Weather witch: the rain maker

This blogpost is to chronicle work done during August 2017 and the ability to manipulate the weather. I put 5 river rocks that were taken with offering to put in this cherry tree that produced alot this summer. This is part of a Taino Caribbean Indio way to make rain. We are having one of the most dry and most wildfires here in the PNW in history. The smoke and air quality is very bad in some areas.  I sang to my Lwa Legba, Metrisili, Cachita Tumbo, Papa Sobo y Bade and Tindjo Alawe while harvesting peas for hours in the evening and my main 2 spirit guides on Sunday. I sang a song my spirits told me for rain. Thank you to my brothers and sister and native tribes doing drumming in western Canada, those who have prayed & assisted. I cannot take credit but I know they have helped us, and thankful to the Lwa & mercy of Bondye, I felt drops of rain when there should be none a few nights ago. There was no forecast for rain, now there is rain coming about 5 days to the day after I did ceremony, and they increased the forecast to rain all weekend for my birthday. My Lwa I am assured! Ayibobo! Cheeehooo its raining! our water was almost out I am on well and duck pond pump and rain barrels right now on this property. Did my rain dance song 24 hours ago. I am going to sing it again! And I always get headache before it rains. And its the thunder full moon just put my pot out to catch some!   look at the change in temperature too : Vancouver Island 29-32 degree Celsius down to 16! Wed Clear Clear 28°C  Precipitation: 0% Humidity: 77% Wind: 6 km/h Thu Sunny 29° Fri Mostly Sunny 27° Sat Scattered Showers 21° Sun Showers 16° Mon Cloudy 17° Tue Partly Cloudy 19° Wed Showers 19° Guess I owe Cachita Tumbo some yellow flowers and cigar to the river, My mother here is shocked haha, but she is a believer in curandero's too.I am not sure if this is a new inherited or latent now developed minor ability, I have only noted my connection to wind before. Perhaps due to my court or my Leo sun and Jupiterian Sag moon energies. When I was in Florida and walked to the botanica it was blistering summer: hot and clear. I was with my younger godbrother and began to sing for rain. He was in disbelief, until there were blessed welcoming cool rain drops...until we made it to be picked up by our godfather and godmother. Recently I have had to walk to work in the mountainous western area of the USA and it rains late winter and spring. I asked my spirits several times to hold off the rain until I could make it to work, and miraculously the weather obliged each time, with a few sprinkles only the one time! As to the relation between the offices of chief and rain-maker in South Africa a well-informed writer observes: “In very old days the chief was the great Rain-maker of the tribe. Some chiefs allowed no one else to compete with them, lest a successful Rain-maker should be chosen as chief. There was also another reason: the Rain-maker was sure to become a rich man if he gained a great reputation, and it would manifestly never do for the chief to allow any one to be too rich. The Rain-maker exerts tremendous control over the people, and so it would be most important to keep this function connected with royalty. Tradition always places the power of making rain as the fundamental glory of ancient chiefs and heroes, and it seems probable that it may have been the origin of chieftainship.....

The foregoing evidence renders it probable that in Africa the king has often been developed out of the public magician, and especially out of the rain-maker. The unbounded fear which the magician inspires and the wealth which he amasses in the exercise of his profession may both be supposed to have contributed to his promotion. But if the career of a magician and especially of a rain-maker offers great rewards to the successful practitioner of the art, it is beset with many pitfalls into which the unskillful or unlucky artist may fall. The position of the public sorcerer is indeed a very precarious one; for where the people firmly believe that he has it in his power to make the rain to fall, the sun to shine, and the fruits of the earth to grow, they naturally impute drought and dearth to his culpable negligence or willful obstinacy, and they punish him accordingly. Hence in Africa the chief who fails to procure rain is often exiled or killed. Thus, in some parts of West Africa, when prayers and offerings presented to the king have failed to procure rain, his subjects bind him with ropes and take him by force to the grave of his forefathers that he may obtain from them the needed rain. The Banjars in West Africa ascribe to their king the power of causing rain or fine weather. So long as the weather is fine they load him with presents of grain and cattle. But if long drought or rain threatens to spoil the crops, they insult and beat him till the weather changes. When the harvest fails or the surf on the coast is too heavy to allow of fishing, the people of Loango accuse their king of a “bad heart” and depose him. Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941).  The Golden Bough.  1922. page 86 http://www.bartleby.com/196/pages/page86.html The power of working with natural forces hits at the very core of harnessing nature. "Making it rain" has its connotations with sexual fluids, cash, fertility and abundance. Rain and water is part of the balance and requirement of life along with the masculine force of the sun and fire, without the combination we could not have rainbows or alchemy.... S7X

Dhamballah: the cosmic snake & creation

Dhamballah's feast or fet date is March 17th the day syncretized with St. Patrick. His colors are white or green, a very ancient, wise, calm, beneficent Lwa, associated with creation, rain, peace, wisdom, destiny, fertility, prosperity and luck. His offerings and area are kept really clean, usually are white and sweet, and he takes no alcohol. A common offering are depending on lineage white foul, almond syrup (orgeat), pompeya lotion perfume,white cakes and a white washed egg on a bed of white flour.

In honor of his day I decided to tell the story of Vodou creation.

The first version was taken from " By The Kingdom of This World ",by Alejo Carpentier:

Long ago, the serpent spirit Danbala created the world. He used his 7,000 coils to form the stars and the planets in the heavens and to shape the hills and valleys on earth. He used lightning bolts to forge metals and make the sacred rocks and stones. When he shed his skin he created all the waters on the earth. And when the sun showed through mist settling on the plants and trees a rainbow was born. Her name was Ayida Wedo.”(the rainbow snake)

I would like to share a similar oral mystery story passed down from a Houngan to our family:

Houngan Steve M has become Ghede to our local group, as well as in other temples, at least one other American Haitian temple I am aware of where his asson sits. I never got to meet him but his influence and his teachings continues to this day.

Dhamballah lay surrounding around the earth holding it together. He began to stir turn and twist the movements made mountains and valleys as he uncoiled it became shaped. He saw something in the sky which may have been the face of Bondye or a great star. He went into the sky and waters dripped off the body, he opened his mouth and it began to pour upon the earth. When he did that, the sun reflected off the waters and he saw Aida Wedo the rainbow serpent. They fell in love and intertwined. Aida Wedo coming up to meet him, and him coming down to earth began all creation.

.........

He carried the Lwa from the sky and she up from earth carries the dead as they rise on the world tree or temple pillar. In some stories he carried the ancestors on his back as the waves when the slaves came from Africa to Haiti instead of the story with the ship Immamou and Captain Agwe.

In the first story 7 is the celestial number of spectrum and planets of the universe. It mirrors the biblical story of creation in 7 days. Blacksmith spirits in several cultures are associated with creation, metals and magic. Water and Fire creates alchemical steam or air and the rainbow.

Some people see Aida Wedo and Dhamballah as the same entity in one, such as the hermetic beings or the mind which contains both polarities. They are viewed slightly different in Africa than Haiti. The 2 snakes also is similar to the healing rod of the Greek god Aesculapius and the mercurial wand. Seen in the medical symbol. Mercury being of air, the mind, magic, communication and sexuality.

Coils also bring to mind the spiral energy of DNA, and sacred geometry of creation. The snake movement of constricting and loosening is like formation of the universe and star systems. The movement of undulating, back and forth is like energy wavelength. The coils or spirals are like sacred geometry the Fibonacci sequence and divine ratio.

Some use Martha the Dominator for Aida Wedo or Mami Wata, a pantheon of snake like spirits or for La Sirene. But we use that for a river snake Lwa Lubana. We use the saint image Mary of (divine) grace for Aida Wedo the rainbow snake, Some use the Lady of Immaculate Conception image.

Sometimes she is pictured standing on a new moon or rainbow instead.
She is credited with holding up the world. The words, ma, material, matter, mother being interconnected. Snakes are images of ancient ancestors.

The rainbow snake also is a theme for creation with Australian Aboriginals, but also in central America the Quetzalcoatl "twins" solar multicolored feathered snake so these ideas are pre-christian. From Greece the image of the snake and egg oomphalos represented the navel or center of the world and communication with the gods, the pythoness divinitory oracle of Delphi. In Ireland serpent mounds were burial sites of the fae and ancestors.

It is not hard to see the procreation knowledge of sperm and ova, potentiality and seed, 1 and 0 binary creation.

Da or Dhamballah is associated with destiny, the star and godhead father of all, before Haiti he was the supreme Deity of life in some areas in West Africa, besides Sakpata or Heviosso who became the Orisha Babaluaye or the Lwa Bade of disease, healing and the dead who some identified as "God" where there was no word equivalent for such, although in Vodou we are monotheists, and the Lwa are high elevated mysteries and not gods and goddesses. Therefore Dhamballah in the new world is a creational Lwa, but that God is the ultimate mystery.

Snakes remain as the bridge between and identified both with earth and the celestial or spiritual. The spanish word culebra and culev or culeb mean both "snake" and "covering", the snake skin that covers the material world.

Ayahuascha a visionary plant, sees the rope vine as a snake, related to DNA and illusions or maya, spiritual axis ladder, light to be able to see the world in a "shamanic" way, beyond the veil or covering; in which they are taught many things. An Ayahuasquero and Tabaquero, says that snakes are the mother of the plants which explains why they see snakes when using the plant teacher, and that the vine is the mother of tobacco. This also explains tobacco's properties being able to draw and communicate with spirits.
RE: The cosmic serpent: DNA and the origins of knowledge by Jeremy Narby. The plant mixture contains DMT which has been dubbed "the spirit molecule", present at birth, death and during dreams, hypnogogic and other "hallucinations" written about by R Strassman.

In the bible it brings to mind Acts 9:18 Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized...He had the scales or veil removed and he regained his sight and ability to see the truth and was initiated into the mystery.

***Sancista Siete Encruzhiladas****

Where & How do the Lwa appear?

Where do they live and where do they come from?

Where do the Lwa live? Do they all live under the sea in Vilokan with met Agwe? I asked my Padrino. It seemed to be related to Afrique Ginen, the mystical homeland across the waters where the ancestors live, since the rada or elder Lwa are referred to as Ginen, the original west African Lwa from where Voudou originated.
Non, they come down from the sky, they live everywhere and in everything. He answered

This made sense to me from the animistic perspective, and as the Lwa are real beings, but also personified natural forces. Some have domain of the rivers, the others the ocean, the cemetary, the forest, the crossroads, the wind, thunder and lightening, some may find homes inside a stone.

You may see them in your dreams, they may appear african, or as the saint face. You may see them briefly as the corner of your eye. You may go to a ritual and see them communicate through their horses. You may see them manifested in the causal environment through natural forces, media, symbols, synchronicity or appearance of animals such as an uncanny timed specific colored butterfly or a specific type of dog. You may see them in waterglasses or candlewax.

What do they look like?

Ah that is why they are mystery. Do they truely look like the saint? no. Do they look like a normal human? no. Do they look like a snake? sometimes. Do all simbi, snake spirits look like a snake? no. They can look like very human animals such as the Lwa Sobo and Bade who can look like giant goats.

What do natural or cosmic force creational force look like? Although I do not believe that Voudou can be approached through ceremonial magick or gnosticism at all, there is personal revelation inside the religion.
What is color, spectrum, vibration as it pertains to the celestial? Light, refraction, fractals.

Dhamballa and Aida Wedo the creational Lwa

The trinity, of source, polarity, giving rise to rays of emanations.

There is a reason we use 7 colors of panuelo, bandana or fabric, for our 7 chief Lwa in Sanse

Sancista 7 crossroad