The Self
TWA MÁK: Divinity in Dykehood
By Sól Girard
From “Beyond the Margin: An Exploration of Black Lesbian Identity“
To be featured in Femme Dyke Zine 4: “Dyke Divine”
I found them the way one might encounter a set of keys after tracking them in pressing loops. Right there the whole time.
I had read Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater and Dear Senthuran, grateful for the introduction to a universe of Black-queer-trans spirituality in which I could see myself. 1,2 I identified with the visceral, delicate negotiation between spirit and embodiment Emezi described in narrating their experiences as an ọgbanje. 3 Emezi’s writing stretched my comprehension of what spirituality could mean and how it could live in the body. Yet the resonance I felt in their work lay across literal and figurative seas of loss. While Emezi’s spiritual path was grounded in their reality as an Igbo Nigerian, I mourned that I could not see a corresponding paradigm in my own heritage in Jamaica and Haiti.
The compounding reasons for this missing spiritual inheritance overwhelmed me: the metaphysical violences of my ancestors’ dark trek across the Atlantic; the forced death of ritual and culture; the necessary transformations that occurred when survivors reached their unconsented destinations; my personal disconnection from what had been salvaged and remade due to inherited cycles of trauma, dispossession, and migration.
I yearned for a spiritual legacy that felt like home. Who could I pray to as a displaced descendant of settler colonialism? As an eldest daughter of immigrants? As a Black dyke in the heart of empire? Learning about ọgbanje gave me deep roots: the trickster spirits reminded me that my need to shapeshift was not foreign, wrong, or new. Knowing of them was like inheriting an heirloom of Black queer spiritual existence. It was a profound testimony that bolstered me against forces that could not understand me.
But I also needed something closer, made of context more familiar to my life. I wandered towards Vodou and the pantheon of lwa of my Haitian heritage. 4 It was not a familiar legacy in my family. My grandmother had walked away from the practice for her own reasons and my father kept a respectful, intellectualized distance. As a child I scanned his collection of books about Vodou and Haitian art for their colorful intricate images, but my understanding never went further than what the books offered. Now my curiosity alighted towards the spirits who covered Haitians like me – unconcerned with norms of gender and sexuality, yearning towards freedom (or at least peace) in their bodies. I was looking for a home within home.
A glimmer caught my eye—
The beautiful femme queen, bull dyke, weeping willow, dagger mistress Ezili. Ezili is the name given to a pantheon of lwa who represent divine forces of love, sexuality, prosperity, pleasure, maternity, creativity, and fertility. She’s also the force who protects madivin and masisi, that is, transmasculine and transfeminine Haitians. 5
Freda and Dantò are two faces of Ezili that speak to me; I am still learning others. Like all lwa, she represents a spectrum of the experiences of her worshippers – her names (Erzulie/Ezili) morph on their tongues, her focus sharpened by their needs. 6
The goddess of love, beauty, and luxury. […] She’s a lover, she loves to be in love and be loved. She loves affection, attention, passion, beauty, luxury, comfort and everything high class. […] She is a jealous and demanding spirit. In return she gives us hope to dream, passion to love and care for others and ourselves. It takes love, finesse, faith and passion to serve Maitress Erzulie Freda. 7
Ezili Freda blesses my batting eyelashes and honeys my voice, finding me somewhere between the femininity taught in my childhood and that which comes naturally. She teaches me the art of adornment; the value of luxury as a practice of abundance, not excess. I see her in my favorite earrings and the consideration with which I conjure my meals and my outfits. I feel her in the care I aspire to for myself, my loved ones, and chosen family – how deeply I want us all to live comfortable, bountiful lives.
Coquettish and very fond of beauty and finery, Erzulie Freda is femininity and compassion embodied […]; she is seen as jealous and spoiled and within some Vodoun circles is considered to be lazy. During ritual possession, she may enter the body of either a man or a woman. She enjoys the game of flirtation and seduces people without distinguishing between sexes. 8
Godong/Getty Images
How often are Black femmes – us of any body and gender who intentionally accessorize, imagine, and care in femininity – called demanding for wanting better and more than we receive? How often are we called spoiled when we respond to the thorns of power snatching and tearing at us? I despair when I am reminded again and again that our lives are not as easeful as we need and deserve. Like Freda, I want the finest life has to offer and it pains me that we don’t all get it. However, another of Ezili’s faces reminds me that what brings me to tears could also move me to speak and act. I know justice through her red eyes.
[Erzulie] Dantor’s anger has the power to destroy, and her vehement displeasure has earned her the reputation of being the red eyed, “Èzili je wouj” […] Ezili Dantor is a devoted and selfless mother, willing to do all that is possible to protect those she loves and cares for, even “turn the world upside down.” 9
In Vodou art, Ezili Dantò is identifiable by one of her children in her arms and a knife on her person. Dantò is known, respected, and feared for her unyielding commitment to justice and defense of her children, who are other lwa representing vulnerability to be protected. She reminds me that rage is a form of love, straightening my spine and turning my despair into decisive action. She is also known as patron of lesbians on an island that would deny their rightful belonging to the land. 10,11 She covers those of us insistent in our desire to live as ourselves in the face of contempt.
Dantor has a very bad reputation, people claim her to be an evil spirit because of her rage and anger. In reality she is a caring mother, feisty protector, defender and devoted to all her devotees. She’s an independent woman who believes in equality. 12
Her love and belief helped free my ancestors. Dantò is credited as an inciting presence and force of the Haitian revolution – it is said she was venerated with a black pig sacrifice at Bwa Kayiman where the struggle began. 13 She fights with the same passion and care with which she caresses her child. She reminds me there are many ways to wield a knife: it can be a tool used towards nourishment and healing as well as in defense of dignity.
Here I come upon another possibility of embodiment in spirit.
A painting of the lwa Damballa, a serpent, by Haitian artist Hector Hyppolite
Ogún (also spelled Oggun, Ogou or Ogum) is a powerful, fierce warrior who defends his people and fights against injustice. Ogun has the intelligence and creativity to invent tools, weapons, and technology. […] He is the cutting edge of the knife and as such is often misunderstood. The knife can be used to kill someone, or to save someone in surgery – such is Ogun’s nature. 14
In Haitian Vodou Ogun is known as Ogou and consists of an array of manifestations; most carry the aspect of iron smithing and tools from the Yoruba tradition. […] [He] is also the god of pioneering, intelligence, justice, medicine, and political power […] Ogou Feray is the god of war. […] Ezili Dantor is the female counterpart to Ogou. 15
Ogou is known as the husband of both Ezilis and the cause of discord between them. Dantò is often depicted with a twa mák scar said to have come from Freda in a brawl over his favor. I imagine the cause of the scarring differently: I see Ogou forging the knife to cut Dantò’s flesh once her children finish nursing. I see Freda’s hands healing willfully-placed incisions and a new, flat expanse across Dantò’s chest.
In my universe of expansive Black dyke spirituality Ogou is a continuation, not only a counterpart. He is a manifestation of trans masculine dykehood grounded in the experience, celebration, and defense of Black femme life. He patiently guides me through my fears that top surgery and testosterone propel me away from myself into an unfamiliar odyssey of manhood and masculinity from which I can never return. I fondly touch my blooming mustache and the scar spanning above my rounding belly, remembering that these changes to my body affirm my shapeshifting. They do not negate my commitment to femmeness or its careful adorning acts. Ogou reminds me that I can wield the knife’s edge of gender just as he does as the weeping femme queen and the furious dagger mistress – that this wielding is its own form of creativity and care. He holds up a mirror, allowing me to face the necessity of this version of myself, how it still fits, and how it has been there all along.
[…] when I was growing up, powerful woman equaled something else quite different from ordinary woman, from simply “woman.” It certainly did not, on the other hand, equal “man.” What then? What was the third designation? 17
Madivine. Friendling. Zami. 18
Dyke is the summation I can muster in a knife’s flash. It is a constellation stretching beyond time, orientation or gender into a deeper dimension of spirit, politic, and ethic. Even when cast in aspersion it rings out my divine.
The spirits of my lineage reveal themselves to me, playing out an unending, unfolding scene:
Ogou forges the knife Dantò wields and brings Freda shining gifts. Freda perfumes Dantò’s neck before battle and graces Ogou’s blades with florida water. Dantò and Ogou fight side by side and both return to the reprieve of Freda’s rose-petaled bed. Among them is an infinite tangle of love, passion, and strength. Ayibobo.
These spirits are my markers in the infinite void of gender, offering me a path to embodiment grounded in adoring care and defended by righteous fury. Together, they hold the legacy of my heritage and my insistence on a just and full life.
•
Edited by Ava Emilione
1 Akwaeke Emezi. Freshwater. Grove Press, 2018.
2 Ibid. Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir. Riverhead Books, 2021.
3 A Nigerian Igbo term for a trickster spirit who lives in a child’s body and brings misfortune to a family, also known as “children that come and go.” Ibid. “Transition.” The Cut, January 19, 2018. https://www.thecut.com/2018/01/writer-and-artist-akwaeke-emezi-gender-transition-and-ogbanje.html.
4 “Lwa.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lwa.
5 Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley. “The Literature of Ezili, Vodou Spirit Force of Queer Black Womanhood.” Literary Hub, February 9, 2018. https://lithub.com/the-literature-of-ezili-vodou-spirit-force-of-queer-black-womanhood/.
6 “Ezili Dantò, Ezili Freda, La Sirenn, Ezili je wouj (red eyes), Gran Ezili, Ezili-kokobe (the shriveled).”
Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha. “An Equilibrist Vodou Goddess.” Harvard Divinity Bulletin, “Religion in Africa and the Diaspora”, Summer/Autumn 2013. https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/an-equilibrist-vodou-goddess/.
7 “Erzulie Freda.” La Belle Deesse Voudou Temple. https://www.labelledeesse.com/lb-spirits/maitress-erzuli-freda/.
8 “Erzulie.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erzulie.
9 “Ezili Dantor.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezili_Dantor.
10 “Haitian Voudou and sexual orientation.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Vodou_and_sexual_orientation.
11 Jeanne-Elsa Chéry. “In Haiti, Homophobic Movements Use Anti-Colonial Rhetoric against LGBTQI+ Communities.” Global Voices, October 22, 2020. https://globalvoices.org/2020/10/22/in-haiti-homophobic-movements-use-anti-colonial-rhetoric-against-lgbtqi-communities/.
12 “Erzulie Dantor.” La Belle Deesse Voudou Temple. https://www.labelledeesse.com/lb-spirits/erzulie-dantor/.
13 “Bois Caïman.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bois_Ca%C3%AFman
14 “Ogun.” Santeria Church of the Orishas. http://santeriachurch.org/the-orishas/ogun/.
15 “Ogun.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogun.
16 Karen McCarthy Brown. Mama Lola, a Vodou Priestess in New York. University of California Press, 2001. (225-248).
17 Audre Lorde. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Crossing Press, 1982. (15).
18 Ibid. (14).