Eshu

And our conjuremen are male hoodoo practitioners.

And because of them, And then working with the Crossroads back in the day, is how we're able to work with these different crossroads spirits now don't get the man of the crossroads um mixed up because there's many spirits at the crossroads but he is his own hoodoo spirit rather than compared to eshu or papa legba or or legbas so legba and legbas is part of louisiana voodoo then Papa Legba is a part of Haitian voodoo.

And then Eshu is a part of Santeria as well as Ifa.

The man of the crossroads is his own spirit.

And this is because, you know, during the Atlantic slave trade, our ancestors had to condense our culture down, syncretize, and A lot of our folk tales and stories got lost over the sea.

And it's keen in Haitian voodoo that you only give Papa Legba his typical offerings that you would make like in the kitchen.

And there are certain recipes that you use to give him those offerings because in Haitian voodoo, if you were to give a spirit of the law, um, an ingredient that is more hot and like spicy and things like that, and that's not a part of their typical offerings, you can, um, fire up that spirit, make them a hot spirit and, you know, invoke that energy into your space.

And as well as just your overall, your energetic, um, being and cause issues for yourself because you're not feeding that spirit the correct offerings so in Haitian voodoo is very keen that you pay attention to the ingredients that you use when you make food for papa legba then also in Louisiana voodoo legbas is syncretized with different saints so any saint that has like a cane or has like dogs on the saint candle or saint pictures or keys as well is used to honor and venerate legbas so this could be saint peter this could be moses as well there's many different saints that you can use to honor and syncretize legbas Then in comparison of the crossroads man to Eshu, Eshu is a part of Ifa as well as Santhariya.

That's where I would do my devotion, my Orisha devotion.

And with Ifa comes Eshu.

They come together.

Those are two Orishas that you receive in Eshe She.

It's based on doing practices.

You get divination done.

It says Eshu wants a rooster.

We got to appease Eshu.

We had the other kind too, the kind who used old names from before we saw the light.

Maybe one of these folks thought they were getting an old-fashioned seance, but someone called on Eshu or Shango and all they got

for it was trouble.

There's the most noise coming from the left hand room, so I guess we start there.

She brings up an example of a spirit that is also tied to both virility, again, coming back to the phallus of El Tio, but is also associated with minds.

And that is the trickster spirit Eshu of the Yoruba people of Nigeria.

So apparently he, according to Rose, I'm going to caveat this in a minute, this entity is portrayed as both a trickster and a protector, is the patron of both mothers in childbirth and minors in Nigerian coal fields.

And he's depicted as having a large lock of plated hair sculpted like a penis.

Now elsewhere, I've seen this described as more of a huge backward curving horn or like a horned headdress.

And the god, while usually regarded as male, also sometimes either takes a feminine form or features feminine features such as breasts.

I've also read Eshu described as the anger of the gods.

And as one might expect, religions from afar, such as Christianity, have often attempted to recast Eshu as more of a devil figure, though clearly he seems to have a more nuanced presence, sometimes described as a god of trickery, but also a god of surprise.

His priests pluck all the hair from their bodies and shave their heads and always appear attired in white cloths.

The general belief is that Ifa possessed the faculty of divination from the beginning, but there is a myth which makes him acquire the art from the phallic god Elegbara.

In the early days of the world, says the myth, there were but few people on the earth, and the gods found themselves stinted in the matter of sacrifices to such an extent that not obtaining enough to eat from the offerings made by their followers, they were obliged to have recourse to various pursuits in order to obtain food.

Ifa, who was in the same straits as the other gods, took to fishing with, however, but small success.

And one day, when he had failed to catch any fish at all and was very hungry, he consulted the crafty Elegbara, who was also in want as to what they could do to improve their condition.

Elegba replied that if he could only obtain the sixteen palm nuts from the two palms that Orongun, the chief man, had in his plantation, he would show Ifa how to forecast the future and that he could then use his knowledge in the service of mankind and so receive an abundance of offerings.

He stipulated that in return for instructing Ifa in the art of divination He should always be allowed the first choice of all offerings made.

Having collected the whole sixteen, Orisha Bi tied them up in a piece of cloth and put the bundle under her waist cloth on her back, as if she were carrying a child.

I don't know.

In, in Africa it's not that big of an error, but in the tradition of Haitian Vodou it is a pretty big error because Eleggua, Eshu, is closer to how Kafu is approached.

And Kafu is more transactional and, and, you know, will invite ...

If you're not right with him, he'll invite troubles into your life.

And Eleggua and Eshu ...

And, and it's not ...

They say a trickster, but trickster's a, is a Western conception.

You've gone to everybody and you haven't gotten what you want, so you go to the bawon because he's highly transactional and will generally do, you know, most what he's asked of, most of the time.

Um, and there's a story with a chicken and couple other things.

I don't know if we'll actually tell the full story here, but, like, the book is rooted in that, and with that comes the different deities, so the Osun, the Eshu, the Obatala.

I hope I said that right.

Mm-hmm.

... you guys will say I'm being funny.

I'm sorry.

Like Eshu's demonization was very intentional, right?

Mm.