Jones Bayou

“This new dimension of wealth feels fantastic.” I take a deep breath, let the spell take root and lock in with the full, harvest moon. The frequency of these words vibrate from a layer beneath my skin out into the magical serenity of the night. As soon as the incantation leaves my lips, I know that across all realms, I will forever stand in prosperity. “The power of life and death resides in the tongue” is much more than a cliche adage for the women in my family.

The longer I stare at the radiant spellbinding beauty of the moon, the closer she seems to draw in towards me. Our family for generations, dating all the way back to antebellum slavery in Haiti has been crowned one of the most powerful bloodlines of witches. I speak wealth into existence at a time where we are running out of options to shift our family’s fate. In every generation, we have reversed the curses of poverty, prison, addiction, secrecy, lies, abandonment, separation and enslavement.

Now it’s my turn. As the youngest member of the Jones Bayou coven, my spellwork is delivered in today’s society in the form of affirmations. In order for our tribe to fly by under the radar and avoid the twisted fate most witches in a patriarchal system face--our cover has to be damned good. It just so happens that I was born in an era where people believe in the power of affirmations while simultaneously denying the existence of witchcraft and spell work.

The patriarchy has bled right on down to the bottom rungs of society and the vehicle is religion-- specifically, Christianity. Our arch nemesis are the bible thumping, “good Christian” folks whom we call our friends and neighbors. Our survival tactic--we hide in plain sight under the unsuspected coverings of the literary world. Readers are much more open minded than people who listen and accept the pastor’s preachings as parables.

Our family is in dire straits and we need to materialize wealth. We don’t have time to do the dog and pony dance of “pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps.” We have our youngest family warlock constrained by the system in federal prison. Our best chance is a spell that can unlock those gates and keep our wrists out of cuffs too. Money in this three dimensional world can do just that.

In order to see my brother free before the thirty year RICO sentence is complete-- we’ve got to get down to business. My sister set our family’s eldest warlock free 10 years ago with her spellwork. She’s far too exhausted from the last time to attempt another. My mother used the full force of her spell work to reverse addiction and alcoholism. She’s mentally spent as well. Now, it falls onto me, the youngest witch from the Jones Bayou coven to pick up the slack.

“We will see him come home.” My mother reassures me every time we speak and my little brother’s name comes up. I believe her. I believe in our power as the Jones witches deeply in my bones. See, our family originated in Haiti so the depths of our abilities run deep in our roots. Our foremothers, originally bearing the name Lefraux, have never abandoned us. Even in death they still loom. At night and early in the morning, they whisper the next steps and we receive spiritual downloads from our guides with every passing cycle of the moon.

Tonight is a full moon and an essential time for manifesting the heightened magic of the gravitational pull of the lunar cycle. I repeat the spell three times aloud:

“This new dimension of wealth feels fantastic.”

“This new dimension of wealth feels fantastic.”

“This new dimension of wealth feels fantastic.”

Now, I must consider it done. The next step is to harvest the power of the moon by cleaning my altar. I head inside, clear away any and all items that we placed there from a fear-based perspective. My grandmother assured me before her passing that I have nothing to fear. I found a black feather in the yard at my childhood home and asked my 91 year old elder what it meant. She looked at me with full, flooded pupils and said, “It means ain’t nobody gone do you nothing.”

She knew instinctively that I was in a fearful state and paranoid that tormentors from my childhood would rear their ugly heads at me once again when I least suspect it. Those fears have all dissipated and now the protection spell using the black buzzard feather and a clipping of my own nail can be removed from my altar. Now, to reverse the progression of fate for the next moon cycle, I must spray my altar down with rosemary fermented water and once more with salt water.

My crystals are all set on the window seal in a bowl of brown rice to recharge, clear and re-energize under the full moon. There are so many steps to this witchcraft life that folks have no idea about. Now that all the steps are complete, I stand in front of the altar and hold a photo of my mother and sister near my chest. Harnessing our collective trio’s power with great distances between us complicates the spell work slightly.

We take full advantage of the time we spend together. Our busy lives have led us to live all over the country. My sister is in California, I live in Texas and our mother holds down the fort in our hometown in Louisiana. We use water in mason jars to communicate with one another and especially with our young warlock who is incarcerated.

Water can move through any space whether that be in its liquid, gas or solid state. There is no way to separate water from entering physical spaces, so it is an essential tool of our magic. It’s possible to move most intentions with a simple mason jar with water housed on the kitchen window seal of your home--FYI. Speak into the water jar daily with the purest intentions of your heart and you can consider yourself a Supreme.

Materializing the wealth our family needs to hire a decent team of lawyers and fund my brother’s appeal may take years, possibly even a decade. That doesn’t matter because if we can get him home in 12 years versus 30--then that is a win. His survival in the place of doom, gloom, death and despair is tested with every passing day. This system is meant to crush the spirits of young black men and my brother is no exemption.

Life as a witch undercover has not been a crystal stair. Concealing my identity becomes harder and harder with my particular abilities of clairvoyance and clairaudience. My mother and I have similar abilities and she warns me all the time about the necessity to control what I say. We can passively joke about an event and within days that event will come to pass. Clairaudience is my gift that I am passionately grateful for. I can hear what is not audible to normal people. There are fun nuanced levels to this gift. Clairaudience also allows me to perceive what people are actually saying in a world that’s filled with babble.

In today’s society, many people are talking and no one is saying much. In Louisiana bayou culture, we have a name for the chatter that pervades our world. “Gumbo Yaya” is a term we use to describe everyone talking at once. My abilities guide me to parse out the most important words that people speak. I also can hear their intentions via their words and body language. I know instinctively when someone is lying to me. I have lassoed the truth out of a laundry list of wayward lovers in my past. I try to give every love interest fair warning during the honeymoon stage, “If you’re lying to me about anything, I’m going to know it.”

Sure enough, they think it’s just talk and parade around in their costume of lies. I find out, materialize undeniable proof, and force them to face their dishonesty.

After the altar is cleaned, I sit quietly for the rest of the night and engage my heighted listening abilities to penetrate the walls of our home and stay connected to the world beyond. After a few hours, I hear the calm call of the owl. She purrs with a divinity so recognizable, I swear I can translate her “Hoots” into words. Regardless of whether or not I can, I feel and know that her presence alone is a demonstration of reassurance.

The great goddess Athena lives on and interacts with the human world in the form of the owl. Any who are greeted with this majestic animal's presence is automatically indoctrinated in the covered blessings of the goddess. Athena sees you and the owl is how she communicates back with us. After letting the spiritual downloads of the owl seep deep into my subconscious, I fall asleep and begin the process of energy transmutation.

Throughout the night, my consciousness travels to ancestral realms and I communicate with the dearly departed for guidance on my life’s mission fulfillment. My particular spell or affirmation for safety sake is about reversing the cycle of poverty in our family.

I am an entrepreneur, as most witches are. To avoid the tantalizing temptation to enact spell work against problematic coworkers, we find safety and refuge in being business owners instead. My business is selling affirmation products and part of my marketing is daily readings online across social media and YouTube. My words permeating on a scale as vast as the internet strengthens the power of my spell work and magnetizes to my more aligned tribe members. In order for today’s spell to work, I must pick up the pace with my business offerings. I need to create an earthly disguise to avoid interrogation when the large sums of money start rolling in. Having a legitimate business established is the safest and easiest way to accommodate for the blessings that the full moon is bound to bestow.

A masterful vocabulary and a strong command of the English language comes naturally to our coven. Our magic lives primarily within our spell work and we are certified logophiles. My mother, my sister and I all learned to read at a very early age. Our abilities landed us in the principal’s office during the start of our education not because we were in trouble, but because our skills were far beyond those of our peers. The school didn’t know what to do with us. By the time I came along, society had adjusted to provide gifted and talented programs for children with heightened abilities. We have been able to pass our talents off for academic excellence for decades and so we continue to do so today.

Our spell work manifests in the form of material success. Some may even think of it as sheer luck. What the world doesn’t realize is that no matter where we land we end up in the same position of astronomical achievement. We don’t argue with the powers that be over what is the root cause. They wish to pass our magic off as hard work, so we let them. The less they know, the better. Our abilities are only called into question when we work big miracles. As black women, society is not keen on supporting our ascension. We play the game for as long as it benefits us. Right now, we are choosing not to fly under the radar and keep passing as “normal.”

This full moon marks the dawn of a new existence. My spell will dissolve the walls of oppression, free our missing link and jumpstart the ascension and continuation of the Haitian Lefraux lineage. As the world witnessed with the Haitian revolt of 1804, our people can not be contained. It is not in our heritage to succumb to oppression. As is our birthright, our coven will always and forever seek the liberation and exoneration of our people.

So shall it be forever.