Pots and Baths
Common element to the items of this section: water or rather waters in all their diversity! And there again we will come close to Ritual stuff and Voodoo Things of the strangest kind…
The Navigator's Pot
That's a meal requiring a very long preparation and cooking times… and that's not to be eaten! Some simplified versions of it are also known, which will only work well if one uses a Voodoo Compass at the same time. In this version of the Navigator's Pot, the most complete and reliable of all, one also uses Dust at the time of singing in burning « kerosened » Grog – some even pretend that the richer in Orichalk the Dust the better but it remains to be proved! – no other external element is necessary to obtain the expected effect, which actually is to bring a Ship to move in a desired direction and that even in the absence of wind and even against adverse winds!
Thus, here comes the « Recipe »:
« Prepare three big onions by mincing them, two well juicy carots and a handfull of wild thyme. Put the whole to boil a few minutes in a big pot of sea water in which one has mixed a big mug of rum vinegar. Put to wait out of fire and open the Key and the Door. Soak in the somewhat cooler stock a dried chicken leg, three pickled lizard eyes and a small dozen of dragonflies wings crystallised in beet sugar. Let macerate a whole night – which you will spend in prayers to Agweh to avoid a big trouble ahead! – and, at dawn, have an Agweh Mount filter the juice and singe the other ingredients and a generous spoon of Dust in a Grog diluted in its own volume of kerozene before you add the juice again to put out the fire. Put in an oven to simmer. At the boiling point, add a swig of mackerel's bile while invoking ‘Ridin' Baron Sturdy’ » (A way to invoke the Great Z… Lwa without infringing the interdiction to tell its name! Not doing so would lead the Ship to sink like a « Titanic »! – typical reference of Ol'Salts of which the meaning has long been lost): « A brownish smoke must then come out, up and most importantly go away through the chimney and in that moment a sort of magical wind will start to blow and you'll set sail for where the winds of your desire will carry you! »Apart from some mistakes which completely change the result, that version of the recipe makes indeed a magical wind blow but the said wind will be accompanied by a terrible pack of black clouds and it'll very soon be pouring sticky toads and frogs from the skies and that until the oven of the kitchen corner be stopped and / or the soup in the pot be not boiling anymore.
It remains only to know how to « translate » correctly one's own wishes in navigation orders which the Voodoo system can understand; otherwise the system will take its own decisions, which is equivalent to say: it will lead the Ship at more or less at random… If you don't know what's the brownies' movement, be afraid you'll soon know!
So, as a summary, let's say there's nothing more simple! As one can see: ingredients, culinary techniques, ritual practices and at last a (long and painful) experience are quite necessary to properly manipulate that Recipe and the associatd Strange Voodoo Things but it remains true that it revolutionised the Navigation in the Known World… And maybe beyond… At least for those who could master it!
Baths of Chance
Baths of Chance are ritual baths which are taken to obtain the protection of a Lwa. There exist natural places which are specially used for that purpose, particularly on Hattea, and they generally are dedicated to Elementary Lwa. The second category of baths and the most spread throughout the Known World consists in artificial tubs or pools which are built in the heart of a Voodoo sanctuary, that is to say a Hoomfo. There, one calls more often on the powers of Utilitary Lwa. The Giddies are, usually for their part, not invoked for that type of Ritual for one hopes not being drowned in the very bathing time! That being said, a Bath of Chance is first of all a Ritual with a specific ceremonial for it and for the Lwa, whose beneficial intervention is desired. Hence, they can even be organised at home or in springs or rivers without remarkable sacred features.
Let us however mention here the probably most famous Hattean place for Baths of Chance, the Zakka's Pool in Haven-On-Earth, Booby ASs disctrict, of which the dedicated Lwa should be clear enough. Another very well visited place, a natural one which is located in the center of the island, is the Watery Spring nearby Villa Bon Air, actually barely bigger than a village out of the period of the annual Hebieso's festival, which is a famous pilgrimage visited from all over the Curry-Bean and even beyond.
The officiating priest is most of the time a Mambo or a Hoongan but can also be a Bokor, who would rather not bolster about his field, because people know well that it is no good to trust such a person when in search of luck. Some, who tried, had enough to kick themselves or didn't even have the opportunity to do so; indeed, some quite unscrupulous Bokor verily made Baths of Malediction, if one daresay, by summoning the Giddy's power.
The Ritual starts with a classical Voodoo Ceremony with the aim to call the attention of the expected Lwa and the adequate Veve are drawn around the pool. In the meantime, the applicant – the Bather – is anointed with perfumes and barley water before he or she is plunged in the bath, in which macerated medicinal plants, flowers, barks and peels, etc. One thus obtains the protection of the Lwa for possibly many a different thing, for instance, the protection of Agweh for an outing to sea which promises to be hard…
It happens however sometimes, beyond the somewhat chaotic mood of some Lwa, that the Ritual works all to well, letting too much of the power of the Lwa burst through the Bather. That, far from being an additional piece of luck, is actually extremely dangerous and can even lead the - from now on - unlucky one to be changed into a Were-Point or even into a Zoo’p! Let us recognise that such a perspective is not the most apetising ever…