Making Love to the Spirit

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses on the rarely documented religious rituals of spiritual marriage or mystical marriage. This sacred institution creates a codified ritual commitment where spirits aid the practitioners and, in turn, practitioners serve the spirits. Spiritual marriage offers a useful framework for analyzing the role of gender and sexuality as it illuminates the gendered expectations placed on practitioners’ fashion and adornment choices. Additionally, this chapter explores the often-unspoken realities of same gender desire between spirits and practitioners and how this challenges the ritual traditions of spiritual marriage within Manbo Maude’s temples. The fashion involved in spiritual marriage extends beyond ceremonies into the everyday lives of practitioners through the ongoing use of ritualized clothing and adornment. Clothing and adornment associated with spiritual marriage signals a personal connection with the divine, aids ongoing communication with the divine, and facilitates the crucial possibility of sexual contact between practitioners and spirits. These sexual interactions, happen “in dream,” which in Haitian Kreyòl is nan dòmi, emphasizes the commitment between practitioner and spirit and plays a significant role in spiritual marriage.