Below is culled from Femme d'Afrique magazine, September 2021 edition, Spirituality Section. It's quite long but I guess it might be an interesting read for some here.
Mamiwata Priestess, born Vanessa Leverne Perry, began her journey in African traditional spirituality in 1997. While on a trip to South Africa, in pursuit of a Ph. D. in African Psychology, she was directed, by a Sangoma, to search for her ancestral roots on the West Coast of Africa. One year later, she arrived on the shores of Benin, West Africa with two bottles of gin and gifts for the Supreme Chief of Vodun, at that time, Daagbo Hounon Houna.
As a result, Mami traveled to Benin three times in 1998 (February, July, and December) where finally, in December 1998, she spent eight continuous years (1998-2006) on the continent before she again placed her feet upon American soil. Thus, her doctoral committee had to be disbanded. She had been captured by her ancestors and personal divinities. Destiny had brought her to Benin.
For those eight years she spent most of her time in initiation chambers in Benin, Togo, and Ghana. She found her paternal ancestry to be Agassou of the Fon tribe and her maternal ancestry of the Ashanti tribe of Ghana, West Africa. She was initiated into the pantheon of Mamiwata in 1999.
Since her return to the United States, she has spent her time writing and teaching about African spirituality; in particular African Vodun. She continues her visits to Africa and is associated with one of the largest Mamiwata temples on the West Coast of Africa... Temple Behumbeza.
Mamiwata Priestess is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in African Studies and Research at Howard University, in Washington D.C. Her dissertation research is an investigation into what extent African Traditional Medicine can assist in the treatment of mental illness in African Americans.
PRIESTESS MAMIWATA
Q: How would you define African spirituality? Some practitioners of African spirituality say it is not a religion. They belong to the persons who make a difference between religion and spirituality. What is your opinion on those two issues?
A: Spirituality comes from within. Religion comes from without. A person on a spiritual journey is out to determine what is one’s purpose in this world or his/her destiny. One is trying to understand to what relation they are to the cosmos and nature itself. Thus, they began a journey of spiritual understanding. As they become more in tune to those spirits which are guiding them they are led to enlightenment which could or could not lead them to a particular religion, spiritual system or self-enlightenment. That is why African spirituality is not considered a religion per se. It is a spiritual journey of enlightenment and service to one’s personal divinities.
Q: Could you give us three elements distinguishing African spirituality from other spiritualities?
A: African spirituality is a form of traditional spirituality; those that predate organized religions. It is simply the one practiced by Africans. As all others it is indigenous, holistic, and nature based.
Q: How did you come to African spirituality?
A: I began a journey to where I searched for “self ” as well as wanting a closer relationship to the Divine. It led me back to my ancestors and embracement to their service to the spirits.
Q: One often hears about the ancestors’ central role in African spirituality and rituals. Could you please detail that role?
A: All that we are comes from our ancestors. We inherit those divinities that give us life from them. In some cases, we even inherit most of our physical traits and habits. So, it is through us that they are served once they pass over to the spiritual realm. Thus, when trouble comes, they are our first line of defense. If we serve them (through feeding them, caring for them and observe obedience to them) then they guide and make our journey smoother as we walk this earth.
Q: You are known as “Priestess Mamiwata”? Could you please explain your name and the title? How did you obtain that title?
A: Mamiwata Priestess is not a title. It is a simple designation that I am a priestess of the pantheon of spirits called Mamiwata. I do not use my title. It is insignificant to my destiny of spiritual service to all those who come my way.
Q: You trace your ancestral and spiritual ancestry to the country of Benin in West Africa. How did you arrive at that destination? How did it change your life?
A: My ancestral pedigrees were revealed through African divination. My service to the ancestors and my personal divinities changed my life entirely. All that I do, whether it is a job or whatever, it is all done in support of one thing... my ancestors and personal divinities. My relationships with them have developed so fervently over the years that my service is now deeply based in love, obedience, and respect.
Q: You have gone through a long process of initiation in typical African spirituality, which is perhaps unique among African Americans. Could you please describe the main milestones of that process?
A: In African Vodun initiations very well may continue throughout one’s life. It simply depends on the various spirits that choose to come into your life, and you decide to serve. But my initial initiations happened in an eight-year span, and I am far from finished. In that I may be unique. At this point in my life my spiritual father says I possess over 1,000 spirits. It is due to the spiritual work that I am destined to do. These spirits help me in that work.
Q: How could your initiation and your current position as Priestess Mamiwata help the African American community today?
A: I have been helping African Americans ever since I returned from Africa, in 2006, and started writing about African spirituality in 2007. One book, THY NAME IS VODUN, has been written and hundreds of essays to guide them in their pursuits of African spirituality. Many have visited our temple and come to know African spirituality through me as well as seminars given and talks.
Q: What is known about the spiritual life of the Africans under slavery in the USA? We sometimes hear that they kept their African spiritual life. Others say as they came mainly from West Africa, and Islam had reached that region centuries before the Atlantic slave trade, many of them practiced Islam. Then they are still others who say they converted to Christianity. What is the truth? What was those slaveowners’ and white society’s attitude regarding their spiritual life?
A: Much is known about the spiritual life of Africans under slavery. There is an abundance of research out there on the subject. But in a nutshell, the right to practice one’s indigenous spiritual systems from Africa were denied. Thus, those that continued to practice in secret did so with the threat of death upon their heads. Those in the United States basically converted to Christianity. Those in the Caribbean hid their traditional spiritual systems and the practice of them under the cloak of Catholicism. The simple truth is that the White people considered Africans to be heathens (those who did not know God) and that their duty was to convert them in order to save their souls.
Q: In his book “Awash in a sea of faith: Christianizing the American people”, Jon Butler used the phrase “African spiritual holocaust,” a metaphor to mean that Christianity and the conversion of African Americans to Christianity have decimated the diverse African traditional spiritual practices the slaves brought with them in America. Likewise, to mean the same fact, Albert Raboteau says the United States of America has killed “African gods.” He speaks of the “death of African God” on the American soil. How do you answer those two authors and their two phrases?
A: Well, due to conversion of so many to Christianity, it would seem that way on the surface. However, what none has understood is the power of the African ancestor. What they have begun to do is reach into the hearts and souls of those to whom they have chosen and put them on journeys of self-discovery; ones that has led many, like me, back to the ways of traditional Africa. Remember, spirituality comes from within, religion from without. Thus, the ancestors have chosen the spiritual route, one unseen by the human eye, to reconnect us.
Q: Usually, a religion or a spiritual systems is built on a dogmatic explanation of both the origin of humanity and the afterlife. What is your spiritual system’s or religion’s explanation of those two issues?
A: African Vodun simply upholds the reality that we are all born of spirits that come with us in birth to help us fulfill our destinies. And that in order to do so one must come to know these spirits, develop a relationship with them and allow them to guide us through obedience and respect. When our eyes close on this earth and we return to the spirit realm. Thus, we come from the spirit realm, and we rejoin it. Our time on earth is transitory. We come here to do a work or fulfill destiny.
Q: You are also a researcher about to complete your Ph. D. dissertation. How does that dissertation’s topic relate to current African Americans’ spiritual and religious life? How would you describe that life in its main components? How does that life impact the general well-being of African-Americans and their relation with the European Americans?
A: My doctoral work specifically deals with African traditional medicine’s ability to heal mental illness in African Americans. I will know more when it is complete.
Q: Before embracing African spirituality, you were a Christian. Why did you reject Christianity?
A: I did not reject Christianity per se. It may be good for some but not for me. My prayer was to come to know God more intimately and to serve my fellow humans. It led me to African traditional spirituality, in particular, African Vodun the spiritual system of my ancestors.
Q: Many African Americans proclaim themselves Muslims or Christians. Some of them now claim atheism. If you had to attract to African spirituality a member of each of those three groups, what reasons would you put forward?
A: Those of us who serve the spirits are not evangelists. We simply help those who themselves are on their own spiritual journeys back to traditional Africa. As I do not know each person’s destiny whom they choose to serve is their prerogative. However, if I am asked specific questions about African spirituality I will attempt to answer to the best of my ability. But trying to convert people is not something that the spirits require us to do. The Europeans have done enough of that already. Anyone coming to the spirits will do so on their own through a process of self-discovery as I did.
Q: How do you see the spiritual future of African Americans?
A: As I do not know everyone’s destiny or ability to be led by the spirits I do not know. But what I do trust in is the divinities and their ability to call upon those to whom they choose.
Q: How do you see the spiritual future of Africans?
A: The same as above. I have no idea. My prayer is that many return to the traditional ways. But this world is not in my hands but of those of the spirits.
Q: What is your message to both African Americans and Africans in general? Particularly, what would you say to women of both populations?
A: Find your ancestors and personal divinities. Serve, honor, and obey them and they will give you the desires of your heart.
