.” (1)
In the final analysis, Zora is a true “Black Madonna”, not just because she was a Black woman, but for her passion for the mystical aspects of Voodoo with her focus on nature, ritual, and the feminine aspects of birth and creation. This was often a solitary path and required endurance. It may be the hope for humankind, as we bring the polarities of male/female, darkness/light, peace/war, into balance.
(1) “The Problem of Invisibility: Voodoo and Nora Neale Hurston”, Wendy Dutton, 1993.
(2) “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, Zors Neale Hurston, 1938.
