Is one possibly better than the other? What should I know about these Veves?
Lastly in The Spider and the green butterfly EA talks of an elaborate altar that’s consecrated specially, and a Veve for protection. Is this required to contact Legba or not?
Apologies for asking many questions on this topic, I think it would be unwise for me to call a Lwa with ignorance and risk misstepping.
Veves are just sigils and some entities give certain people “special sigils” which is just a sigil, in short coded to that particular magician, so you would be connecting more to the aspect of Legba that was shown to E.A if it’s a “more powerful version” is for the magician using the sigil to find out
I’ve used the second veve to call Papa Legba. I was pulled towards him and kept having dreams about him so just decided to call. I didn’t have much at the time, so all I could offer him was a white tea light candle, a glass of water and one of my kid’s toy trucks and he was grateful. It was a nice conversation and he told me he was coming to me in dreams because Erzulie Dantor wanted to connect with me for protection over my youngest child from his dad. I remembered a dream where just the name “Erzulie” was on fire, but I didn’t connect the dots until the conversation I had with Papa Legba. I still call on Erzulie Dantor to help protect me and my son from his dad, she’s a fierce protector, so I’m grateful to Papa Legba for coming to me.
Any entity from any pantheon can be harsh on beginners, just like they can be soft. You just have to take precaution, protect yourself & if you feel pulled towards one, call on them. I can only speak for myself and say that before I called on Papa Legba, I’ve never called on any of the LWA before, but kept getting pulled towards them so I just took the plunge and called on them. After getting all of your questions answered here, you’re going to have to decide for yourself if you’re going to call on them. Ask all the questions you need and do whatever research you can beforehand so you feel safe & confident in your decision.
I concur with what’s stated for the most part, but I have used both for Legba as well as Ea’s protection veve. I used his veves the first time I called upon Legba. I forgot there was one in there for protection till you mentioned it tbh, because I haven’t used it since.
I prefer the bottom veve personally, but both have lead me to the same entity.
Some of these I think are designed to connect you to particular aspects/abilities of the Loa, similar to how I’ve seen authors move the placement of angels in banishing rituals to alter the type of protection they are asking for.
Dk actually pmd me about this a while back, and I can’t recall what I told him, other than I felt it didn’t matter which veve he used for the Loa he was asking about. I’ve called upon them without veves, I’ve had them lead to me to the appropriate Loa for teaching me the work and things like that as well, when I didn’t even know who I wanted.
I also know there are veves out their for the families- like all of the Erzrulies I’ve come into contact with are similar, but each has a specific thing prefer to work on. Even when I wanted a specific Ezrulie, I couldn’t find a specific veve, so I used a generic one for the group of them, and the specific Ezrulie I wanted came forward.
I think this one of those things where intent can matter more than what’s on your paper in front of you.
Hope that makes sense. Maybe @DarkestKnight can recall what I told him about it, it mighta made more sense. (Probably not but I feel like I’m forgetting a factor I shared with him)
I was asking about the Rada and Petro veve for Damballah, as I recall, because I was using the Petro one, and that is supposed to be the more violent family of Lwa.
Ah that’s right. Seems like I didn’t think it matter since he sought you out- you should get the right entity from either, but the energy around might/possibly be more volatile, or you might find it affects your emotions if your working with thst particular aspect a lot, but I feel it’s the same entity in different roles.
But I don’t like the whole every god equals every other god thing. I rarely concur with others that entity x is also entity y- except with a handful of the Loa like when comparing things such as the French versus African named entities.
EA descrives the Lwa as very violent sometimes, would you say they are extremely harsh on beginner’s?