“According to Felipe Garcia Villamil, a leading priest of the Kongo religion in Cuba, an initiate’s possession is genuine when only the whites of the eyes show. Bembe sculpture captures this state by showing ‘eyes that roll up.’. . . Just as the white eyes relate spiritual people to Bembe sculpture, so the famous New Orleans faith healer Mother Catherine Seals . . . before she died in 1930 made herself a spectacular robe beaded with the image of Jesus armed with a similar optic. Jesus guards her with the spiritual light of his eyes. They blaze with whiteness, like the white porcelain eyes found in Bembe figures.”

—Roger D. Abrahams, Blues for New Orleans: Mardis Gras and America’s Creole Soul, 2006.