Bokor
Also Known As: Bòkò (Haitian Creole), Sorcerer (partial translation), One Who Serves the Lwa with Both Hands
Culture/Region: Haiti, New Orleans, and the Haitian Vodou diaspora broadly
Progenitor Lineage: Witch/Sorcerer
Belief Framework: Haitian Vodou tradition, in which the Bokor explicitly operates on both sides of the light/dark divide, accessing the power of the left hand path (service to more dangerous Lwa) without abandoning access to the right hand
Physical Appearance
No consistent physical template. The Bokor is often indistinguishable from an oungan or mambo (the standard Vodou priests) by appearance: the distinction is in practice and in the willingness to engage the darker Lwa, not in any physical marker.
Origin in This World
Haitian Vodou is itself a syncretic tradition, born from the forced convergence of West African Vodun traditions (Fon, Ewe, Yoruba), indigenous Taíno beliefs, and Catholic colonial overlay in the context of one of history's most brutal slave societies. The witch/sorcerer lineage found in Haiti a belief environment of extraordinary intensity, shaped by genuine historical trauma: the transgression thresholds encoded into Haitian magical practice were thresholds forged in the experience of enslavement, and the lineage's expression through this framework carries that weight.
The Bokor specifically represents the practitioner who transgresses the left-hand threshold: the choice to engage the Gede Lwa (death Lwa), the Petwo Lwa (powerful, dangerous), and the techniques of zombie creation. The zombie-creation practice is genuinely represented in the World's terms: the Bokor's ability to capture and manipulate the ti bon ange (the portion of the soul corresponding to individual consciousness) through the coup de poudre preparation is a real witch/sorcerer lineage technique. The resulting zombie state is a genuine partial soul-capture, not merely pharmacological.
Abilities
Lwa invocation and service-mediation for both the rada (cooler, more benevolent Lwa) and the petwo (hotter, more dangerous Lwa). Zombie creation through the coup de poudre preparation combined with the ti bon ange capture ritual. Ouanga (talisman) creation with genuine supernatural efficacy. Curse and counter-curse working of considerable sophistication. The specific ability to perceive and interact with souls of the recently dead, which overlaps with the Restless Spirit Progenitor domain and occasionally creates jurisdictional complications between the OVM's Witch/Sorcerer and Spirit protocols.
Belief-Based Weaknesses
Salt is the primary counter-agent, functioning on multiple levels: as a purifying agent against the Bokor's ritual environment, and as the specific antidote that restores the zombie state's ti bon ange to something approaching normal function. The complexity of the Haitian theological structure means that Bokors are vulnerable to counter-working from other skilled Vodou practitioners: a mambo with deep rada connections can directly contest and potentially overwhelm the petwo-sourced power of a Bokor. The Bokor's dependence on the captured ti bon ange of zombies creates a specific strategic vulnerability: freeing or destroying the souls in a Bokor's collection significantly weakens them.