Hear and Obey

(• • • • • Spirit,  • • • • Life   or    • • • • Life,  • • • • Mind)                 The Book of Crafts  26

This dreaded bokor mojo traps a person's soul and compels obedience from his corpse.  Thus the zombi is born.  Methods vary; most of them involve a potion or powder mixed into the victim's food.  Soon, he painfully dies.  His corpse is dug up, ritually prepared, and revived to walk forever soulless.  The ti-bon-age falls into the spirit tempests, but the gros-bon-ange remains in a conduit -- usually a locket, witch bottle, animal or skull.  For further tortures, the Bata'a might threaten the conduit, mutilate the body, or both.  No worse a fate exists in voodoo lore.

[Spirit magick traps the soul, tearing its essence in half, while Life magick kills the man and revives the corpse.  The gros-bon-ange is destroyed forever -- even if some miracle worker manages to free the gros-bon-ange and restore the body to life, the victim remains empty, loveless and without compassion.  A different version imprisions the subject's mind in his own rotting corpse, then yanks it around like a puppet until it falls apart.  This fate is often reserved for informers, traitors and les idiots who ignore the bokor's warnings.]