Kill Me With Your Voodoo Doll Honey I Blew Up the Universe Again
THE VOODOO THAT NEW YORKERS Practice
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Dec 2, 1979
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Or telephone call it santeria, or macumba, or shango, or simply The Organized religion. It comes out of W Africa, and it'due south existent. It too has nix any to do with blackness magic or Form B horror movies. In fact, information technology seems to serve a very useful social role.
The drums. The kickoff thing you find is the drums, 3 of them, pounding louder, softer, then louder again in quick polyrhythmic riffs that sing ancient melodies.
Combination of tunes tomtomming in your ears; then the dancers, women in the centre, men outside, all in white, Missed out on the beat, non listening really, the messagegoing straight into their bodies,now moving to the drums,twirling,jurking,feintingbut always catastrophe up facing the drums ,post-obit their lead in an exquisite,sweaty chreography;and the chanting,a salute to the ancient goods of W Africa,in Yoruba,thegods'own language: "Ako Eleguaache..."
Edward Tivnan is a freelance telly and magazine writer.
To an outsider, an uninitiated white voyeur, information technology is a boundless sight, this commemoration ‐ a remnant of another world taking identify very much in this one, in New York in fact, in a tenement not far from the bombed‐out areas of the Southward Bronx, where 30 New Yorkers are saluting their gods in an ancient ceremony open to nonbelievers.
Even so such rites are not at all unusual here or in the slums of Harlem or in the ghettos of Brooklyn and Queens. Indeed, a whole liturgy routinely takes place in these communities, where, accompanied by African music and dance and nutrient, the claret of chickens and the scent of cigars, New Yorkers ‐ function workers, high‐school dropouts, graduate students, streetwise dudes ‐ are becoming gods, gods who tin dance.
It is voodoo. At least that's what Haitians call information technology. Cubans and other Latinos phone call information technology santeria. Brazilians call it macumba. Trinidadian call it shango. To the blackness Americans who practice information technology, it is simply "The Religion" — the organized religion of West Africa, of slavery, of the black Caribbean. Just whatever its name, information technology's here in New York, and it is growing.
No one tin say for sure how many New Yorkers are members of voodoo or santeria sects, but "thousands" is a common approximate of those In or familiar with the religions; and six‐figure guesses don't seem to raise any eyebrows (there are, afterward all, some 200,000 Haitians, 250,000 Dominicans and 90,000 Cubans in the city). The combination of this new immigration ‐ the Caribbean area diaspora ‐ and the black‐pride movement of the late 60'southward that led many Americans to exult in their African origins, has markedly increased the number of adherents to West African rites in New York, as well as in other major cities.
Still, this represents a very small pct of all New Yorkers, black or white, who
Leslie Jean‐Bort
A practitioner in Queens presents an offering ‐an egg, symbolizing the soul ‐ to her voodoo deitypractice organized religion, most of information technology the more traditional kind. But New York is a city notably tolerant of religious and ethnic multifariousness. While voodoo in its urban manifestation embraces some practices thought to be characteristic of superstition and magic, it is a deeply engrained and meaningful way of life for thousands.
Angela Fontanez de Fleming is a well‐educated, clear, fashionably dressed film producer, who has been a practitioner of santeria for 8 years. "I got interested from a gut and intellectual level," she says. "Like many Puerto Ricans my age‐36‐ I identified with the blackness movement in the sixty'south. I began gravitating to things African, which wasn't really all that foreign to me, based on the music, art and other trappings of my ain Puerto Rican culture." Now, she enjoys exploding the stereotype of voodoo as a nighttime, surreptitious, forbidden ritual. "People see 'voodoo' scenes in movies like 'The Comedians' and 'Blackness Orpheus' or those old B horror movies," she explains. "A person like me in The Religion gives it some credibility."
The mutual and persistent perceptions of African religions accept to practice with juju, hexes, spells, rag dolls impaled on chapeau pins, animal perhaps even human ‐ sacrifices. Simply, according to Henry Frank, a Haitian who is a Caribbean area expert in the American Museum of Natural History'south teaching department, voodoo and santeria are "religions whose objective is benevolence, non violence. The main task of the gods," he says, "is to protect their devotees and secure their wellbeing." Granted, spells, potions, rag dolls and "sympathetic magic" are employed to accomplish this cease, but their use is not to be confused with the specific evil practices of sorcery and witchcraft.
While there are differences between voodoo and santeria, the ii sects share several gods and rituals and, most important, the overriding belief that all events In this world are shaped past divine forces outside it.
Voodoo and santeria are philosophically and theologically sophisticated rites that offer an explanation ‐ equally all philosophy and faith tries to ‐ of the way things are and so help man live a productive life. Like members of other primitive religions, believers see themselves every bit part of the grand design of the natural globe, a pattern that is engineered and guided past divine forces. There is no written dogma, no Ten Commandments; the individual has a personal relationship with his god, whom he petitions to help him in matters dealing with his family unit, his job, his mental and physical health.
"Voodoo" is derived from the give-and-take vodun, which in the ancient Fon linguistic communication of Dahomey, the West African bequeathed home for most Haitians, means "protective spirit," a kind of guardian angel. Voodoo and santeria are really monotheistic religions: there is i god, the Creator of the Universe, known to Haitians as Le Bon Dieu, who, according to legend, grew tired of ruling the globe and created a group of subdeities to oversee the vast issues of flesh. At birth, each person is assigned his ain god, who protects and guides him until death. But the identity of a person'southward god is revealed only at initiation by the priest.
In Manhattan's St. Patrick'south Cathedral, two elderly women, one white, the other blackness, are sitting starting time‐row center, Just few anxiety from the communion rail. They are not together. Both sit quietly, absorbed in their devotion, making a neat tableau of religious faith ‐ except for two things: unlike her neighbor, the blackness woman never looks at the crucifix above the altar; instead, she staring at a statue of St. Patrick to the left of the communion runway. And closer inspection reveals that she is holding, not the familiar Roman Catholic rosary, but a colorful wooden necklace. To confirm my suspicion that she is actually praying to the voodoo god of fertility, I whisper the name, "Damballah." A frightened wait takes over her face. smile. So she smiles and leaves.
"Oh, yes, I run across them come in hither all the time, praying to the statues as It they were really God," says an quondam employee at St. Patrick'southward. "St. Anthony over there is a cracking favorite of the women. And there's an African fellow ‐ in the whole get‐upwards ‐ who comes in here and goes over there in the corner. He prays for 45 minutes or and then. Real devout. wouldn't dare say anything to him."
About as presently as they arrived in the French and Spanish Americas, thousands of thoilcism and forbidden to practise anything else. But instead of fighting the white man's religion, the African priests absorbed it, lock, stock and saints.
For these transplanted Africans, of grade, the statues were non actually Catholic saints; they were African gods in disguise: St. Patrick is Damballah, the voodoo god of fertility; St. Anthony of Padua is Ifa, the santeria god of miracles; the Blest Virgin Mary is Erzulie, the voodoo goddess of honey. The Roman Catholic saints were Only convenient camouflage for African organized religion (thus, the derivation of the Castilian discussion, "santeria"). The cover‐upwards worked so and it still does.
"Haitians hither in New York are even deeper into voodoo than we thought," says the Rev. William Smarth, a Roman Catholic priest, himself given a one‐way ticket out of Republic of haiti by Francois (Papa Physician) Duvalier a decade ago ("I'm still not sure why," he says). Now working in the Haitian community with a Brooklyn‐based group of priests called the Haitian Fathers, Begetter Smarth reports, "People here are swimming in voodoo. Still, it is definitely part of Haitian culture, and the Cosmic Church building has to get to sympathise it meliorate."
The Religion is not for faddists. Indeed, becoming a member requires making a commitment to a new style of life. Angela Fleming, whose husband also practices santeria, says, "The just affair I've experienced like it is having a kid: once you practice it, there's no turning dorsum. Yous will accept obligations until the twenty-four hours yous die." Mrs. Fleming's 3‐year‐one-time son will non be indoctrinated in The Religion; rather, he will be allowed to take it or reject it in his own fourth dimension.
Mrs. Fleming's initial contact with santeria was accidental. "A girlfriend of mine was going to a priest for a reading," she says. "To me it was like going to a gypsy. It turned out to be a lot more. It had nothing to do with, 'You're going to encounter a tall, dark and handsome homo.' information technology was near what kind of person I was and some very key things I wanted and didn't want out of life, all based on some very, very personal things. It was incredible." That was eight years agone; for the past five, Angela Fleming, who was raised a Catholic, has been a ranking member of a Bronx‐based
"family" of upwardly to 500 people. (There is no leader or central organization in voodoo or santeria. Groups tend to form informally and geographically around a leader/ priest.)
The neophyte in santeria begins learning virtually his religious duties during an initiation period when, in effect, he announces to the globe his delivery to the gods of Africa.
Recalls Mrs. Fleming: "First y'all spend a week at the home of a priest ‐ Fri to Fri‐going through the underground initiation rituals. Then you spend a year and a week, a kind of learning, purification period, making visits, coming together the other people. During that time‐ and in this mean solar day and age this tin can be the most difficult part‐you lot have to wearable white, from head to toe, and always keep your caput covered. The start time I got on the train it was like trumpets. There you lot were all in white, long apparel, lots of bracelets and everybody staring at you. Yous become through a lot."
In one case their god has been revealed to them through initiation, adherents maintain a small chantry in a special role of the house. Offerings of the god's favorite food and drink are kept replenished and prayers and small rituals are uttered. Ceremonies outside the house for larger groups take place at specific times of the year and in case of special need, such as terrible illness.
An indication of the number of New Yorkers seriously involved in African organized religion is to be establish in the Bronx and Brooklyn, in East Harlem and all over the Upper West Side. Every neighborhood has its little, often shabby, store, featuring cheap statues of Christ and the Roman Catholic saints. The stores, called botanicas, are the centers for the statues, herbs, beads, potions and other ritual paraphernalia of voodoo and santeria.
Botanicas are big business in the ghetto. Simply take one neighborhood, Park Avenue at 115th Street, nigh the Spanish covered market: at that place are 3 large botanicas. Stepping into ane of them, Otto Chicas, the visitor becomes role of a crowd so large on a Sabbatum morning he will take to take a number to be served. In The Faith, just about everything has its price: special foods for sacrifices, spells and cures (ranging from a few dollars to hundreds). Ceremonies tin also exist expensive. For example, receiving the bead necklaces of the cult, which is the kickoff pace in becoming a santero, an ordained priest of the surreptitious rites of santeria, can cost several hundred dol‐. lars. Initiation itself can run equally loftier every bit $two,500, which includes the cost of clothing and various handcrafted artifacts, every bit well as payments to those who administrate the ceremony. People as well pay for divinations (the santerfa practise of "reading" of the shells ‐10 of them known as "mouthpieces of the gods" ‐ course certain configurations that can be interpreted only by an experienced priest chosen a babalawo; the practice is very similar to the I Ching).
And where in that location's coin, there are swindlers, figuring how to get their cut.
"Yeah, there are fees, as there are in Africa, Cuba, Brazil and wherever else The Religion is skilful," says Angela Fleming. "The fees are very specific, rated according to what kind of consultation or anniversary has to be done. However, what has happened is that some people who aren't even in The Religion have used this equally a way of making money, incredible amounts of coin. For something that ought to cost 610, these guys will accuse $50. With the whole mystique around voodoo, you get people who are afraid not to requite him the money for fear that this person volition strike them dead at midnight. In that location are a lot of people in the community getting burned, and it gives The Organized religion a bad name."
Withal, those who have chosen to work full‐time as santeros have to earn a living. "I charge what I need to live," says ane Harlem santero, a black American college graduate and former social worker. "If I do a psychiatrist's piece of work, why shouldn't I accuse a comparable price. People have advantage of the fact that organized religion has a complimentary aspect. Just, hey, man, I deal with the ghetto. I don't want to live on food stamps. I like to live well. I have to deal with aggrandizement besides. Besides, if I tin can solve their issues, it may be worth whatsoever price."
Of course,. he claims he couldn't solve anyone'southward problems without the help of the gods of Africa. And they are as numerous and varied every bit the gods of the Greek pantheon, at once benevolent, whimsical, difficult‐drinking, political party‐loving, wise, tough, even sexy. They are also demanding, and if any devotee dares to slight them, these gods tin turn nasty.
If there were just one axiom of voodoo, information technology would be, "Take care of the gods and they will take care of you." During their twelvemonth in white, for example, santeria initiates learn the underground rites of their new faith, study the Yoruba language (plainly, the gods prefer to be addressed in their ain natural language) and receive instruction on the deities' favorite food and drink. Ogun, the god of atomic number 26 and war, for example, has a gustatory modality for roosters and male goats; his favorite potable: rum. Erzulie, the voodoo god of love, has a sweet tooth; she fancies desserts, busy cakes in item, washed down with a bit of crème de menthe. And though Damballah orders champagne, several voodoo gods are satisfied with Coca‐Cola.
Carol Spencer/Gamma‐Liason
At a voodoo ritual in Haiti, a celebrant dances. At the determination, she will turn to face the drummers.
"In a existent cede, information technology is absolutely necessary to have blood," says Hugues de Montalembert, a transplanted Frenchman and student of Due west African rites. "In Africa you use very pocket-size goats and chickens." De Montalembert continues: "Yous remove the head of the chicken, which produces a spray of blood. Then you hold the cervix and 'h2o' the fetishes or representations of the god. Then, you pour honey and palm oil; you take a cigar and blow smoke; you spray rum from your mouth over the fetish, y'all give bananas and coconouts.You lot have to feed the gods what they similar, or they become very angry." Such elaborate offerings are reserved for dealing with extraordinary problems such as serious disease.
"Although voodoo gods are benevolent," says Henry Frank of the Museum of Natural History, "if the devotee fails to continue a promise or doesn't feed them well, he may terminate up getting very sick or falling down a flight of stairs."
It'due south strictly quid pro quo, this relationship between man and the gods, and the gods occasionally may exist asked to practice a favor for a devotee, even share his anger or want for revenge. This brings us closer to the stereotype of voodoo as i ghetto weapon for hurting people: the gods as "hitting men."
De Montalembert, who learned his voodoo at the source, in Dahomey (now the People'southward Republic of Benin), claims he institute something "more than aggressive about voodoo in the big American cities; whereas in Africa, The Religion is very tender and very loving." While in W Africa in 1975, working on a documentary project for French tv set on local traditions and life in Republic of benin, de Montalembert, who says at the time he thought voodoo was a "lot of baloney," was suddenly attracted to the organized religion, "I was actually impressed by how well
Intigrated it was into the community, how tender and beautiful the ceremonies were. As well the poetic philosophy of the symbols appealed to me." He became friendly with a local priest and was formally initiated into The Religion.
Two years later, when he moved to New York, de Montalembert discovered he missed the gods of West Africa. Learning that voodoo and santeria were practiced in New York, the immature Frenchman began scouting around for a "spiritual home" in Harlem. He was befriended by a member of The Religion and eventually accepted into a Harlem family, headed, like Cuban priest.
"What was interesting —and scary ‐ were the questions people asked in the classes for initiates," he recalls. "They kept asking how they might do something bad to someone else, how they could make them ill. They were non the sort of questions that would be asked in Africa, and I constitute that a fleck embarrassing." Co-ordinate to de Montalembert, the priests dutifully pointed out that casting evil spells was not the goal of The Region.
"Everybody, of form, was pretending to want to injure someone for good reasons because in W African religion if y'all do bad for a bad reason, the spell will plow effectually and land on you." Needless to say, every bit deterrents go, it'southward an effective ane.
Witches and socerers of all kinds be in New York, some on the fringes of voodoo. There is no shortage of customers for evil‐doing. How exercise these people go into the‐business of evil spells, hexes and jinxes? According to Henry Frank, "Some used to be priests who didn't care about annihilation but making money. They used voodoo in a bad way," he continues. "Now these priests survive by harming people for others. Still," Frank says, "if somebody asks a magician to kill a person, if the prospective victim is a good devotee, he and his god ‐ tin can counteract the sorcerer's actions."
But Henry Frank is quick to indicate out that "there is an unfortunate tendency to identify all evil practices with Africa and African derivatives similar voodoo and santeria. "Early concluding year, for example, the law came to me with photographs of a bizarre murder in the Bronx," exist recalls. "A young male child was found hanging in a tree, expressionless. The detective idea there might be a voodoo connection. But I told them that it must take been some kids playing with their own course of witchcraft or perchance trying to brand murder look like a voodoo rite. As far equally I could tell from the photos, there was no sign of voodoo or fifty-fifty witchcraft every bit I know it. As well at that place is no such thing as homo cede in voodoo. Television and movies mention voodoo, yous see pins being stuck in dolls and then someone gets killed. That's witchcraft, non voodoo."
Voodoo has always suffered from a bad press: reports of grave robbers arrested with skulls headed for "voodoo rites," "voodoo ladies" approving the guns and drugs of heroin dealers; chicken carcasses in Riverside Park; bloody bits of goat by a Fundamental Park transverse road; a decapitated rooster in Prospect Park; a ram's head globe-trotting in the Harlem Meer. Merely, says a spokesman for the Constabulary Department, "occasionally someone will disguise a cruel crime with the trappings of a religious cult, but we really don't have any issues with these religions, autonomously from complaints of voodoo‐blazon ceremonies taking identify in the park." Adds Elliot Lock, the community diplomacy officer of the 77th Precinct in Brooklyn, where 1‐quarter of the population is Haitian: "In my 26 years here, I've never encounter any criminal offense actually linked to voodoo. Narcotics is nonetheless our biggest problem in this area."
Since the days when the white Christian slaveholders tried to supercede native beliefs with Catholicism, the gods of Africa and their devotees take practiced underground. Secrecy breedS mystery, fear, ignorance and exaggeration. As a result, these days every little religious oddity, cult practice and chip of witchery in the ghetto is ascribed to voodoo.
Voodoo and santeria have been almost invisible in New York. "Because of the bad publicity voodoo has received, fifty-fifty initiates don't acknowledge to practicing it," says Henry Frank, not a practitioner himself, though he knows many who are. Outsiders are non usually welcome, and only initiates may attend sure ceremonies. Even so, secrecy may be understandable for Haitians, many of whom are illegal aliens, emigres or refugees from the terrors of the late Haitian dictator and the current president, Duvalier'south son Jean‐Claude (Baby Doc). New York's Haitians tend to look upon strangers, white or black, every bit potential Immigration and Naturalization Service agents.
Haitians call information technology chevauche "ridden like a equus caballus"; in voodoo it means "mounted" by a god. To many Westerners, possession is the strangest aspect of voodoo or santeria. Some observers have fifty-fifty described information technology as mass hysteria or paranoia. And no wonder. Suddenly, in the middle of a ceremony, during the chanting and the drumming, someone will begin to shake, to lose motor command and fall into what to some looks similar an epileptic fit; he is possessed. In a trance, the devotee has become his god; or, perhaps more accurately, his god has get him.
Is it real? It is real enough that anyone defenseless faking a possession is punished past the priest in charge. And people who want to resist a divine takeover have to be helped by others. "I once went to a 12hour santeria ceremony in Brooklyn attended past about lxxx people," recalls Hugues de Montalembert. "At that place was a girl there who suddenly started to be shaken past possession merely resisted and got very scared. I of the priests asked united states of america to aid to keep her out of the trance. Someone had to dance with the girl and ring a little bell in her ear to calm her down."
Angela Fleming laughs, recalling her beginning possession experience: "I thought, 'This won't happen to me ‐ even though I believe in it. I feel cipher.' I was thinking about what I was going to exercise the side by side day and that was the terminal affair I remembered when I came out of it." What does information technology feel like? "I'm not in control of what I'm doing," says Mrs. Fleming. "And I'm someone who knows who I am and when I am in command. Simply I practice feel a strength entering my trunk."
Though psychologists have offered theories about what happens during possession, the upshot is probably most easily compared to hypnosis; information technology also contains some of the •same psychological benefits. For example, after a trance, devotees often claim they feel terrific, invigorated. Modernistic medicine has likewise discovered the therapeutic value of the trance and self‐induced hypnosis for relieving anxiety and relaxation.
And there is also another important psychological benefit to possession, particularly for the poor: the prospect of becoming a god, if only for a few hours. Psychologists talk of "suggestibility," and there is no question that members of voodoo and santeria are highly suggestible. Moreover, like anyone who gets hypnotized ofttimes, devotees will find it easier to enter a trance afterward the commencement fourth dimension. And just as a hypnotist uses repetition or a sure dawdling rhythm in his voice, voodoo and santeria take their chants.
Then, of course, there are the drums. The "manic" ritual dancing of voodoo is, in a sense, choreographed past the drums. When Shango dances in a stooping position or hops along on one leg swinging his machete as if cut weeds, he is following the direction of the drums, now playing Shango's song. Information technology is the drums at a ceremony that call down the gods, and at that very moment, cult and theater come together in an emotional ballet that seems to aim at heightening a person's concrete and mental powers.
Co-ordinate to Henry Frank, "the voodoo priest performs the aforementioned role here equally he does in Republic of haiti. He becomes the neighborhood doctor, therapist and social worker. He can be trusted and is at that place to help you lot." And voodoo does seem to bestow some social benefits.
"It is used to requite people a psychic remainder, relief, escape, from what they face in life," says Hugues de Montalembert. Moreover, the part of divintion in santeria takes the pressure off a member faced with a dilemma: the gods say quit your Job, ally that woman, motility to Kalamazoo, and that is that. Such advice can requite even the meekest of men confidence. And in that respect, voodoo resembles most religions, which attempt to provide believers with a fashion of life.
Prof. Robert Farris Thompson of Yale, a longtime bookish specialist in Yorub art and culture also as an observer of its development in this country, explains his own sympathy: "The Religion has and so much common sense built into information technology: verses or readings volition tell you what to do, like make clean up your house, stay out of bars, keep off drugs. Shape up. And past letting the gods command people, say, to boot drug addiction, it can exist quite successful at achieving its goals. Believe me, it's amazing to stand on a burned‐out street in the Bronx and see a adult female in a white bandanna cleaning things upwardly with a flash of beads."
Fifty-fifty de Montalembert, who was put off by the occasional desire of initiates to impairment their neighbors, concedes voodoo and santeria have a positive function to play in the city: "If you lot abound upwardly in an environment where people are prostituting themselves, where at that place'south all sorts of heroin and cocaine around, and and then finally discover something that teaches values ‐ and people in santeria and voodoo have very strong values, dissimilar from street values. That can exist very attractive."
Such notions have even drawn a pocket-sized number of American whites into the religion, though, like most initiates, they are wary of publicity. The appeal is strong. Living naturally is in faddy, and voodoo is a natural, unscientific, manner of life ‐ man as an integral part of the forces around him. "Self‐fulfillment" is the cliche of every pop therapy that comes down the pike; and voodoo is based on finding the god in man, the route to what Cubans call "salad" or well‐being.
"Only the organized religion never died," points out a member. "It only languished in West Africa. Now it'south being discovAfrica. Now it's being discovered in an urban surround." Indeed, some santeros go so far as to suggest that fate would accept it this way; a renaissance is, they claim, only function of a grand, supernatural design.
"What if," hypothesizes one New York santero, "some 400 years ago, the gods sat dorsum and asked: 'What would happen to a people if we took everything away from them, their state, their art, their whole civilisation; and so put them on a foreign soil? Could they reproduce their culture?' "
Historians might chuckle over such a stunning fleck of revisionist history; psychologists might shake their heads in wonder at such an ingenious rationalization of centuries of physical and mental corruption.
Members point to clues of how their culture, music, its fine art, its vision of the globe Is spreading, Infiltrating the lives of white America, coloring even that esthetic.
"Let me requite you an example," says one Harlem resident, a sociologist, who has been quietly practicing santeria for 20 years. "I went to a political party given by a dance therapist. In walk four drummers, all white, who brainstorm to play ceremonial songs which they've probably got ofttimes records. I was outraged: how dare they play the songs of my religion, of my gods! And then they all bundled themselves in a typical way, women in the center, men on the edges, dancing commencement face to face, but gradually they moved to face the drums.
"And then this white guy got up and danced the ritual trip the light fantastic toe to the god Elegua. I thought I'd croak. So information technology occurred to me that at that place might be a message here about the strength and power of what I'thousand involved in ‐ that The Religion seems to have a life of its own. thought, perhaps I'm supposed to encounter this because it transcends my ain notion of santeria equally a political and cultural savior of blacks. Maybe information technology'due south for others, too ‐ for the world.
"I retrieve mentioning this experience to a famous loftier priest. Basically, he said, 'Don't go all upset considering they weren't doing a proper ritual. What they were doing was O.K. ‐ and so long every bit It wasn't a striptease or something like that.' Then he added, 'The gods like to go to parties.' "
Of grade. Where else would the gods get to trip the light fantastic toe? ■
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1979/12/02/archives/the-voodoo-that-new-yorkers-do.html
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