Series - Essays from an Iya “Finding Destiny: Politics, Ancestors & Magic” Ifetayo M. Flannery, Ph.D MXGM Oakland Chapter I almost forget now the moment my Spirit had become idle. I know it was some time when I was coming of age in college. I did not become numb to the virtue of spirituality nor did I decide to become agnostic. But I was aggressively aware as time passed that my former belief system and my fever for Black politics were nonaligned. I had never been someone to ignore the truth in efforts to hold on to tradition for tradition sake; and so as destiny would unfold, the totality of my being would evolve as I fell in love with Black Studies. My consciousness was hungry for more answers in every class I accumulated and the necessary “revolution” was my solitaire logical conclusion for various narratives in the New Afrikan experience. I had not sorted out what to do about religion and at the time I wasn’t empty enough to figure it out. The revolution had saved my life—thank God. As my depth of study into the African and African diasporic experience stretched in my graduate studies, I peeled away other layers of African epistemology. I could easily make sense of race and DuBois’ double-consciousness; I deeply felt the sociological isolation of Baldwin—but what God was Harriet talking about and how do we explain the immortality of Queen Nanny, and of what significance do we attribute to the rituals of the Haitian Revolution? I could not suffocate these truths of the greatness of our people, but I was not sure I had felt this type of faith in anything before. My curiosity in the unseen reality and mysticism of African people was a gentle seed expanding in my conscious mind. I never really paused to think about what was happening to me reflexively. I was more or less thrust into African spirituality during my studies, however in the right time and place. I remember attending a Vodou ceremony in Philadelphia as an assignment for an African Religion class. I do not know why I wasn’t afraid given the mass propaganda I was exposed to my entire life. Nonetheless, by now I had a good amount of exposure to Black nationalism, cultural nationalism, revolutionary nationalism, Afrocentricity, and a host of other positive feelings towards embracing the known and unknown parts of my New Afrikan self. These politics definitely became the gateway to my spiritual destiny. For some reason the ceremony that night felt familiar and ancient at the same time. It was held at someone’s personal residence only a mile from where I had been living in Philly. I remember the kindness of the elderly Black women and a deep sense of “blackness” being normal and supreme in this setting. It was something I had never experienced personally but the rhythm and the singing voices of the people melted over me like an epic memory. I was never the same after that. The ancestors had whispered in my ear that night, and that was fa sho’ Black magic.
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By Any Means Necessary