New Orleans State of  Mind: Hurricane Katrina

Louis Martinie'
 

The magus cries on the inside and laughs on the outside.
A. Crowley (paraphrase)
 

Inside:

I look up from my desk at work and see Mrs. Smith holding Nikisha. She sings to her softly; tells her how pretty she is. Nikisha smiles and makes soft contented sounds. That was not so very long ago.

Mrs. Smith is poor and black and can't drive and is probably dead now. She was so proud of going to High School for one or two years. Her parents let the Mississippi cotton wait so she would not have to be in the fields with them all of the time. She liked to spell words. I would sit and write reports and ask her how to spell. "Mrs. Smith, does "know" begin with a 'k' or an 'n' ?" Mrs. Smith would tell me and then go back to Nakisha, " Baby, we gonna get a tin can and sit up on Chef Menteur and get some little money and then get us a bag of Doritos and watch TV. Would you like that, Baby?"

Nikisha is profoundly physically/mentally handicapped and black and in an understaffed  group home that didn't have enough transportation at the best of times; she is probably dead now. She liked to hold a handkerchief in her right hand. She would wave it back and forth to cool her badly disfigured face; maybe a fire. She was a strong little girl. It took both Mrs. Smith and I to give her meds. She was blind but she knew what we were up to; we had to sneak up on her.
 

Outside:

I am a voodoosant and a sorcerer; how does this help or hinder my abilities to be in such devastation? Here are some entries thoughts, and examples from my magickal record (MR). They are followed by a comment (italics) that looks at how my experience may have some relevance to the hidden community.

MR  - I ask myself why I bother to to "laugh" or at least stay calm on the outside.  There is a dangerous no man's land between the laughter and the tears. It is filled with anger that can strike as quickly and as unexpectedly as a snake.  The anger appears if I hold to Mr. Crowley's words too strictly.  After a few days I have come to regard the anger as an early warning signal. A sign to make time when I can to cry on the outside and do things that bring an internal laughter. This time must not be self indulgent; it must not interfere with the doing of the will. The multiverse seems to agree, I cried at the Red Cross when thinking about those who may be suffering and a radio DJ said, " That was 'Stop Your Sobbing' by the Pretenders."  Its simple, my crying then and there took time away from others who could be helped. I cried later.

The external calm / good humor is effective in getting done, doing what it is my will to do. Helping people make contacts, finding out how I can use the resources I have to help all those in need.  This includes the needs of Mishlen and I. I do not know if a Priest, in particular a Warrior Priest, can do any less.

 There is an elegance to this simple formulation; the most effect is gotten for the least effort.  Love gives rise to the internal tears that act like a great water engine generating power for the exercise of Will. Will provides a fertile ground for the joy of effective action. Once this dance of Love and Will has begun it is hard to tell who is leading. Almost all of the time there is success in this; the laughter/calm is real and the tears/sorrow is real.
 
 

MR  -  Mishlen, my companion, can see futures. She told me Hurricane Katrina would be very bad for us even before it hit the Florida coast.  I didn't believe her but out of respect I readied the house and some belongings to evacuate. She was right and I was out before the traffic jams.

People who have this kind of sight are correct a percentage of the time. Priestess Miriam of the New Orleans Voodoo Spiritual Temple has been talking about a big one hitting for the last few months.  It would have been good if I sent some sort of electronic message to voodoosants in the New Orleans area and ascertained if others shared Mishlen's vision and Priestess Miriam's foreboding. Perhaps comparing this information could have helped us all.

MR  -  We have a house on 18 foot pylons on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain across from New Orleans. I'm told that 2 out of about 150 residences on our street are still standing; ours and one other. Mishlen wonders about using up our good karma.

Our house is well built, that’s an important beginning. Mishlen was doing mantras to Red Tara for protection from the storm. I joined her in these mantras. I asked the loa and set my familiar spirits to protect the house before leaving. I worked and prayed and chanted that Katrina would make land fall in a way as to do the least damage to sentient beings.

Big failure and small success. Katrina certainly did not make landfall in such a way as to cause the least suffering possible.

We were hit. Should I have worked to deflect Katrina? I don't know. These kinds of workings have always struck me as deeply suspect. The comparison is to a battlefield (Warrior Priest). Bullets are flying and to protect myself I pull a brother or sister in front of me. They take the bullet and I walk.

Perhaps there would have been less suffering if Katrina would have hit, say, Pensacola. That said, I would be interested in hearing what mothers in Pensacola have to say about this line of thought. Dostoyevsky asked if the happiness of the world was worth the suffering of one child (The Idiot? ; no library). Is that a fair price?  I don't know.

The eye wall of Katrina appeared from maps to have passed directly over our house. I do mean exactly, "directly".  The house survived and a neighbor called and told me we were (relatively) "fine".  I'm told the hurricane pulled off the boards I had over windows but did not break the windows themselves. Houses on both sides were flattened. To our left even the debris was swept clean.

With good fortune comes responsibility. The buddhas, loa, and spirits worked for us and now it is time to show gratitude.  We plan to use the house as a gateway to New Orleans for friends and returning members of the spiritual community. It looks like Northshore will be up and running months before the central city area.  If good fortune is separated from the responsibility it brings, then at best depleted magickal power and at worst guilt is the product.

I do not think our house surviving caused more damage to the houses around us. There is no evidence that our good fortune was bought at the cost of others misfortune. The winds of the eye wall (175 mph) and the tidal surge were sufficient to flatten everything.

Here is a big one. Were our magicks stronger than the magicks of those whose houses were destroyed by Katrina?  Maybe, but I'm not convinced of this. The Invisibles were a tremendous help but voodoosants all walk different paths. On our path there is great benefit in having the house safe. On another path the Invisibles may have responded to the voodoosants workings by allowing their house to be destroyed so that a greater, future good could manifest. The Invisibles could have responded to the purpose of the working using different means.

The issue here seems to be how success, the strength of one's magicks, is measured. When I look at myself, I know that my magickal powers are stronger now than they were 10 years ago and much stronger than they were 20 years ago. I can see a growing rate of what I call "success" as I walk my path. I am not sure about comparing my individual successes or failures to those of other workers.  Perhaps the best place to measure success or failure is within the practice of the voodoosant over time.
 

There is karma and the conditions that bring karma to fruitation. Perhaps all one can truthfully say is that we are fortunate and that fortune is immensely complex. Those less fortunate may have stronger magicks but their karma in this particular situation may have been less helpful or an actual impediment.  Also, it's important here to differentiate between the storm damage and the devastation brought on by Washington's lack of concern.
 

MR  -  Habits!  More than anything, good habits have gotten me through this time.  This is extremely important. Emergency workers know this well. When the mind is numbed by the extent of what one is dealing with, training kicks in.

We are magaickians and our training is magickal. Practice well. I have often said to myself that my life would be more interesting if I had more discipline.
 

The Master of my Head is the New Orleans loa Blac dan-i. The name means "white snake" and its primary attribute is coolness, a calm abiding. This loa walks the same path as Obatala.

The advise s/he gave me was to practice "small kindness." In facing the devastation squarely I think this is good advice for all of us. Msl. Katrina and her effect is much too big to hold in our arms or mind. Small kindnesses anchor us in the moment; help to stabilize the mind  and allow us to begin to breath meaning into the ruble around us.