Helping Your Root Worker to Help You

🔊 Listen to Post Ceremonies and talismans work best when you respect the Spirits behind them.  Here is a guide for helping things along.

Offerings

Generally, you want your priest/ess to handle the more complicated things, but there is plenty you can do day to day to stay in reasonable awareness.  As a believer in the Vodun, you will find things in your life or at least your emotional state will improve with offerings of dressed candles and incense.  Some people do this as a daily observance, while others don’t have the time or energy to do it more than once a week.

I recommend that if you’re new at this and don’t have a specific cultural tradition around it, that you at least start to do something for Eshu on Mondays.  If you need to do more than this, he will actually show you through dreams and signs.

Opportunities

The Orishas may open a door for you, but you must walk through it.  Many of the complaints about a ceremony or spell not working are due to a person having their desires delivered to them but not taking the steps to receive the blessing.

I have seen many works for love go to waste because when the person they wanted comes to them, they chicken out.  Works for money go to waste when people get an opportunity, or are given a generous gift, they turn it down.

In general, you shouldn’t run from a blessing, but if you run from blessings you’ve specifically requested and paid to have work done about, this is a catastrophe.

One big problem is that many of us are westerners who are re-embracing a west African belief system or at least encorporating it into our lives.  Most of us are Christian, but were raised with a Eurocentric rather than African or Middle Eastern flavor.  So we have guilt about money because we don’t want to be greedy.  We hear words like “slippery slope” ring in our ears whenever we’re close to something that, in the eurocentric flavor of Christianity, might be a sin.

It is great if, due to your principles, you want to wait for marriage to have sex.  However, there is no sin in speaking up and holding hands.  If you slide down the slope, it’s not as if God doesn’t know that you are human and that we all have weaknesses.  So long as you are responsible about it, then according to the way Christianity is practice in the very home of Christianity, you’re in the clear.  It is God who joins people together, not man and his papers.

If there is a worry, it is in displeasing the force of Nature named Orunmila, also known as Natural Law and Rules of Honor.  So have no worries so long as you conduct yourself with honor.

The same goes for money and business blessings.  Not everybody has the luxury of operating  100% above board at all times, but you should honor your agreements and never forget those who helped you gain your wealth or get through a hard time.  So when the money comes to you, take it.

Timing

Vodun is about working with Nature, not against it.  So some things can move quickly while others more slowly.  Most works have been done so many times that it is well know how quickly or slowly things will move if there are no serious obstructions.  The initial readings also tell whether or not a work is allowed, or what may be in the way of its being successful.

When things take longer than expected, there could be many reasons aside of the work being ineffective.  A good priest/ess will do followup if something appears to be going wrong.  So don’t just give up and go to another without checking first.

Also, many if not most of us are active in communities of mystics.  If we don’t understand what went wrong, we will ask others who are either more experienced than us or who have a different expertise.  As an example, if the one doing the work for you is a child of  Eshu, they will have a different approach than say, a child of Oshun.  Different perspectives are helpful in getting the most consistent results because every case is different.

I hope that this helps you to get the most out of work that has been done for you.  If you have talismans or charms that you’ve put aside because you think they didn’t work, take them out and give them another look.