St Michael

St Michael is known in religious circles as an archangel of protection. He is written with a sword in hand in traditional iconography, inviting petition to the spirit realm for defense against evil. Byzantine Hoodoo has used black-and-red-Ankara print fabric and a knotted sword to help think through how this icon speaks to me in our contemporary moment. 

I can remember after my first year of seminary, I left with a burning question– why would God allow the rape of Black women during slavery? I even wrote and performed in a play seeking to address this question. Almost ten years later, the question has come back up in recent months, and I rest in the following message. I must acknowledge that this question exists within a much broader context of American and even world history, where women in general have suffered at the hands of toxic patriarchy since its inception. Even with women in leadership roles, there is an undergirding spirit that needs healing within this patriarchal society, for all beings to flourish, including self-identifying men. 

Something else I have learned since that first year at the Southern Baptist Seminary is that people have created gods–they/we can give energy to an idea to the point that it can become a ruling energy, power, thought, god, etc. So much so that folks then begin to live in its realm as if it is true and necessary for human thriving. For example: the excessive desire for more by way of money shows up as greed, imperialism, colonialism–where systems are created and religious and philosophical thought are constructed–binding folks to these patterns, to this economic god. 

This is not the Source of Energy, but merely an extension of it. That is not the “god” that my ancestors prayed to when they were being beaten and raped. This and others like it are rather constructed energies/powers that form into systems, becoming folks’ god/guiding force for life. And while I believe we have entered into an age where these gods/systems have been and are continuing to be destroyed and dismantled–the aftereffects of toxic patriarchy, imperialism, and colonialism and and and… the impact of cleaning up this mess can/will still be felt, and for some more viscerally than others. 

So when I go back to how and why this question about women came up for me, and as I think about Byzantine Hoodoo’s St Michael and his knotted sword, I am not negating the spiritual dynamics needed to heal our physical realm–on individual and societal levels–it rather demonstrates that a call to the Spirit for protection removes the weapons of warfare against my body, my spirit, and my being, my life, my family, my home–and binds them to the depths of hell, utterly destroying them to never return, so that I and our future generations live into the loving goodness, abundance, and reciprocity that is undergirded by the Source of all Energy, by the name which is above all names, by Ultimate Goodness, by capital letter L - Love, by Universal Law.