Wonder Born: A Journey into the Birth and Life of a Living Traiteur

By V.M. Castel

This is the first book, of a series of two, of present-day people who work with spirit, using inherited spiritual gifts such as empathy, healing, sight, spirit communication, and more; to do amazing things (healing, energy manipulation, interact with ghosts, affect weather, precognition, animal/nature communication, dream travel, and manifestation). In Southern Louisiana, these people are referred to as Traiteurs and the foundation of their faith and craft is the Trinity. This particular family is of the Naquin Traiteur lineage. Each family is unique in their abilities as are the different traditions of Native American tribes; akin to Native American Medicine.
Part one focuses on the circumstances surrounding the birth and early life of these unique people.
Part 2 tells of resources (tools) used by this Traiteur family to live regular lives.
So, come along for the ride, as we explore a mystery of wonder living along-side you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479731183

V.M. Castel

V.M. Castel earned a B.A. in Theological Studies/Pastoral Ministry through Grand Canyon University, AZ. She presently works as an inter-faith Chaplain for a non-profit organization. For the past 30 years she has been consulted for instruction and information regarding living and working with the world of Spirit. She is a member of the Eastern Delaware Nation and a home-grown French Catholic Acadian. She has three grown children, and lives in Upstate New York with her husband, two dogs, three Bettas, and Phoebe.

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Copyright © 2012 by V.M. Castel.

Library of Congress Control Number:        2012918940

ISBN:        Hardcover        978-1-4797-3117-6

        Softcover        978-1-4797-3116-9

        Ebook        978-1-4797-3118-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Foreword

PART I

Chapter 1: It Begins With A Birth

Chapter 2: Marie: Being Young Within A Fairy Tale

Chapter 3: Finding Balance In Both Worlds

Chapter 4: Living With The Sight

Chapter 5: Continuing The Legacy

Chapter 6: Negative Aspects Of Living Both Worlds

Chapter 7: Tulla

Chapter 8: Steven

Chapter 9: Olivia

Chapter 10: One Destiny, One Path, One Heart

Chapter 11: Growing Up With Such A Legacy

Chapter 12: To Be Involved With Someone Living A Fairy Tale

Part II

Chapter 1: Tools Of The Trade

Chapter 2: Numbers, Colors, Nature

Chapter 3: Helpers: Seen And Unseen

Chapter 4: Unseen Human Helpers

Chapter 5: It’s A Wonderful Life, But . . .

Epilogue

Rules To Live By

Further Reading

Endnotes

DEDICATION

To Nugget . . . the future (child of Olivia)

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This is the first book of a series of present-day people who work with spirit, using inherited spiritual gifts such as empathy, healing, sight, spirit communication, and more. In Southern Louisiana, these people are referred to as Traiteurs, and the foundation of their faith and craft is the Trinity. This particular family is of the Naquin Traiteur lineage. Each family is unique in their abilities as are the different traditions of Native American tribes, akin to Native American medicine.

Book 1 focuses on the circumstances surrounding the birth and early life of these unique people.

Book 2 will continue on the story with the training that occurs to develop these individuals into active participators.

So come along for the ride, as together we explore the mystery of living a life of Wonder.

V. M. Castel

FOREWORD

Some people are born into a musical family, some into a family of talented natural-born artists. Each of these families seems to carry genes of this particular gift, transmitted and erupting within their children for generations. For some families, this generational gift is a hidden secret that is whispered only in campfire stories or divulged within TV programs. Some people accept the concept of gypsies and their unusual traits or abilities. Cultures like the Native American have individuals who are referred to as medicine people who are born into families of medicine workers. This medicine referred to is the ability or gift in which someone naturally lives side by side with what is unseen—the spirit world. In Southern Louisiana, in bayou country, these magical-born people are called Traiteurs.

Marie

PART I

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CHAPTER 1

It Begins with a Birth

A child is born. But before that birth, the child was wanted so desperately that a pact, an agreement, was made with the Creator of all (yes, God) so that the child would be born alive and healthy. This was not to be an ordinary child because the mother was Traiteur.

Edna appeared to be an ordinary woman living in Southern Louisiana during the 1950s. She hoped for a handsome man to marry and eventually have children to call her own. She owned one fox fur coat (the real thing, for back then it was considered very fashionable), sewed all her own clothes (sought after for her talent as a seamstress), and worked as a bookkeeper for the town hall. She could jitterbug till her shoes wore thin, and she could see when people were going to die. Edna was born with a difference.

With the late marriage of her longtime boyfriend of nine years, Bill (she was thirty-eight, her beau forty-seven), she believed she was going to live a life like any other white American female. They settled into a family business, and Edna began the project of having children. The first child survived, but barely. He was so premature that his legs were only as big as her thumb. He weighed just under three pounds. For him to survive was a miracle, but the joy was to be short-lived. Because of Edna’s gift, she saw he was going to remain a sickly child and would not live to see his thirtieth birthday. With a heavy heart, she brought him home and gave him all the love she could. Because they were Catholic, birth control was not used, causing Edna to get pregnant quickly and often. She lost her second, third, and fourth child, either as a still birth or they died a few days after they were born. Edna was tired of burying babies. By her fifth pregnancy, Edna was desperate. She decided to use her natural-born gift of spirit to change the outcome.

*     *     *

Edna’s family was born into an inherited tradition where if a particular outcome was desired, prayers of intent or desires of the heart, with an offering of some type (commitment, promise, performance for another), had to be made. With the absolute knowing that this particular prayer would be heard and answered, the person making the request could manifest almost anything. As long as the results were for a good purpose to others, not just the self, the outcome could be expected as desired (the desire could be almost anything). You see, Edna was born into a family of Traiteurs, the French or Cajun version of a Native American medicine person. And though she could wish almost anything she needed in her life, she could not wish what she wanted without a price. The price was always discovered in dreams (yes, the dream one has while sleeping) or the person could offer his or her own price or sacrifice.

In the world of a Traiteur, dream time is the place to see, discover, ask questions, visit with those departed, do many things other than sleep peacefully. It is a place where through prayer, healings could be done for others, protection for another, or personal guidance and direction could be found. For a person born into this difference, the Traiteur world, the unseen, was only a blink away and it was like living alongside a fairy tale. Spiritual happenings were a regular occurrence, and prayer was reality manifested. It was a dangerous world unless tread with care, lived responsibly, and secured with a strong faith based on some positive belief tradition (like Christian, Buddhism, or Native American). Each of these belief systems was the best for a strong anchor and gave a harmonic place to live peacefully with the world of spirit.

Edna, as was her mother before her, and so on for many generations were Catholic. It was a long family tradition that involved strong-willed individuals whose faith in the Trinity (God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) was the anchor for their existence. Because of what they were born into, they had to have this basis of divine good, or disaster of an earthly kind could befall them and all whom they loved. This was a legacy that could bring stress and disturbances into one’s mental, emotional, and physical life; but it could also be a life of wonder.

*     *     *

In 1957, Edna received confirmation that she was pregnant for the fifth time but was told she could never expect to carry full term. Edna heard the words, but her stubborn faith believed otherwise. But first, she had to prepare the groundwork for her wish to come true.

*     *     *

For a person born into such a life, spiritual interventions were as simple as reaching for a Band-Aid. It is a resource always at hand but is one that must be reached for with care and forethought. There are unspoken rules that apply so that what is desired will be the thing that will manifest. It is one thing to flip the switch to activate spirit intervention and get what one needs or wants, but it is another to flip the switch so that it doesn’t cause harm to self or others. The outside consequences of such requests are difficult to predict, which is why a higher source must be incorporated. It is crucial for Traiteurs to merge with a Divine source when they project their need or desire. This is why Traiteur children are raised from birth, in a religious environment. One that will establish and teach the young how to live a Divine connection. This type of spiritual connection then becomes as natural and real as any earthly family and helps balance a life that lives in both the corporeal and incorporeal realms.

*     *     *

Edna called her sister-in-law, a sister of Mt. Carmel living in New Orleans, and requested the convent to establish a novena for the child she was carrying. A novena was a steady flow of concentrated prayers from the rosary, said every day for a particular cause, usually for seven days or for a specific period, depending on the request—in this case, nine months.

Through these and Edna’s personal prayers, she solidified her desire for a healthy full-term baby. She made her prayers into an agreement with the Almighty. In bearing a healthy girl child with blue eyes, auburn hair, good, strong teeth, strong health, and intelligence, in return, she would dedicate the child in service to the Lord through the patronage of the Holy Mother Mary. In biblical times, some might refer to this as the Shema contract,¹ a dedication of the child to the one and only God (that being the God of Abraham and Moses, Jesus’s reference to the Father).

*     *     *

Nine months later, Marie was born, named in honor of her patron (Mary, Mother of Jesus). On the day of her birth, Edna wrapped her healthy baby in blue and white, in accordance with the colors of the Holy Mother, and went home, a secret smile upon her lips. The doctor was amazed, her family astounded! How could she have borne such a healthy infant?

Edna became pregnant two more times after Marie’s birth. One was stillborn, the other died after only a few hours. With her son sickly, it was a relief to see her daughter thrive. After Edna’s seventh pregnancy and another miscarriage, she prayed herself sterile. Edna had no further pregnancies but was grateful for the two living children she could call her own (well, one was God’s).

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CHAPTER 2

Marie: Being Young within a Fairy Tale

Little Marie was a happy child. Everyone loved her smile, her joy, but her mother constantly reminded her who was responsible for her life and how she was God’s child, not Edna’s. Marie never questioned her mother’s statement of fact or faith; she had a natural love for the unseen Father of heaven and had an uncanny confident knowing of His presence.

For two years, Edna dressed Marie in only blue and white frilly dresses with ribbon and lace. Marie was given a little Bible book that contained the most interesting stories. It was her favorite book. At the age of five, when her father’s store caught fire and burned everything within, Marie cried because she had left her little Bible book under the register counter early that morning. She begged and pleaded for her parents to go get her book. Finally, a fireman heard her pleas and agreed to look in the cinders that were left. He told her not to get her hopes up, but Marie was positive her book was still there.

Digging through the cinders in the middle of all the blackened ash, the fireman found the book of Bible stories. The edges were slightly blackened but nevertheless untouched! It was the only thing within the store that had not been incinerated. Handing it to Marie, he was astounded. She smiled calmly and said, Thank you for getting it. I knew Father wouldn’t let it be ruined! The fireman looked at Marie’s father, and he just pointed up. Looking at Edna, the fireman saw a twinkle in her eye as she shrugged. And as he looked back to the small child, he witnessed her hugging her book tight into her chest and had to wonder who this special little girl was.

*     *     *

If one researches the story behind the Traiteurs, they would discover that traditional Traiteurs utilize French Catholic prayers in their healings and dealings. The legacy is usually passed on from one sex to the opposite sex. However, in Marie’s family, females were born to work the spirit gift while the males were to support and protect their women. Though some males were born with the touch of spirit upon their lives, they usually didn’t become actively involved like their counterparts. Edna’s family referred to their lineage as Spirit Born or Spirit Touched rather than Traiteur. And it was the females that were specifically taught the manipulation of spiritual energy for healing, protection, and fulfillment of desires. Mothers taught their daughters and guided their sons, and everyone supported through the involvement of aunts or other female blood relations.

The Catholic faith and its prayers were the foundation for all administrations of spirit for this particular type of family, so Sunday church attendance was a necessity. However, while many a child would be in church reciting prayers, Marie would be busy playing. She was in God’s house after all, and she felt secure in the love He and her sponsor, the Holy Mother Mary, had for her; she knew they were smiling down upon her! Being in church was going to visit kin. She felt safe in that holy dwelling, and it was the only place where Marie would ever feel truly accepted, loved, and welcomed. Marie was a child whose faith was a known factor, as real to her as the very breath she breathed.

During her school years (Catholic, of course), the nuns became frustrated with Marie’s matter-of-fact explanation of prayers. She would tell the Mt. Carmel sisters how God the Father had enough to do without providing the bread for her family (her daddy did that already), so in the Lord’s Prayer, she could leave out give us this day our daily bread and save God some trouble. The nuns would throw up their hands, and Edna would get a phone call.

Edna’s daughter felt so personal with her Father above that she assumed everyone else did too! She didn’t just recite prayers to something she believed; she also talked with someone that was as real to her as her parents! However, as a child, Marie was very confused about other people’s attitude regarding God. It was hard for her to understand that people didn’t really know him, only believed in him. How could that be? He was right there in front for all to see and know! She felt His hugs, felt his correction, knew his touch. If people didn’t accept God, she worried, they probably didn’t embrace the spirit of Santa Claus either! (But that is a story for a different time.)

*     *     *

Growing up with one foot in the physical world and one foot in the fairy tale was fun, but challenging. Marie was raised to know she had the ability to