Vodou Culture 101: The Lesson
In vodou culture, the act of being born enrolls you in school. Everywhere around you is your classroom. Everything and everyone around you could teach you a lesson.
Contrast this to the US majority culture’s attitude toward learning, which requires a book, someone authorized to interpret the book who proves it by memorizing obscure passages in books, and an accredited institution. Learning, in US majority culture, is something that happens either to prepare you for employment or in retirement, when you have the time and resources to learn something frivolous (not employment related.) You need to seek out and pay exorbitant amounts of money to earn a certification which can gate keep entry into certain kinds of employment.
Laypeople, people who are not a part of that certification process, have to trust that the accreditation is an accurate description of the ability of the institution and its representatives to provide what they need to know.
In vodou cultures, the idea that learning is meant almost entirely to create employees is bizarre. It is not just your employment skills which need to be changed, it is the soul itself and the character it expresses which needs changing. Your character—that is, the way you act and reason—is what drives your behavior, and employment is not the only place you exist. It seems odd to vodou cultures to try to insist that employment, which is a small part of your life, should be the only reason for you to learn. After all, the knowledge for employment dies when you do.
Vodou culture is absolutely not against earning money. It’s more a matter of balance, and the US majority culture is very strongly focused on productivity and employment, and can be downright hostile to the idea of (spiritual, non-Christian) self-improvement. Ain’t nobody got time to care if you’re a good person. That’s what the rules are for.
For vodou, the knowledge is anywhere it needs to be and the wisdom you gain from learning is portable between lives. You will eventually learn everything you need to know. You can put off a bit of learning in any particular life, but it just means you’ll be presented with an opportunity to try it again. You have eternity. It’s up to you if your eternity is really, really long (because you don’t want to learn.)
The word ‘lesson’ is used in the context of learning across lives to refer to whatever specific thing you’re currently learning. It is also used in the context of employing a priest or spiritual worker to help you figure out what you’re supposed to be learning and to advise you on how to get that particular thing over with more quickly, which benefits you in this life by making you better able to control the terms of your life. A lesson is a little like a paid tutoring session: you come and we help you figure out what you need to know.
Our ‘accreditation’ is provided by the communities we serve, by testimony and getting results.
If you’re going to live in the classroom, life is a lot more pleasant when you’re quick to learn your lessons.
