Tayloki wrote:These are important things I must know:
1. Ancestor Altar. I sorta have one already made but I want to know more.
2. Oils. I learned that these are important.
3. Casting a spell. I heard that with voodoo, you can do this. But I'm not quite sure
4. Just about everything
Hi Tayloki, and welcome to the board.
Housekeeping Notes
A few housekeeping things I did, just for clarification. Since your post was mainly asking questions about religion, and not so much an introduction about you personally, I moved your post to this forum, "Types of Witchcraft." If you'd like, you could post another introduction post in the "Member Profiles and Introductions" forum again, this time actually telling us a little about you (beyond questions about Voodoo practice). Or, you could leave this post as your intro, that's fine, no worries.
Also, I noticed in your original post you had several religions listed in the title that are closely related to Voodoo. But, since you state in your post that you are now a Voodoo practitioner, I changed your title to reflect that, and deleted the other names since your questions are not about them. OK, enough about housekeeping and onto your questions.
EUTM Witchy Demographics
It's great that someone had high enough regard for this site that they pointed you in this direction, but I hope you don't get disappointed with few if any responses. Perhaps that individual didn't know the makeup of the members here (or it was your Wiccan friend who referred you? that would make sense, as he or she might have had a lot of responses to his or her questions regarding Wiccan practices).
You may or may not have noticed this board is primarily Wiccan. Those here not Wiccan still primarily follow one or another of a European
diasporic family of magical practices. And, some belong to covens, but by far most here are solitary practitioners.
So, that is a rough outline of the general population here. And notice I used modifiers like "most" and "primarily," which of course means the rough sketch does not mean "all" members here share the same characteristics. In fact, I would say "ecclecticism" prevails here, lol.
Source Material
Practitioners
As far as Voodoo goes, there have been and are some members here who state they practice Voodoo, including one young guy who was working toward becoming a houngan (meaning a Voodoo priest, and a Voodoo priestess is a mambo, but you probably already knew all that). Don't know whatever happened to him. He was pretty fun, though --
Guardian Wolf, I think his handle here was. You might look up some of his old posts, as he often compared Wicca with Voodoo, the differences and similarities in practices and approaches (mostly the differences, though, lol).
Aside from that, not many Voodoo practitioners here, so don't have your feelings hurt if you really don't get many responses to your OP. People here are very friendly and helpful. But, African diasporic religions (let's call them, "ADRs" so I don't have to keep typing that out) are not the focus of this board. I have made a few posts about hoodoo, but it is not the same as Voodoo. For example, one big difference is a Voodoo practitioner might honor African loa and/or Catholic saints (or Catholic saints as "stand-ins" for the loa), whereas hoodoo is folk magic and not an actual religion, and if Christianity is combined with it it will tend to be Protestant-based.
Written & Online Sources
Finally, regarding your questions, the use of oils, ancestor altars, and spell casting are prominent in Voodoo, as they are in other ADRs. These are very deep, involved topics, and you're not going to get a lot of information about them in one thread on a message board like this. This is a vast topic! There are many, many ingredients used in ADRs like Voodoo, and their composition and purposes won't be covered in one thread. It's really something you just have to practice for yourself to learn.
The good news is we live in an age where there are books about
everything, things that used to only be learned in private, from teacher to student, from master to apprentice, etc. I think there are so many solitary practitioners today because the availability of information has knocked out the middle man (i.e., the teacher, master, etc.), so to speak.
This has its pros and cons, of course. There are a lot of good books out there, but then there are a lot of stinkers out there, too. Some books are just plain stupid, embarrassingly so. It doesn't take much to publish a book nowadays, let alone a blog post, or even to open one's own website. So, though the distribution of information is vast, the quality of that information varies
greatly.
Nevertheless, using your intuition as you read things, I think you could learn a lot of good stuff through books and the internet, trial and error, and experience. Along the way, you will come across authors with valuable information. Be advised that since Voodoo is a variant of the Vodoun practiced in Haiti, which itself is a variant of the vodou practiced in West Africa....there are both ardent proponents for,
and equally ardent critics against Voodoo.
For example, this author, who wrote a pretty nice, succinct summary of ADRs, calls Voodoo an "imaginary religion" (see:
African Traditional & Diasporic Religion).
Whereas on the other hand, author
Denise Alvarado has spent an entire lifetime promoting Louisiana Voodoo, and has become a popular go-to person for instruction and guidance. You could read her website writings and books, and try some of the techniques she teaches, and I bet you'd learn a lot. Also, you might find a group of Voodoo practitioners locally, and learn from them.
Above all, try not to get mired in all the sectarianism and rants out there, and try instead to just focus on getting an overall picture of your chosen religion, and most importantly, focus on selecting practices and beliefs you find useful and meaningful to your life --that's the main thing. Let the rest go, or at least file it all away for now.
That's my advice to you, and I hope something of this helps.
.
I have found that this is a wonderful online community. Spend a lot of time browsing the forums, read a LOT. It helps. The more you know....
