A little bit of knowledge can be dangerous… as this story proves out.

I don’t know where to begin because I don’t think that I’ve told you enough about my past with Santeria, Palo and Vodou, but this memory came to mind this afternoon and I wanted to write it down. Perhaps, I’ll even publish it without giving you the proper context. To help a little you could go into some of my blog posts that are tagged with Santeria, Palo and Ramiro and the like… yet it might not help at all. But let’s get right into it, anyway.

Without going into any great detail, suffice it to say that I had been living with a Santero (a practitioner/priest of Santeria. My break with him was tragic. After being with him for several years, to better understand him and the culture of Cuba and its people, I studied Cuban spirituality and simultaneously, Haitian spirituality which, of course, both derive from African roots.

In my studies, I came across primary resources written by priests. Primary resources, of course, are documentation that record first hand experiences. These books or pamphlets or diaries recorded the rituals of their religion. I had watched many rituals performed in the years spent with the Cubans. I always felt though that I was standing at the door with the door just barely cracked open and me, I was peeking inside of a room not truly being able to enter, to participate or to even understand what I was seeing.

This new found knowledge, accompanied by my first hand experiences with Santeros and practitioners of Palo and Vodou, proved to be dangerous weapons in my hands.

After my break with Ramiro, I was left with many accoutrements, but this is another story. My heart had been broken and I had seen too many things. I wanted to relieve my broken heartedness and I also wanted to affect others with what I knew. I didn’t really want to hurt anyone, that was not my intention. But these two things alone are a dangerous combination. I wasn’t looking for revenge but this is how it was perceived.

Pepe was a friend of Ramiro’s and appeared on the scene to “soothe my pain”. I didn’t want a boyfriend, I wanted Ramiro back but I wasn’t getting him back, so Pepe became a friend. But this was not how Pepe saw it.

Pepe would not go away. He tattooed my name on his arm. He led his friends to believe we were lovers. That, we never were. My mistake was to allow him to continue to be my friend even when I realized that he was unreasonable.

My reasoning was that Pepe was nice enough. Pepe cared for me. He was willing to tolerate that I was still in love with Ramiro and that I didn’t love him. In a selfish way, Pepe was my connection to the Cuban community and vicariously to Ramiro. In some odd way this helped to ease the pain, to have somebody familiar around.

This is how the problem started and I am the only one to blame. Pepe was insistent and I suppose you could say that I allowed it, I left the door open, I was too tolerant. But as he became demanding, I became frustrated at first and then afraid. I didn’t believe he would hurt me but he had become frustrated, too. There was an element of him being out of control. Here again, I won’t go into unnecessary detail about his fits of frustration. He was refusing to just be my friend. Though I would lose my connection to him, to the Cubans and to Ramiro, it was time for him to go.

I wanted him to know that I was serious. I wanted him to know that I could make him go away. I knew in no uncertain terms that it had to be final and permanent. I thought that my most powerful ability was to use his own beliefs against him.

I knew too much and yet I knew too little. I never should have done this but I did. This wasn’t the first time, nor was it the last that I used what I had learned, that I used ways that I had no business using.

Whether you believe this or not is neither here nor there to me. I don’t care. But this is what witnesses have reported. These are the consequences of my actions. I followed the directions to the letter. There are times that I regret what I did, but they had the results I was looking for. I never heard from Pepe again.

I wrote Pepe a letter simply asking him to leave me alone. I sprinked into the envelope, powders and ashes of certain and specific animal bones, crushed plants, rocks and metals procribed in the books of priests. I carefully copied, by hand, certain ancient symbols drawn in the books. I sealed the envelope and drew certain other symbols that crossed over the seal, so that when opened, the symbols would be torn in two.

Pepe recieved the letter. According to witnesses, when he tore open the seal, a cloud of dust rose into the air covering his face and flew into his eyes. He was blinded momentarily and had trouble breathing. The dust caused sores on his face and neck that lasted for weeks.

Pepe was out of my life for good. I haven’t heard from him or about him for years. I hope he’s OK.