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

E.A. Koetting/Baron DePrince
The Spider and the Green Butterfly
who has been trained by another Le Petit Houngan, and
therefore is limited the minor feats of Magick, divination,
and conjuring. They are able to perform the most basic
Vodoun rituals, to read the cards or bones, and to perform
rituals for their clients.
The latter type of Houngan, the Grand Houngan, is
an adept in Vodoun sorcery, usually having trained for 21
years in one of several Vodoun sects or cults. Although
these groups are well-known, feared, and considered
common knowledge in Haiti, they are rarely spoken of,
outside of admonitions to stay far away. No person can
apply for or in any way request membership in such sects,
but must be received by invitation.
It is also said in Haiti that a person must be born
into sorcery, under the protection and empowerment of the
spirits. Before birth, a Houngan priest will prophesy the
destiny of the child, as the true sorcerer is not born into this
world, but returns to this world as a reincarnated adept
continuing his training in a new bodily form. Given below
is a powerful seal, or Veve, used to discover the past,
present, and the future of the reincarnated soul, and can be
used just as easily by the Houngan to alter the past and to
disrupt the flow of time.
Once the timeless identity of the infant is
discovered, he is put under the care of a Grand Houngan
who will mentor him for the first seven years in the basic
practice of Vodoun magic. Often the young Houngan's job
is to take care of the temple "Hounfour," cleaning the
temple, sitting in on magical rituals and acting as a personal
assistant to the Grand Houngan.
During the following seven years, the Vodoun
Initiate trains in basic herbalism, learning the baneful and
beneficial aspects of specific plants that are used in
Vodoun. Over the next seven years of the Vodoun
apprentice's training, he will become trained in not only the
secret Vodoun sorcery, but will be made familiar as well
with the works of Western metaphysicians like Heinrich
Cornelius Agrippa, Hector Durville, Encausse, Papus,
Duviel and Eliphas Levi.
This study of "white man's Magick" is merely a
reconstruction of the trade-off that was common in Frenchruled
Haiti: the French, who were interested in the
seemingly tribal but entirely effective "black Magick" of
Vodoun, would "trade" their knowledge of Western
Magick. This allowed the black Vodoun Masters to
combine their sorcery skills and wisdom of Vodoun and
create a powerful magical system that is second to none
today. It is through this marriage between the New World
and the ancient one that the Vodoun priests learned to
access the Tree of Life, and the inverse Qlippoth Tree
through the doorway of Da'ath, which is hidden between
Binah and Chokmah, wisdom and death, but before
absolution and resurrection.
While 21 years of training and discipline cannot be
condensed into any written library, let alone a single book,
some of the darkest secrets of Vodoun are given in the
chapters that follow. Once inside the Vodoun current, and