Go to where the spring rises cold from the black rock, where the water is so clear it seems not to be there at all, and stand very still. Something is watching you from the pool. It has watched a long time. It is patient in the way that water is patient, and it does not come to those who come loud. This is Simbi, the serpent of the sweet waters, and he is the shyest of the great spirits and among the shrewdest — a mind that moves like a snake through reeds, glimpsed and then gone.
The Snake of Two Waters
Simbi is a water-serpent, but not of the sea. He keeps the fresh waters — the spring, the pool, the well, the cool secret places where the ground gives up its hidden rivers. Where Danbala Wedo, the great white cosmic serpent, arcs across the whole of heaven and earth, Simbi keeps to the intimate waters, the ones a person can kneel beside. He is called Simbi Andezo, which is to say Simbi of Two Waters — he stands at the meeting of the sweet water and the salt, at the threshold between the pool and the sea, and this is why he is a spirit of passage, of crossing, of the place where one thing becomes another.
He governs magic. He is the keeper of charms, of the wanga and the paket, of the leaves whose names are not spoken aloud. The old sorcerers were his people; the makers of medicine and the workers of the hidden work knew that their craft came up out of Simbi’s waters. He holds secrets the way a spring holds its source — invisibly, deep, and giving out only what it chooses to give. When he possesses a horse, that person may go silent, may sink low, may seem to swim or to slip beneath an unseen surface, for Simbi does not perform. He confides.
A Spirit Born of Kongo
Simbi comes to the peristyle by the Petwo fire, the hot rite, the nation of spirits forged in the New World out of Kongo memory and the heat of bondage and resistance. But he sits apart even there, for the simbi were spirits before Haiti — carried in the hearts of the Bakongo across the water, the nature-spirits of the springs and stones and pools of the old country. This is why he is steeped in Kongo magic more deeply than almost any other Lwa: he is one of the few who kept his old name and his old work through all the crossing. His heat is not the fury of the war-spirits; it is the cool, coiled, quick heat of intelligence and secret power. He is severe, exacting, and easily offended by the careless — but to the one who approaches rightly, he is the surest of teachers.
He wears the faces the Church laid over him. He is syncretized with the Three Kings, the Magi who followed the star and carried strange gifts along secret roads — three wise ones, foreign, magical, coming from far water to far water. And he is joined to Moses, who struck the rock so that sweet water leapt out in the desert, who worked signs with a rod that turned to a serpent. See how the Christian mask fits the true face beneath it: the maker of water in the dry place, the man whose staff became a snake.
How He Is Honored
Simbi has no fixed day upon the calendar; he comes when the water is right and the heart is quiet, and the wise wait upon him rather than summon him. His colors are green, gray, and black — the green of the wet leaf and the water-weed, the gray of stone and still pools, the black of the deep place where the spring is born. His veve is drawn with serpents, often coiled or paired, winding among the marks of crossing water.
Lay before him fresh spring water, drawn cold and clean, for this is his own body and his first delight. Give him a black fowl, and cool green things — herbs, leaves, the green growth of shaded damp places. The songs sung to him are low and winding, calling Simbi, calling Simbi Andezo, asking him up out of the pool. Bring these to a quiet shore, a well-head, a spring, and speak softly, for he is listening long before you see him move.
Benediction
Simbi Andezo, snake of the sweet waters, keeper of the springs and the shaded pools — coil now at the edge of this water and turn your patient eye upon us. Open to us the secret leaves, the hidden work, the charm that heals and the word that is not spoken. Cool serpent of two waters, teach us your silence. Carry our prayer down through the black source and out to the far sea, and let it return to us clear. Ayibobo.