Most of what the average person knows about Voodoo is based on preconceptions often derived from Hollywood movies and popular fiction. While Voodoo dolls and the walking dead have their place in traditional Voodoo, their connections with black magic derive primarily from events during the nineteenth century. First, there was a significant decline in the spiritual and ritual elements of Voodoo, so Voodoo gained prominence as more of a system of magic rather than a religion. This focus on magic over ritual is often referred to as “Hoodoo.” The practice of Hoodoo, along with misconceptions of the use of votive candles, roots, stones, and oils found in Voodoo apothecaries, have contributed to the connection of Voodoo with magic. Second, many misconceptions were fostered with the publication of Spenser St. John’s 1884 book, Hayti or the Black Republic, which described tales of cannibalism, child sacrifice, and evil cultic rituals. Later, Zora Neale Hurston, the well-known novelist and author of Their Eyes Were Watching God but also an anthropologist, helped to give a detailed picture of “Hoodoo” in the 1920s and 1930s, and later in 1959 French anthropologist Alfred Metraux provided a more balanced analysis of the religion, disavowing many of the negative stereotypes.
In truth, however, Voodoo is a religion that includes both a belief in gods and rituals for worshiping those gods. It posits a general ethic that affirms respect for elders and a sense of justice and service combined with avowing proper giving and grateful receiving. It shares many characteristics with Santeria, which is found in Cuba and Latin America, but varies because of the influence of Spanish Catholicism rather than the more oppressive French Catholicism of the time that imposed the Code Noir, requiring all slaves entering French colonies to convert to Catholicism. Much of the mystery surrounding Voodoo derives from the fact that for so long its practitioners had to practice their beliefs in secret. It wasn’t until 1987, for instance, that Voodoo was recognized as one of the official religions in Haiti. Misunderstandings about Voodoo also stemmed from the lack of in-depth study of the religion. That there is not an organized system of priests (Hungan or Oungan) and priestesses (Mambo or Manbo) and that these religious leaders are primarily autonomous further makes it difficult to conclusively define the belief system. However, many core beliefs of the religion have remained relatively consistent.
Voodoo is a system of religious beliefs and practices that traces its roots to West Africa. Practitioners like Priestess Miriam of the Voodoo Spiritual Temple in New Orleans appeal to spirits for protection, healing, and direction in making life’s choices. (Bob Krist/Corbis)
Voodoo has its origins in the religions of West Africa. During the slave trade, the African captives brought their beliefs with them to the New World, especially the West Indies, but they found strong antagonism toward their faith from their Christian owners. They were typically forbidden to practice their religion. In some instances, slaves were forced to renounce their pagan beliefs and to convert to Christianity. This was particularly true in Haiti, whose French Catholic white population forced all of their slaves to convert to Catholicism. Some scholars argue that in response the slaves in Haiti co-opted the rituals and practices of the Catholic Church to hide the practice of their own religion. The eventual synthesis of the two religions, then, developed into the current manifestation of Voodoo. However, because of the syncretic nature of the West African religions—which basically means that they can easily incorporate other belief systems and practices into their own—it is likely that such a synthesis with Catholicism might have occurred regardless.
Practitioners of Voodoo affirm a high god, referred to as Bondye or “Good God,” which some devotees identify with the Christian God; however, Bondye does not intervene in the daily lives of people, so believers in Voodoo turn to lesser spirits known as lwa or loa who act as go-betweens for the higher deities. For this reason, the most evident example of the conflation of the religions can be found in the correspondence between the lwa and the Catholic saints, as both serve as intercessors. During slavery, Haitian practitioners of Voodoo who were forced to convert to Catholicism likely hid the worship of their various native deities by associating them with the iconography depicting the various saints of the Catholic Church. For example, Legba, the guardian of entrances and the gatekeeper to the spirit world, is associated with St. Peter, who holds the keys to the gates of heaven. Similarly, Damballah, who is often associated with the serpent, is tied to St. Patrick, who is often depicted with a serpent at his feet because, according to legend, he rid Ireland of snakes when they attacked him during a forty-day fast. Some of the parallels between Voodoo deities and the saints, however, are less consistent. The goddess Ezili (also Erzulie), for example, is often identified with the Blessed Virgin Mary. While one manifestation of Ezili (Ezili Danto) is as a solitary mother, another (Ezili Freda) is characterized as a sexy, flirtatious spirit, which is in direct conflict with the purity associated with Mary. This may add credence to the notion that Catholic saints were co-opted to hide worship of the lwa. Complementing this idea, many of the feast days for the various Voodoo lwa also coincide with their Catholic counterparts. Regardless, the two have become so intimately intertwined that many Haitians do not see a contradiction in practicing both Voodoo and Catholicism.
Voodoo played a significant role in helping to establish Haiti as the first black republic in the Western hemisphere. The Haitian revolution is linked to secret meetings begun by a Voodoo practitioner, Boukman, who, according to legend, sacrificed a boar to establish a blood pact among those gathered. The resulting local uprisings that stemmed from his influence eventually developed into a full-fledged slave rebellion, and twelve years later, in 1804, Haiti became a nation of free blacks. During the uprisings in Haiti, though, many people fled the country and landed in Louisiana. While there were similar manifestations of Voodoo in the United States stemming from the slave trade, the Voodoo traditions brought by Haitians during this time melded with those elements already present in Louisiana. As a result, the Voodoo practiced in both Haiti and Louisiana share some of the same music, dances, and rituals. Marie Laveau and her daughter, also named Marie Laveau, free women of color, were among the most famous Voodoo queens of the nineteenth century who enabled Voodoo in New Orleans to survive despite the strong opposition to its practice.
A key premise of Voodoo is that all forces of nature are unified: the living, spirits of the dead, land and water, and so on, all work toward restoring harmony and rhythm. Illness, for example, is considered a result of an imbalance between the material and spiritual worlds. Thus, the religious elements of Voodoo are tied directly to the interaction between the living and the spirit world, and the lwa play a significant role in bridging the two. Human possession by the lwa is a dominant element of the rituals in Voodoo. The lwa are generally divided into two main subgroups, the Rada, which refers to deities that originated in West Africa and which are typically more gentle and benevolent, and the Petro (also Petwo), who are more intense and potentially dangerous, and who originated in the West Indies. These latter are typically tied to specific families and ancestral spirits. Practitioners of Voodoo seek to communicate with the various lwa either to offer gifts and obeisance, to seek protection through healing and provision of needs, or to seek advice.
While one may honor the gods through liturgical dances or offer them gifts through the sacrifice of an animal, most rituals focus on possession in which the priest or priestess performs an elaborate dance to put him- or herself into a trance in preparation for taking on the spirit of a particular deity. These rituals are most often performed in a temple, the center of which is a sacred pillar called the Poteau-Mitan, where the communication with the gods takes place. During the trance, the priest or priestess becomes the chwal or “horse” of the god who “mounts” and “rides” the spiritual leader, who then speaks and acts on behalf of the deity. Through this state of possession, the spirit becomes physically present, dancing, singing, and eating with those present, and it often offers advice or chastisement.
Another tenet of Voodoo is the belief that each individual has two souls, the gros bon ange, which can be understood as a person’s personality, and the petit bon ange, which is often identified with the conscience and spiritual energy of a person. The gros bon ange is free to leave the body while an individual is asleep; however, it can be captured and misused. One manifestation of the zombie is derived from this misuse of a captured soul, for a zombie is not only understood as being a soulless body, but can also be a disembodied soul—one generally used for magic. If the gros bon ange does not return to the body, the person dies. The petit bon ange can also leave the body and can become transformed into an inanimate object or animal, thus imbuing that object or animal with certain powers. Because either of these two souls can be captured and misused, Voodoo practitioners place much emphasis on ceremonies for the dead, enabling both of the two souls of the individual to pass into the spirit world so that they cannot be captured and used for ill. It also prevents the spirit of the individual from seeking retribution from the living if there is an unsettled score.
Santeria
Developed out of a combination of African, Caribbean, and Roman Catholic elements, Santeria is a religion that was born out of the slave experience in Cuba. Also known by names such as La Regla Lucumi, La Religión, or Regla de Ocha, Santeria, or the Way of the Saints, has elements that have been compared to Voodoo, a similarly syncretic religion that arose in the slave communities of Haiti. After entering the United States in urban locations with large Latino communities, Santeria has become popular with other populations as well, and in 1993 a landmark Supreme Court decision upheld the right of its devotees to make animal sacrifices. Santeria now has become commonplace enough in the United States that the federal prison system and the military both allow chaplains of the faith to minister to their many followers within those institutions.
C. Fee
As a result of the influx of Haitian immigrants during the oppression of the Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier regimes in the 1980s and the health crisis stemming from the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the practice of Voodoo has increased in North America, particularly in New York, Miami, and New Orleans, where many of the Haitian immigrants have settled in large numbers. In the French Quarter, for example, one can find Voodoo shops where one can purchase votive candles, roots, and stones as well as icons and crucifixes, showing the continued conflation of Voodoo and Catholicism. Many of these shops attract individuals interested in the New Age movement who find some overlapping elements with Voodoo.
W. Todd Martin
See also Folk Medicine; Hurston, Zora Neale; Shamans; Saints’ Legends; Zombie Legends
Further Reading
Desmangles, Leslie G. 1992. The Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Jacobs, Claude F, and Andrew J. Kaslow. 1991. The Spiritual Church of New Orleans: Origins, Beliefs, and Rituals of an African American Religion. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Long, Carolyn Morrow. 2001. Spiritual Merchants: Religion, Magic, and Commerce. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Ward, Martha. 2004. Voodoo Queen: The Spiritual Lives of Marie Laveau. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
Voodoo—Primary Document
W. W. Newell, “Reports of Voodoo Worship in Hayti and Louisiana” (1889)
The practice of seemingly exotic and secretive religious rituals was both a fascination and cause of alarm for Victorian society. In the United States, fantastic reports spread about the practices of Voodoo in Louisiana and the Caribbean. Purported practices included cannibalism, snake worship, and “debauchery.” This article on the practices of Voodoo appeared in the Journal of American Folklore. While the author takes a skeptical view of many of these alarming reports, he nevertheless demonstrated how little European Americans knew about the religious practices of African Creole culture.
By far the most remarkable story respecting Voodooism in Louisiana is to be found in a French work, “Dictionnaire Universel du XIX Siecle,” by P. Larousse. In this encyclopaedia Vaudou is defined as (1) “an African worship which negroes have imported into America; (2) as the god who is the object of this worship; (3) as the person who practises the worship. A narration is then given respecting the annual ceremony of the “Vaudous,” which ascribes to that sect an important part in the recent history of the State. In I863, it is stated, the society was brought before a court of New Orleans. The words of the account are curious enough; I cite in translation:
The great annual ceremony took, this time, a particular stamp from political events, and a great number of negroes, informed of the day on which it was to take place, resolved, either in the assemblies of an inferior order or in private meetings, to devote themselves to the invocations and superstitious practices prescribed by the chief priestess. But there had been indiscretions, and the police was well informed. On the day appointed, at ten o’clock in the evening, eight police officers unexpectedly entered the inviolable sanctuary, and found themselves in the presence of fifty women in the costume of our mother Eve, of whom two only were white, the latter, as it appears, well known in New Orleans. These were executing at that moment, with frenzy, the dance of the Vaudous, while the great priestess devoted herself to invocations peculiar to the old superstition which counts so many adepts among the peoples of Africa, whence it has spread into the New World. In the middle of the hall, says the police report, “was a vase, of which the contents were at least as varied as those of the caldron of Macbeth, a mixture in part composed of nameless substances.” Around the vase, on three dishes of silver, many snakes carelessly reared their heads. The whole was surrounded by many hundred candles, and in the four quarters of the hall burned on hearths stimulating perfumes.
The report goes on to state that twenty persons were arrested, and appeared before “La Cour Prevotale” on the 30th of July. Two thousand negroes and as many negresses crowded the approaches to the court. The case was brought up again on August 6th, and completed on the 8th…. The chief burden of the accusation depended on the testimony of an officer, who affirmed that the meetings had a seditious and secessionist character. All the proofs, on the contrary, went to show that the high dignitaries of the “Vaudous” had contributed powerfully to the maintenance of tranquillity. The prisoners were discharged with an admonition, which action gives the reporter an opportunity to laud the respect for personal liberty and the rights of conscience observed in the United States.
Since the preceding paragraphs were written my attention has been called to a new story of Vaudoux excesses quite in the line of the tales, of which an account has been given in the first number of this Journal. According to a correspondent of the “Allgemeine Zeitung” of Munich, writing under date of Port-au-Prince, July 12, I888, the recent fall of President Salomon was owing to the political influence of the Vaudoux priests. Two negroes had consulted a priest as to the manner in which they might become rich. The latter advised them to kill and eat their mother. This the pair proceeded to do, strangled the old woman, made a feast, and, with the addition of horrors not necessary to detail, devoured her. The criminals being denounced by one of the invited guests, the President caused the priest and the two principals to be shot, the other cannibals going free. Hence the hostility to Salomon. The correspondent adds: “This incident is unfortunately not isolated in our beautiful country. Such cases occur every month, and you can imagine what a state of things exists.”
Within the last few weeks, the state of diplomatic relations between the United States and Hayti having called attention to the matter, reports similar to the German fiction above mentioned have abounded in American newspapers. For example, a correspondent of the New York “Tribune” writes from Port-au-Prince, December 30, 1888: “Without law, life or property is unsafe in this section. Excesses of every kind are the rule. The horrid cannibalistic rites of Voudooism are revived, and reports reach this city of a meeting of several thousand Haytians Christmas night near Jacmel, and the sacrifice of a young girl and the greedy scramble for some portion of the half-cooked flesh.”
The particulars of these relations contain nothing new or calculated to add force to the reports. The correspondent of the “Mail and Express” of New York, February 1, having interviewed a Protestant clergyman in Port-au-Prince, a person of color, said to be a bishop, communicates in extenso the account of the latter. Hayti contains 4,000 Protestants, 50,000 Catholics, the rest of the population follow Voodooism, with its cannibalistic rites. To describe these rites, the preacher can find nothing more original than to repeat the eternally echoing account of Saint-Mery. Legitime himself is in favor of this heathen religion. The remedy is for the American public to educate a few of the natives. It never seems to occur to the clergyman that a large proportion of the Roman Catholic priesthood of Hayti is educated in France. The correspondent’s moral is that the United States ought to step in, and give Hayti a stable government. A day afterwards, the son of his informant publicly declared these stories fabulous!
Source: Newell, W. W. “Reports of Voodoo Worship in Hayti and Louisiana.” The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 2, No. 4, Jan.–Mar., 1889, pp. 41–47.