Light hearted but at no sense any less serious or disrespectful, Gabriel Toso gave a captivating, enlightening and demystifying lecture on a subject and a religion so repeatedly misrepresented, misunderstood and marginalised in the popular mind.
Possession, the sense of self, notions further than the body and the soul, notions non euro-centric or western; like the ‘kick in the neck’ before the god or spirit possesses you.
Then, you let them in. Macho men embrace femininity, older people the vitality of youth, younger people the invincibility of the elder experience in a collective act resisting imposed religions; deities are now taking the form of acceptable catholic figures while the rawness of the act remains primeval and the drums reaffirm their dominion.
In an everyday where we get obsessed with presenting a self image, with anxiety on missing out, displacement of personal contact, focus on careers, and a society of the spectacle still reigns, maybe the notion of letting go, of letting a god take over for a bit to represent your opposite or your real self, to dance manically like the Maenads in a context where this is trivial, not exceptional, is the antidote: Accepting your insignificance in the magnificence of the shared act.
Like the speaker and myself, many having had an epileptic fit understand this to the core: the complete loss of self, loss of memory while in fits/ecstasy; the way the possessed get helped by the segregation reminded me of how I was helped then, too by a beautiful man. You come out humbled and thankful. There is no glamour in being chosen. The beauty comes later, in the realisation of the role of the collective in support and in invocation.
We go on daily, brushing off on each other’s tragedy, happiness, struggle. Emotional, physical, health worries, each one of us carries their own cross. Whatever we try, we feel we have no control. And there is where Treadwell’s, a constant for decades amidst the whirlwind of the world has its door wide open, with Christine and her team always welcoming, to slow us down, make us smell again, the candles, the night, the air, look again at stars, plants, ourselves, invite us to see ourselves as part of a whole not as singularities, and for a moment, doubt reality as we know it.
Somehow, while there, in that basement, in commune with the speaker's passion, the idea of a possession by a deity, temporarily, felt comforting and sweet. Like a familial embrace when you’re lost, a blanket pulled towards you by a lover, a song from the past you smile to.
A promise we are not alone, we are not abandoned. Even if we know we are.
more info:
https://www.treadwells-london.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Vodou
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