Patrisse
Well maybe not, just necromancers, channeling the spirits and powers of the dead. This is Patrisse Cullors, one of BLM's three founders in a video call with Melina Abdulla, LA BLM chapter founder:
At its core, it’s a spiritual movement. You can’t pretend like that work is just organizing work. That’s, you know, that’s some serious stuff.
When we say the names, right, so we speak their names, we say her name, say their names, we do that all the time that, you kind of invoke that spirit, and then those spirits actually become present with you.
Cullors' comments on necromancy followed Abdulla's:
Maybe I’m sharing too much, but we’ve become very intimate with the spirits that we call on regularly, right. Like, each of them seems to have a different presence and personality, you know. I laugh a lot with Wakisha, you know. And I didn’t meet her in her body, right, I met her through this work.
She went on to emphasize the importance of invoking spirits, referencing popular BLM name chanting:
Gross
When we say the names, right, so we speak their names, we say her name, say their names, we do that all the time that, you kind of invoke that spirit, and then those spirits actually become present with you.
Spirituality is at the center of Black Lives Matter, and I think that’s not just for us, I feel like so many, um, leaders and so many organizers, um, are deeply engaged and in a pretty, um, important spiritual practice.
Cullors, Abdulla and how many others are practitioners of Ifa, West African Yoruba ancestor worship, with an emphasis on spirit possession and associated divination. You know, tell the future with the help of your dead spirit friend.
I tell you, this fight is against principalities and powers, and the Devil, like a roaring and ramping lion prowls, seeking whom he may devour.
Runway Model
Nigerian friends tell me Christianity is this remarkable thing, freeing them from the dead hand of their ancestral demons. Think, Western Man, sorry, pyrsxn, of your fate had Ygdrasil not been chopped down.
Hey, it's all a great Afro larf 'til Orisha's gnawing on your buddy's shin bone. Don't say Tayo.
LSP
