Mumbo Jumbo 899express our deepest sense of ourselves, and when
that expression is belittled and subjugated, we lose
our ability to understand who we are.
Michael Little
SpIrItuaLIty in Mumbo Jumbo
Ishmael Reed’s depictions of spirituality in Mumbo
Jumbo are painted with fairly broad strokes. Reed
is exploring spirituality on two levels, contrasting
religious systems on one level and presenting indi-
vidual concerns on another. PaPa LaBas is the main
character and central spiritual figure in the novel.
He is a houngan, a voodoo priest, who performs the
Work to help others in spiritual distress. LaBas is
able to perform the Work through communion with
a collection of loas, or spirits, that he feeds daily in
honor and tribute. LaBas’s younger assistant, Ear-
line, feeds the loas according to LaBas’s instructions,
but she does not take those instructions seriously,
and when she remembers on her way to a party that
one of the loas needs to be fed, she decides it can
wait and leaves the feeding tray empty for several
days. In truth, Earline is not convinced that the loas
even exist, and if they do, she is not convinced that
feeding them actually amounts to anything. After
she is possessed by a loa, though, and probably the
loa angered by her neglect, she embraces LaBas’s
Work and want to know more, accusing him of not
being forthright about the meanings of the ritual:
“You should have explained to me what that par-
ticular rite was all about, pop, maybe I would have
respected it.”
While it may be possible for LaBas to explain
the rites, the core of the Work is indefinable and
ever-shifting. LaBas is reluctant to insist that Ear-
line learn his ways out of deference to the idea that
each generation must find its own source of spiritual
meaning. In many ways it cannot be taught—it
descends on people unexpectedly and individu-
ally. Because of its improvisational and unpredict-
able nature, it is described as having “jes’ grew”
out of nothing and taken whatever form suits the
individual.
LaBas is said to carry Jes’ Grew in him like most
other folks carry genes,” but for all of his mastery
of the Work and for all of his renown as a houngan,
LaBas suffers what might be called a crisis of faith.
He fails to impress Earline with the seriousness of
feeding the loas because he is reluctant to insist that
she learn his ways. Once Earline is possessed, LaBas
is unable to exorcise the loa and has to get help
from another houngan, Black Herman. “Maybe I’m
too rigid,” he says, to which Black Herman replies,
“You ought to relax. . . . Doing The Work is not like
taking inventory. Improvise some. Open up, PaPa.
Stretch on out with It.” For the Work to be suc-
cessful, its practitioners must remain open-minded
and flexible—the number of loas is limitless, a new
loa can come into being at any time, and each loa
has a distinct personality and interest—and LaBas
recognizes that his practice of the Work has become
too formulaic and too structured. Yet LaBas’s reluc-
tance to insist that Earline learn his ways leads to
her possession.
Reed’s central concern here is the balance
between too much and too little rigidity. The real
risk LaBas realizes he faces is that of slipping into
the spiritual oppression of Atonism. In Reed’s
mythology, the inflexible and intolerant Jewish/
Christian/Muslim systems of laws and discipline
derive from the followers of the Egyptian god
Aton. The Atonist religions are constrained in
practice, critical of sensual and emotional displays
of religious fervor, and insist that everyone wor-
ship a single god and conform to written liturgies.
LaBas thinks of the Atonist mind trying to “inter-
pret the world by using a single loa” and compares
it to “filling a milk bottle with an ocean.” This, of
course, stands in direct contrast to the practices
of LaBas and Herman, which rely on a system of
belief in which loas represent variety and joyful self-
expression and respond to the needs of individual
believers.
The story of Mumbo Jumbo is the story of a
spiritual pandemic ( Jes’ Grew) that sweeps the
country while the forces of Atonism work to crush
it. Ultimately, Jes’ Grew is unable to sustain itself
because it cannot find its text; without some degree
of codification, it unravels under its own infinite
multiplicity. The problem Reed is highlighting in
the novel is the difficulty of finding just the right
amount of structure to give spirituality form without
constraining its individuality.
Michael Little