How to Live
the ethic — what it asks of a life
Keep the obligation.
The lwa you inherited expect to be served, on time, in the correct form, and the arrangement is contractual rather than devotional. The cruelty of it is economic: a proper service costs money, and a family that cannot afford one lives with the knowledge that a debt is accumulating against them.
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Feed the dead, and feed whoever comes.
The ancestors are fed before anyone else and the household is expected to feed visitors. In the diaspora this becomes a logistical problem — the graves are in Haiti and the family is in Brooklyn — and remittances sent home for ceremonies are a real and substantial category of Haitian money transfer.
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Do not promise what you will not do.
A promise to a lwa is binding and a broken one is held to be actionable by the lwa. The standard Haitian analysis of a run of misfortune is that somebody promised something and did not deliver, and the standard remedy is a consultation to establish which promise and to whom.
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Respect the head.
A mounted person is not themselves and must not be grabbed, laughed at, questioned as themselves, or photographed. The camera is the live grievance — a century of outsiders filming ceremonies for their own purposes has meant a great many houses will not admit foreigners at all, and are right not to.
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Which hand you work with.
Practitioners distinguish between serving with the right hand and working with both, and the distinction is theirs rather than an outsider's imposition. There is a market for harm, everyone in a district knows who serves it, and the tradition's stated sanction is consequence rather than prohibition — it comes back, and it comes back on your children.
⚖ contested within
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