Voodoo

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Based primarily on an amalgamation of spirit and ancestor cults and healing traditions brought by
African slaves to the New World, and secondarily on African and European forms of folk Catholicism,
Vodou (Voodoo) is the most popular religion among Haitis eight million citizens, most of whom are
peasants.
It is also practiced by a sizable minority of the two million Haitian immigrants (and a small number of
converts of diverse ethnic backgrounds) in the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, and North American
cities like Miami, New York, and Montreal.
The first Vodou practitioners in the United States were the African and Creole slaves of French
plantation owners fleeing the violence of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), who settled mainly in
New Orleans, where the religion remains part of the citys religious fabric, sometimes practiced in
concert with Hoodoo, a form of African American folk spirituality that is also based on ancient African
traditions.
Like any religion, Vodou is a system of symbols, beliefs, and practices that provides its adherents,
whether in Haitian or American society, with a sense of meaning and purpose in life, a means of
communing with the sacred, moral guidelines, a source of personal identity and group solidarity, and
the courage to face lifes struggles.
Vodou emerged in the sixteenth century among enslaved Africans and their descendants in the western
region of the Spanish Caribbean colony of Santo Domingo, which became the French colony of SaintDomingue in 1697 and eventually the Republic of Haiti in 1804.
Although possessing deep roots in West Africa and Central Africa, the religion is more correctly
identified as African-derived or African-based rather than African, even if the term vodou (whose
original meaning in the West African Fon language is spiritual entity) was reappropriated by
practitioners of traditional African religions in West Africa in the twentieth century to designate their
own religion.
Like Santera and other major African-derived religions in the Americas, Vodou is an example of
diffused monotheism, meaning that the sacred power of a single creator god, called Bondye (Good
God) or Granmt (Great Master), is diffused through a pantheon of divinities, which in Vodou are
called lwa, and throughout nature. As such, the lwa are deeply enmeshed in nature, and each lwa is
associated with some natural force or feature, like rivers, rainbows, the earth, and the sea.
From the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, a total of some
800,000 enslaved Africans were brought to Santo Domingo/Saint-Domingue, the majority from the
West African Fon and Central African Kongo ethnic groups.

Numbering relatively few and facing opposition by slaveholders, Catholic missionaries managed little
success in evangelizing slaves beyond administering the legally required sacrament of baptism. The
syncretism that would thereafter characterize Vodou thus resulted, as Catholic saints merged with
African spirits, and crosses, holy water, and rosaries joined spiritual forces with amulets that slaves
refashioned from African traditions, which proved remarkably resilient in the face of the unspeakable
oppression of slavery.
Prior to the Haitian Revolution, a multiplicity of African religious traditions thus persevered in SaintDomingue, whose sugar plantations made it Europes most lucrative colony.
To speak of Vodou prior to the revolution is therefore somewhat anachronistic, as three of the religions
cornerstones were not laid until the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the
nineteenth century: (1) the unity of purpose of the Haitian Revolution, as exemplified by the powerful
ceremony at Bwa Kayman in August 1791, led by a prototypical Vodou priest named Boukman Dutty,
which is widely credited with having sparked the revolution; (2) the integration of essential African
religious traditions that were being practiced during the colonial era in clandestine maroon settlements
of escaped slaves in the islands mountains and forests; and (3) the acceleration of the adoption of
Catholic elements (especially hagiography) during the period of the great schism between Haiti and
Rome from 1804 to 1860, when the Vatican refused to send Catholic priests to the young nation.
After the schism, the Catholic Church, in alliance with the Haitian government, orchestrated several
formal campaigns to suppress Vodou. These ultimately failed, however, and today the religion enjoys
protection under the 1987 Haitian constitution, while in 2003 its baptisms and marriages gained legal
recognition in Haiti.
Vodou has always been heterogeneous and decidedly uncentralized, relying on neither the teachings of
a founder, nor scripture, nor formal doctrine. In some parts of Haiti, for example, the religion is
primarily characterized by ancestor veneration, and elsewhere by cults of spirits of West African
origins, such as Ezili, the female lwa of love, sensuality, and feminine power, and Ogou, the male lwa
of iron and all powers associated with metals.
The Vodou pantheon is divided into two principle rites: the rada, whose lwa are cool and serene; and
the petwo, whose lwa are hot and feisty. Many lwa have manifestations in each rite. Rada and petwo
cults are supplemented for most practitioners by the veneration of their ancestors (zanset or lem, the
dead). Collectively, the lwa, zanset, and lem, along with angels and Catholic saints, are identified
simply as the mysteries (mist ).
Principal forms of communication and contact with Vodous mist include prayer, praise, ablutions,
offerings, spirit possession, drum and dance ceremonies, divination, and animal sacrifice. These rituals
overarching aim is to ensure, establish, or reestablish harmony between practitioners and the mist, or
to protect practitioners from sorcery (wanga ). In the event of bad things happening,

Vodouists consult with ritual specialists (female: manbo ; male: oungan ), who perform divination and
orchestrate ceremonies (which most often take place either in temples (ounf ), family burial
compounds, or public cemeteries) to provoke spirit possession and thereby enter into communication
with the mist in order to discover the cause of the underlying discord, disease, problem, or misfortune,
and to determine and prescribe means of reestablishing harmony, healing, or achieving relevant
solutions. Further drum ceremonies may be prescribed, while others are held according to a liturgical
calendar derived from Catholicism.
Harmony between humans and the mist and healing comprise Vodous raison dtre. In general, such
harmony requires the ritual appeasement of the mist, whether through splendidly artistic communal
drum and dance ceremonies, animal sacrifice, or more frequent personal devotions such as praising and
feeding the lwa. Healing, meanwhile, often involves herbalism and ritual baths.
Leaves, water, song, dance, drums, blood, healing, and communion with the sacred are thus what
Vodou is truly about. It is a dignified and complex religion of survival, resistance, and African roots
that is quite the opposite of the ignorant and racist stereotypes that malign Vodou in Western
imagination and media.
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