E. A. Koetting and Baron DePrince - The Spider and The Green Butterfly

E.A. Koetting/Baron DePrince
The Spider and the Green Butterfly
and carries out their requests, not because he is their
servant, but because often they can see that which he
cannot. Often, the Grand Houngan, having received such a
revelation from the spirits, will read into the person being
proposed for initiation, using some methods discussed in
this text such as the bones and the bowl of fire, and using
others which have yet to be revealed. The Grand Houngan
will see the prospect and will see the spirits that surround
him. Usually, if the person is indeed ready to be initiated
into the Vodoun Current, he will be surrounded by many
spirits, and the Houngan will see this and will recognize the
significance of it.
Using the first Veve given in this book, that of
protection, the Grand Houngan can call downLegba to
open the crossroads and to bring the threads of the past,
present, and future together so that the Houngan can see the
past lives of the prospect as well as his future destiny.
Once the individual is found to be ready for the
Secret Sciences, a spiritual initiation takes place, in which
the individual is spiritually inserted into the Vodoun
Current. This can be visualized as a large river that flows
through existence, and is diverted towards the Initiate,
sweeping him into its tow. Once he is in the Vodoun
Current, whatever physical rituals of initiation take place
are only a further affirmation of the spiritual, or an addition
to it.
While a person who is born in Haiti may grow up
and learn the Secret Sciences and may be initiated into one
or more Vodoun cults, these again are merely physical
reflections of a greater reality.
The true definition of the word "cult," as it applies
to Vodoun is acceptance into an inner order of learning,
understanding, and power. Such cults are specific, even
specialized, in that which they teach and offer. What is
interesting, however, is when a person is not invited into
such a cult by its human leaders, but instead is invited by
the Loa themselves. This will only occur once a person has
been initiated into the Vodoun Current, but once the
invitation has been made, it cannot be refused.
After working through the rituals given in this book,
and many other secret Workings given to me by DePrince
which we were not allowed to put into writing, I was
working with Met Kalfu, learning his dark secrets of
control and spiritual subversion, when he, Met Kalfu,
instructed me to not call upon him for a time, but instead to
call upon another Loa, not at another time or night, but
immediately. Thanking Kalfu for the information, and
slightly saddened by the admonition to not contact him
until my work with the other Loa was finished, I arranged
my altar for the Calling. The second that the Loa was
present, he instructed me to go into the desert, specifically
into the desert, during the day in the middle of the summer,
to carve into the ground his Veve with a particular knife
that I own that has spilled blood in war, which is not a
ritual dagger but instead a Marine Corps KABAR, and to
lay cornmeal into the lines of the Veve. Other instructions
were given to me to complete the ritual, which I took down
in writing but cannot place here. I was confused as to what
exactly I was being guided towards. I contacted DePrince
with the matter, and was informed that he had been through
the same ritual, almost exactly, delivered to him by the
same Loa as well, conducted in the desert in the summer's
heat. This, he told me, was an initiation into the very
specific cult of Gatekeepers.
There is no more information that I can give
concerning this ritual or its significance, nor am I able to
discuss what has developed from it, except that the
induction into this cult is one of the very few milestones in
my spiritual development, and that despite the fact that the
ritual of initiation took place while I was completely alone,
physically, in the middle of the Mojave desert, all of those
who have been initiated into the same cult recognize me as