Voodoo/Past Life Question

[Twine]

I think I've talked about Maybelline here before, but it wasn't until last night (when I had the most colorful dream) that I finally found out how her two pieces fit together. I had only known of young Maybelline, who was foolish, just short of ignorant in the Craft, but certainly a hand-full and older Maybelline, a VERY powerful woman, not one to be messed with, but she also seemed to be loving and loved by most people.

How the hell did she get to become this is the quandary I'd been presented with, until in a very stylized dream, the answers came to me.

After killing her own mother (out of revenge), Maybelline took to her mother's things (all of her Voodoo/Hoodoo belongings) and studied them intently. I'm not sure for how long, and I'm also positive she took a majority with her. Shortly after that she met a man. I don't remember much about him except he had a serious face and he had VERY dark under-eyes, that I think he colored with some kind of special ash (for Visions). She took her mother's things, somehow faked her own death and left with him for New Orleans.

There, she developed a new name, faked an Islander's accent and used her mother's tools, picking up the trade. Now, of this period, I know she did a lot of medium work, but in the likes I've never seen before. She had a human skull, that was either sawed or broken just above the brow, and was without a jaw. It was black, as if it had been scorched or buried for a very long while and had small cavities full of strange things inside, as well as a sort of crown that it wore that I can't really describe....

Anyway, people would come to her (or she would go to them if she was needed in a specific house and she'd sit, resting the skull on her right knee. She'd look into its eyes and go into trance (for real, it wasn't just a gimmick like her accent). And remembering this is exceptionally strange, as when I think back, I can see ghosts that I can't see when I'm there. But it was like her face morphed into the face of the person she was contacting. It was quite peculiar. And she could somehow make the entities visible (for a short period of time) using her power, their power and the skull.

Have any of you heard of such an instrument. I'm sure it was a human skull... and it might have been her Mother's, to be honest. That's some effed up ancestral magic if I've ever seen it. Using your voodoo-witch mother you murdered for your own personal gain.

I wouldn't put it passed me.

[Ula]

Man you get some details on your past lives. Not knowing much about voodoo, I would imagine that the skull was to use the persons power they had in life and maybe even control them in some way. I could see the dark skull being like a scrying bowl?

[Tylluan]

There are all kinds of instruments like that Twine. In the headshrinking tradition they believed that covering the skin in ash kept the muisak, or avenging soul, from seeping out of it. That could explain why this skull was blackened?

[Twine]

Both sound positively perfect. But I'm also wondering if the skull is mean to represent the Loa of the Crossroads. I don't remember his name, but I know in voodoo that there's a spirit that dictates which dead may be spoken to. That being said, I kind of wonder if maybe this is a char or fetish to easily summon or by-pass the veil. Her mother was VERY powerful, and would have been MIGHTY angry, so both of the things mentioned make plenty of sense as well. Maybelline wanted to use Momma's power, but also didn't want Momma trying to hurt her. It makes sense, it really does.