Real Zombies, the Living Dead, and Creatures of the Apocalypse. Brad Steiger
good dose of pure Vegetable Oil
A dash or two of Datura
Two Blue Agama Lizards of the male sex
One Big Toad called Crapaud Bonga (Bufo Marinus) that must weigh one pound
One Sea Snake’s brain and sex organ
Several Pods of Itching Pea, “Pois Gratter”
Two (Preferably Female) Puffer Fish
Add Tarantulas, Millipedes and White Tree Frogs to taste
The potion should be prepared in June, when the female Puffer fish contains its greatest quantities of Tetrodotoxin. Be careful not to touch the mixture at any time as it can act through skin.
Tie the snake to the Toad’s leg. Put them in a jar and bury it.
This is so that the Toad “dies of rage,” which increases the concentration of its poison. Place its skull in a fire with Thunderstone and some blessed oil and burn till black.
Roast the animal ingredients and grind with the uncooked plants in a pestle and mortar. Add unheated shaving of the bones.
A few sacred spells (Juju), now grind your mixture to fine powder, place in a jar and bury in the coffin with the rest of your source skeleton if possible for three days.
You now have coup poudre or zombie potion. It is traditionally sprinkled in a cross on the threshold of the target. It can only be introduced by touching the skin. If taken internally, death will be final.
Upon the zombie’s awakening from the grips of death, one must bite the tip of the tongue—or as some Voodoo-hoodoo practitioners prefer—the entire tongue. The tongue should be kept always in the company of the person who owns the zombie, because the zombie will obey only the one who has it.
If the tongue is swallowed, the zombie is bound only to the “boukur” (bokar), or Voodoosant who created it. The zombie will obey someone else’s commands if their master tells them to do so.
I chintal (chayote root) is used in making Zombie-Stay-Away Powder. The zombies are said to freeze in their tracks and cannot cross over a buried chayote root.
Although most people are familiar only with the fruit itself, the root, stem, seeds, and leaves are all edible. If you feed any part of a chayote (merliton) to a zombie the spell will be broken for nine days. The person will then resume a normal life, but at the end of nine days it will return to being a zombie or die.
The act of feeding of a chayote to a zombie to break the spell will only work once every seven years.
The chayote (Sechium edule), also known as sayote, tayota, choko, chocho, chow-chow, christophene, merliton, and vegetable pear, is an edible plant that belongs to the gourd family Cucurbitaceae, along with melons, cucumbers and squash. The plant has large leaves that form a canopy over the fruit. The vine is grown on the ground or more commonly on trellises.
Costa Rica is a major exporter of chayotes worldwide. Costa Rican chayotes can be purchased in the European Union, the United States and other places in the world. Chayote is a very important ingredient in the Central American diet.
Next to the zombie, the so-called Voodoo doll is the most well-known figure associated with Voodoo. Many tourists have brought such souvenirs home from their visits to New Orleans or Haiti where voudun is practiced. Over the years, the portrayal of a Voodoo priest or priestess sticking pins into a doll that represents someone who has incurred their wrath has become so common that such effigies or puppets are known collectively as Voodoo dolls.
Actually, such figures have no role in the religion of Voodoo, and the practice of sticking pins in dolls or poppets (puppets) is a custom of Western European witches, rather than the Haitian, New Orleans, or other Caribbean practitioners of voudun. Perhaps the misunderstanding arose when outsiders who witnessed certain rituals saw the followers of Voodoo sticking pins in the figures of saints or guardian spirits. Such acts are done not to bring harm to anyone, but to keep the good force of magic within the object.
WITCHCRAFT AND VOODOO
On February 9. 2006, Myrlene Severe was charged with smuggling after federal security screeners found a skull in her luggage at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
Ms. Severe, a Haitian-born permanent U.S. resident, said that the male skull that she had brought from Haiti would be used in rites that were an important aspect in her Voodoo beliefs.
While members of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement grimaced in disgust, Ms Severe explained how the skull, complete with teeth and hair, would enable her to ward off evil spirits. Attempting to employ their strict discipline as federal security officers, a number of the screeners found themselves recoiling from the skull that still contained organic matter within its shell and was spotted with bits of skin and lots of dirt on its exterior.
Although she was guilty of smuggling because she had not declared a human skull in her luggage, 30-year-old Myrlene Severe was practicing her freedom of religious belief. It is not against the law to practice Voodoo, Witchcraft, or Wicca in the United States—in fact, there are an estimated 800,000 individuals practicing Witchcraft/Wicca/Neo-Paganism in the U.S. Those practicing some form of Voodoo, Voudun, Candomoblé, Macumba, Yoruba, or Santeria number as many as 80 million worldwide.
Voodoo and Witchcraft are often confused, and both are often incorrectly associated with Satanism, the worship of a malignant deity. Although to the outsider, both religious expressions would seen to give obeisance to a devil, neither Witchcraft nor Voodoo worships the satanic or the demonic.
Witchcraft, the “old religion,” or the “ancient craft of the wise,” is a nature-based religion, which is thought to have had its genesis in the later Paleolithic period, a time when Stone Age humans had to adapt themselves constantly to changes in the weather, climate, and food supply. Wicca, a more contemporary expression of Witchcraft, has evolved into what its followers term “Neo-Paganism.” Voodoo has come to wear many guises, as we shall learn, but its roots are at least 10,000 years old.
Primitive humans were primarily hunters, who needed the meat obtained from their prey, and they needed the animal skins for clothing. When the hunting was bad, their very existence was threatened. Because humans have the gift of reason—and imagination—the more reflective among the early people spent some time wondering why the hunt was successful at times and not at others? Certain members of the group claimed to have visions, and when some of these visions came true, these gifted ones, the shamans, discovered that there was a spirit who decided these things. If certain rules were followed that spirit could be persuaded to allow prey to be slaughtered for subsistence by the human hunters.
Certain members of the group claimed to have visions, and when some of these visions came true, these gifted ones, the shamans, discovered that there was a spirit who decided these things.
The concept of certain spirit beings who assist a magician, a Witch, or a Voodoo sorcerer quite likely hearkens back to the totem animal guides that attended the ancient shamans, for the familiars express themselves most often in animal forms. The black cat, for instance, has become synonymous in popular folklore as the traditional companion of the witch.
The ancient Greeks called upon the predrii, spirit beings