Filan Kenaz - Drawing down the spirits : the traditions and techniques of spirit possession

Kenazs Story

Ravens Tale

PART ONE
The Past

PART TWO
The Present

Kenazs Story

Ravens Tale

PART THREE
The Spirits

PART FOUR
Possession

Kenazs Story

Ravens Tale

PART FIVE
The Community

Kenazs Story

Ravens Tale

PART SIX
The Future

Ravens Tale

Appendix: Asphodels Ritual Structure for Public
God-Possession

Kenazs Story
July 1994

He sits atop the garbage can, his skin dingy dust-gray as the shirt hes been wearing for the past four weeks. He chuckles to himself. If you saw only the bottom of his face, you might think he was laughing at some private joke or celebrating whatever passes for good fortune in his world. The eyes give him away; nobody could mistake them for human.

Nobody who was watching, that is. In New York City you turn away from homeless people; you pretend theyre not there and hope theyll return the favor. Those of us who have lived on the streets know better; we know the angels and devils who live in the subways and alleys, the sad and the mad and those who have been touched by something else.

People like him. People like me.

This is what demonic possession looks like. The smile becomes a rictus, something you might see in the final stages of lockjaw or rabies. The motions are jerky as the new host tries to acclimate itself to a meat body with all its quirks and shortcomings. First the gaze goes dark and hollow; the aura feels like a husk, like a paralyzed wasp waiting for the larva to break through. Then comes the cold light in the eyes as the parasite takes control.

Is this how it ends for me? I wonder.

Dont worry, child, Legba whispers in his velvety baritone.

The chuckling turns to muttering obscenities. The demon takes a long swig from the half-pint of vodka at his side, then stares at me. For a couple of seconds I catch his eye; tendrils slither around me. The air smells of reptiles and rot with a sweet undertone, like crack smoke in the dragons den. I turn my head away.

I told you, dont worry, Legba says. Remember what I told you? Legbas going to show you everything.

The demoniacs muttering turns to high, shrieking laughter. I walk away, afraid of what I might see reflected in his eyes.

Legbas going to show you everything.

I nod to the voice in my head and try to believe his promises of sanity. Because I have no other choice, I succeed.

Ravens Tale
19811988

At sixteen, it began, and I didnt know what to call it.

I had no history of mental illness, including dissociationno repressed sexual abuse, no repressed anything, reallyso I didnt understand it when my vision would blur, I would feel as if I was falling, and then I would hear through a fog a distant voice speaking to the friend next to me. It was my voice, or at least it came through my vocal cords, but it didnt sound like me. When I would come back into myself a minute later, they would be staring at me as if Id grown horns. Once a friend asked me, How did you know that?

I didnt know anything, and I told her. She informed me that I had called her by a name that was known only to herself. I had to come up with some kind of explanation, so I said, Well, maybe I picked it up from your thoughts. Dont worry, whatever it was, its gone. I dont remember it. It went right through me. Apparently I also told her to do something, but she didnt say what, and I didnt ask. Even then, I knew that hearing these things was not for me.

But I also knew that I hadnt picked up anything from her thoughts. That was a hastily crafted lie, spoken for both our comfort. That hadnt been me who had said those things, and I had no idea what had been spoken. Another presence had moved into my body and shoved me aside, and I could only flounder as it used me and moved on. It occurred about every four to six months, just often enough to make me doubt my sanity.

I wondered if Id somehow developed multiple personalities, and I searched my head for themand found nothing. I wrote notes to myself, pleading with myself, telling whoever was in there to at least write something back, but there didnt seem to be anyone in my head but me. After a while, I decided that this had to be external, because it felt so very inhuman. It felt bigger than me, much bigger. I was like a cowering child next to these Presencesand yes, there was more than one of them, which seemed even more worrisome.

I started watching them, observing in the moment before I went away, psychically sniffing the scent when I came backand I figured out that one of them, anyway, was the goddess who had been talking to me off and on since my childhood. I didnt know Her name at the time, but I knew that She was a Death, and that She had some kind of a strong connection to me. Nailing down this fact was both a relief and a greater terrormy body was being borrowed by deities, but why? How? And what would this entail?

I joined a local Wiccan coven, but the high priestess was young and unsure of what to do about my situation. At first she told me that it was just drawing down, although shed never heard of it happening spontaneously, not in a circle via a trained high priestess. The other possibility, she said ominously, was that I was being possessed by lesser creatures. I was pretty sure this wasnt the case, although I had no way to prove it. I witnessed her drawing down the generic Wiccan goddess soon afterward, and since I have always been able to see auras, I noticed the way that her aura changed its colors became brighter, more glittery, with a hint of another Presence. Is that what it looks like when it happens to me? I wondered. But I was young and untrained, and they told me that I couldnt do high priestess stuff until I was older and more experienced, so I resigned myself to waiting.

Then a visiting Pagan from another group mentioned Vodou folk, and that they do spirit-possession as a matter of course. My head jerked up, and I felt my high priestesss eyes on me from across the room. I didnt know where to go in order to find any Vodou people, and I wasnt sure that they would even let white folks in, so the information didnt seem all that useful. However, a week later that visiting Pagan called me up and gave me the contact for an Umbanda house (an Afro-Brazilian group) about an hour away from me. They had a lot of white folks, or so hed heard; maybe they could do something for me.

At seventeen, I ran away from my parents house and began to live on my own, but it was still years before I was able to follow up on that contact and hesitantly introduce myself. How do you say to a group of colorfully dressed strangers, I think that gods are borrowing my body, and how do I make it stop? Because it hadnt stopped; in fact, it had become more frequent. It felt like a violation, and control freak that I was, it frightened and shamed me. To my surprise, the House Mama was entirely sympatheticthis was hardly the first time that someone had come to her with this problemand she turned me over to her assistants, to be taught the practicalities of god-possession. Drinking salt water, putting cold water on the back of the neck, and non-rhythmic activities could put off possessions for a while. The real issue, though, she cautioned me, was that I had to make proper alliances with the spirits who wanted to ride me. It was the first time that I heard the terms