Bestiary

Everybody dies. Even gods, it is has been said, must die eventually. And when we die, it is the Baron — Baron La Croix, Ghede, the Cemetery Lord — who will greet us on the other side. Tipping his top hat, puffing his cigar, laughing at mortality’s little joke on us, Samedi embodies life as well as death, and can bestow either one with a snap of his fingertips.

Wrongly viewed by outsiders as a demonic figure, the Baron represents balance, not cruelty. Amidst the horrors of slavery and poverty, his presence seems oddly comforting. All things end, the Baron reminds us. Even suffering. Especially suffering. This doesn’t mean he’s not above poking fun at humanity, of course. Among Loa and devotees alike, he’s infamous for crude jests and sexual humor. You might as well laugh at it all, Le Baron says. The alternative is misery… and who wants to go through life like that?

A large man dressed in a mockery of the white man’s fashions, Baron Samedi heads the Guédé Loa family: a clan of entities whose provinces are death and fertility. His wife, Grandma Brigitte, appears as a blazing skeleton-woman who guards the crossroads and cemeteries of the nighttime American South. Le Baron has a thing for crossroads, too — a territory he shares with Papa Legba… usually over a bottle of good rum and a lot of filthy jokes at humanity’s expense. Manifesting most often with his signature top hat, tailed coat, and a face either painted with skull-like makeup or replaced by an actual skull, Samedi speaks in a high, often loud, nasal voice, swears continually, and smokes up a storm. He often wears dark glasses, with plugs up his nose like any well-dressed corpse should have. His devotees, when ridden by La Baron and his kin, smear themselves with crushed hot peppers and raw rum, taxing the limits of the flesh because what’s most important is the state beyond this mortal shell.

Straddling life and death like an enthusiastic lover, Gedhe always speaks the truth. Because he transcends mortal limitations, he ignores the bounds of propriety, too. The head of his cane is carved into the shape of a cock, and he loves to wave it around. Samedi is, after all, a deeply sexual Loa, too. Some folks call upon

him when they want to get laid in non-fatal fashion, and his devotees have a reputation for being frighteningly seductive yet downright crude. Samedi loves to party, but he’s always watching the clock… not his, but yours. A trickster godhead, he’s got the blunt honesty of the grave. Sex and death are his dominion, and he enjoys indulging both.

Thanks to his province over death, Samedi tends to attract necromancers to his path. These folks often wind up wishing they’d knocked on someone else’s door. Though he often plays the fool, La Baron does not suffer fools at all, most especially not if they’re white folks who think they understand voodoo. In addition to the frenzied dance called the banda, Papa Gedhe loves to mess with people’s minds. He can read minds, too, so it’s a bad idea to try and fool La Baron. Coffins, poisons, graveyards, and near or actual death are signatures of his rites, and would-be devotees need the courage to face both the grave and what lies beyond it if they wish to beg Samedi’s favors. Offerings of rum, cigars, black coffee, roasted peanuts, and bread (baked black if you can manage that) attract La Baron’s attention, but you’d best be ready to meet death face to face if you wish to work with Samedi. Though often associated in popular media with zombis, Samedi actually prefers to keep dead people dead. Behind his rough humor and fearsome façade, Baron Samedi hides a secret compassion for the poor souls walking this hard earth. Demise, he knows, is not a torment but the blessed relief from life itself.