Papa Loko, Who Holds The Tradition Together

Papa Loko, along with Manbo Ayizan, is a root lwa who holds the tradition together.

First of all, it’s very important that those of you familiar with the Spanish word loco, meaning crazy, get it out of your head right now.  That word has nothing to do with the Lwa Papa Loko. He knows all the rules and really, really cares about them.  He might enforce them passionately.  But he is anything BUT crazy.

Papa Loko is the primordial houngan, the first Vodou priest.  Like Ayizan, he is very old.  While Ayizan stretches across the whole horizontal plane of the Marketplace, the mirror’s surface where the human world and the spirit world meet, Loko is the vertical axis.  He is a tree whose trunk stretches infinitely high into the heavens and whose taproot plunges infinitely deep into the underworld. 

In Vodou, every hounfor or temple has a poto-mitan; a central post around which offerings and veve are placed.  The poto-mitan is the axis mundi, the axis of the whole world, as seen in the Kaballistic Tree of Life, in the Temple of Delphi, and in the Norse Ygdrassil.  Sacred energies climb up and down the tree to reach the temple and attend the ceremony.  Papa Loko is that central pole, and he is also the snake; the thrill of divine energy that flows through it.

As such, Loko is the master of traffic between the worlds and, with Legba and Ayizan, is a lwa of intersections.  With Ayizan, he mediates the connection between humans and the divine, advocating on the side of humans.  With her as his teaching partner, he instructs humans in how to live a life that will facilitate a connection with the Lwa.  He’s one of the parents; not in terms of having made humanity, but in terms of having the responsibility of teaching them.

While Ayizan rules over the djevo or initiation chamber, Papa Loko is in charge of reglemen, or the system of rules in Vodou..

Reglemen is very, very important in Vodou.  It’s the backbone of the tradition.  Since it is a ritual tradition, not a written one, it is passed down entirely through codified actions.  There is an order to everything.  The whole ceremony follows a strict order, beginning with the Priye Ginen, a long recitation that begins with Catholic prayers and descends into a litany of the spirits, invoked in a specific order.  Then the ceremony proceeds with calling each nachon or nation of lwa in order, first the Rada, then the Nago, then the Petwo, then the Gede.  And within each nachon, each spirit is called in order.  Specific drum rhythms are used for each nachon.  Specific songs are used for each lwa, and not only that, there are songs to invoke the lwa, songs to celebrate the lwa while they are there, songs to dismiss the lwa.  There is an order to which the humans and sacred object present are saluted and how, how the directions are saluted, how the drums are saluted.

It’s so structured because it has to communicate cosmology, history, biology, what happens when you die, every human emotion.  It’s the entire book of life!  Not only that, but it has to entice the Lwa to come down and join the party.  It has to please them.  A manbo or houngan has have to have their favorite foods ready, wear their favorite  colors, have their special items in the temple, sing their favorite songs.  They have to draw their veve.

This is all reglemen, and this is all the realm of Papa Loko... this and more!!!  You could not learn all this by yourself, no one could.  It’s a whole sacred book written in a very specific language with its own grammar.  If you put the words in the wrong order, the book won’t make sense, and the ritual won't work. 

If a Manbo or Houngan slacks on reglemen, Papa Loko will come down in a ceremony to reprimand and correct.  He is known to break things for emphasis.  Again, not crazy.  He just takes his role as the protector of the tradition very seriously.

Because he is the Houngan par excellence, it’s Papa Loko who gives Asogwe initiates permission to take the asson.

The asson is a ritual object that may only be used in ceremony and healing by the highest rank of Houngan or Manbo in asson lineages.  Materially, it is a dried gourd with a net of beads or, more traditionally, snake vertebrae around it.  It has a bell attached to it.  It’s used to call down, control, and dismiss the Lwa.

There is more than one Vodou lineage.  Lineages are basically broken up into Asson and Non-Asson lineages.  So not every lineage has an asson.  But in the ones that do, Papa Loko is the one that gives it or refuses to give it.

  The highest rank in the asson lineage is called Asogwe, and being inducted into that level is called pran asson, which means to take the asson.  Most in asson lineages agree that this step of initiation must be done in Haiti, before a specific tree that is Papa Loko.

He’s also seen as the spirit of vegetation.  His most important symbol is the tree, in fact he’s seen as the personification of an archetypal tree.  He’s a great medsin fey or leaf-doctor and is a patron of all who cure with plants; healers invoke him when performing a treatment.  Since he was initiated before there was another Houngan to initiate him, he is said to have received his initiation directly from the plants.  In particular, the Mapou tree (Ceiba pentandra, or Antillean silk-cotton tree) is sacred to him and is used as his “reposwa,” or a container for him to inhabit.  Offerings are placed in straw bags and hung on its branches.

Let’s talk about Loko’s syncretisms with Catholicism!

You will almost always see Loko syncretized with Saint Joseph, who is the adoptive father of Jesus, and this is perfect, because althoughwe are not Loko’s biological offspring, he is responsible for raising us and instructing us in the divine.  And calendrically, Loko’s birthday is usually matched with Saint Joseph’s day on March 19, with is very conveniently close to Papa Danballah’s birthday on Saint Patrick’s saint day, March 17, so they are usually celebrated together.

As I mentioned, Papa Loko is seen as a tree, but he’s also seen as the wind, while initiates are seen as butterflies that are carried on him to deliver the news to the people.

Like Ayizan, because he is old, it’s fairly uncommon for Loko to come down in ceremony, but when he does, listen to what he has to say.  He is trying to put the reglemen right!