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Voodoo
The term Voodoo is applied to the branches of a West African ancestor-based
spiritist-animist religious tradition.
Its primary roots are among the Fon-Ewe peoples of West Africa, in the country
now known as Benin (formerly the Kingdom of Dahomey), where Vodun is today the
national religion of more than 7 million people. The word vodun is the Fon-Ewe
word for spirit.
In addition to the Fon or Dahomeyan tradition which has remained in Africa,
there are related traditions that put down roots in the New World during the
days of the transatlantic African slave trade.
In the Americas it has found fusion with Catholicism.
The majority of the Africans who were brought as slaves to Haiti were from the
Guinea Coast of West Africa, and their descendants are the primary
practitioners of Vodou (those Africans brought to the southern US were
primarily from the Kongo kingdom). The survival of the belief system in the
New World is remarkable, although the traditions have changed with time. One
of the largest differences however between African and Haitian Vodou is that
the transplanted Africans of Haiti were obliged to disguise their lwa
(sometimes spelled loa) or spirits as Roman Catholic saints, a process called
syncretism.
In Haitian Vodou, spirits are divided according to their nature in roughly two
categories, whether they are hot or cool. Cool spirits fall under the Rada
category, and hot spirits fall under the Petwo category. Rada spirits are
familial and mostly come from Africa, Petwo spirits are mostly native to Haiti
and are more demanding and require more attention to detail than the Rada, but
both can be dangerous if angry or upset. Neither is "good" or "evil" in
relation to the other.
Everyone is said to have spirits, and each person is considered to have a
special relationship with one particular spirit who is said to "own their
head", however each person may have many lwa, and the one that owns their
head, or the "met tet", may or may not be the most active spirit in a person's
life in Haitian belief.
In serving the spirits, the Vodouisant seeks to achieve harmony with their own
individual nature and the world around them, manifested as personal power and
resourcefulness in dealing with life. Part of this harmony is membership in
and maintaining relationships within the context of family and community. A
Vodou house or society is organized on the metaphor of an extended family, and
initiates are the "children" of their initiators, with the sense of hierarchy
and mutual obligation that implies.
Myths and Misconceptions
Public relations-wise, Vodou has come to be associated in the popular mind
with such phenomena as "Zombies" and "voodoo dolls". While there is ethnobotanical evidence
relating to "zombie" creation, it is a minor phenomenon within rural Haitian
culture and not a part of the Vodou religion as such. Such things fall under
the auspices of the "bokor" or sorcerer rather than the priest of the Lwa Gine.
The practice of sticking pins in "voodoo dolls" has been used as a method of
cursing an individual by some followers of what has come to be called "New
Orleans Voodoo", which is a local variant of hoodoo. This practice is not
unique to New Orleans "voodoo" however and has as much basis in European-based
magical devices such as the "poppet" as the nkisi or bocio of West and Central
Africa. In fact it has more basis in European traditions, as the nkisi or
bocio figures used in Africa are in fact power objects, what in Haiti would be
referred to as pwen, rather than magical surrogates for an intended target of
sorcery whether for boon or for bane. Such "voodoo" dolls are not a feature of
Haitian religion, although dolls intended for tourists may be found in the
Iron Market in Port au Prince. The practice became closely associated with the
Vodou religions in the public mind through the vehicle of horror movies.
There is a practice in Haiti of nailing crude poppets with a discarded shoe on
trees near the cemetery to act as messengers to the otherworld, which is very
different in function from how poppets are portrayed as being used by "voodoo
worshippers" in popular media and imagination, ie. for purposes of sympathetic
magic towards another person. Another use of dolls in authentic Vodou practice
is the incorporation of plastic doll babies in altars and objects used to
represent or honor the spirits, or in pwen, which recalls the aforementioned
use of bocio and nkisi figures in Africa. One Haitian artist particularly
known for his unusual sacred constructions using doll parts is Pierrot Barra
of Port au Prince.
Source and further reading:
Wikipedia.org
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