Vodou
The term Vodou (Vodun or Vudun in Benin and Togo); also Vodon, Vodoun, Voudou, or other phonetically equivalent spellings. In Haiti; Vudu (an Ewe word, also used in the Dominican Republic) is by some individuals applied to the branches of a West African ancestral religious tradition, or to individual spirits or deities within that tradition. It is important to note that the word Voodoo is the most common and known usage in American and popular culture, and is viewed as a pejorative by the Afro-Diaspora practicing communities. However, the different spellings of this term can be explained as follows:
The word Voodoo is used to describe the Afro-creole tradition of New Orleans, Vodou is used to describe the Haitian Vodou Tradition, while Vudon and Vodun and Vodoun are used to describe the deities honoured in the Brazilian Jeje (Ewe) nation of Candomble as well as West African Vodoun, and in the African diaspora. Voodoo or Hoodoo also refer to African-American folk spirituality of the southeastern USA, with roots in West African traditional or "folk" spirituality. When the word Vodou/Vodoun is capitalized, it denotes the Religion proper. When the word is used in small caps, it denotes folk spirituality, or the actual deities honored in each respective tradition.
Its roots are varied and include the Fon, Mina, Kabye, Ewe, and Yoruba peoples of West Africa, from western Nigeria to eastern Ghana. In Benin, Vodun is the national religion, followed by around 80 percent of the population, or some 4.5 million people.[citation needed] The word Vodún (Vodoun Vudu) is the Fon-Ewe word for spirit. Vodou in Haiti is highly influenced by Central African traditions. The Kongo rites, also known in the north of Haiti as Lemba (originally practiced among the Bakongo) and is as widespread as the West African elements. The Vodoun religion was suppressed during slavery and Reconstruction in the United States, but maintained most of its West African elements.
Until recently, many assumed that the mixture of such traditions with Catholicism occurred in the New World. There is significant evidence that the model for such syncretism can be found in the religious practices of the Kongo Empire.
The Fon tradition in Cuba is known as La Regla Arará.
African origins
Vodun/Vodoun is a name attributed to an West African ancestral religious system of worship and ritual practices, where specific deities are born and honored, along with the veneration of ancient and recent ancestors who earlier served the same tutelary deities. This system of worship is widespread in a multitude of African groups in West Africa and throughout all 43 Africa. They are arguably some of the oldest religious systems predating historical times.
The cultural area of the Fon, Gun, Mina and Ewe peoples share common metaphysical conceptions around a dual cosmological divine principle: Nana Buluku, the God-Creator, and the God-Actor(s) or Vodun(s), daughters and sons of the Creator's twin children Mawu (goddess of the moon) and Lisa (sun god). The God-Creator is the cosmogonical principle, who does not trifle with the mundane, and the Vodun(s) are the God-Actor(s) who actually govern on earthly issues.
The Pantheon of Voduns, though not complete, is quite large and complex. In one version, there are seven direct sons of Mawu, interethnic and related to natural phenomena or historical or mythical individuals, and dozens of ethnic Voduns, defenders of a certain clan or tribe.
West African Vodou, just as all indigenous African Religions, has its primary emphasis on the ancestors, with each family of spirits having its own specialized priest and priestesshood who are often hereditary. In many African clans, deities might include Mami Wata, who are god(desse)s of the waters; Legba, who in some clans is virile and young in contrast to the old man form he takes in Haiti and in many parts of Togo; Gu, ruling iron and smithcraft; Sakpata, who rules diseases; and many other spirits distinct in their own way to West Africa.
European colonialism, followed by totalitarian regimes in West Africa, tried to suppress Vodun as well as other forms of the religion. However, because the Vodou deities are born to each African clan-group, and its clergy is central to maintaining the moral, social, and political order and ancestral foundation of its villagers, it was near to impossible to eradicate the tradition. Today in West Africa, the Vodou religion is estimated to be practised by over 30 million people.
New World traditions
Haitian Vodou
Haitian Vodou practiced by less than 1 percent of African-Americans is the most widely known and written New World Vodou religion. The major portion of this article will cover Haitian Vodou. While maintaining the fact that other forms of West African Vodoun, i.e., Mami Wata, Mama Tchamba is the ancestral religion of the Africans enslaved in the United States is now re-emerging.
In Haitian Voodu or Sèvis Gine or “African Service” in Haiti, a Creolized form of Vodou, Haitian Vodou also has strong elements from the Bakongo of Central Africa and the Igbo and Yoruba of Nigeria, although many different people or nations of Africa have representation in the liturgy of the Sèvis Gine. Among these other nations are the Taíno and Arawak Indians, venerated as the indigenous population (and hence, a form of ancestors) of the island now known as Hispaniola. A large and significant portion of Haitian Vodou most often overlooked by scholars, especially English-speaking ones, until recently is the Kongo component. The entire Northern area of Haiti is especially influenced by Kongo practice. In the North, it is more often called Kongo Rite or Lemba, from the Lemba cult of the Loango area and Mayombe. In the south, Kongo influence is called Petro. Many loas or lwas (also a Kikongo term) are of Kongo origin such as Basimbi, Lemba, etc.[citation needed]Haitian Creole forms of Vodou exist in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, parts of Cuba, the United States, and other places that Haitian immigrants dispersed to over the years. However, it is important to note that the Vodoun religion existed in the United States, having been brought over by West Africans enslaved in America, specifically from the Ewe, Fon, Mina, And Kabaye, and Nago groups. Some of its more enduring forms still exist in the Gullah Islands. There is a re-emergence of these Vodoun traditions in America, which maintains the same linealritual and cosmological elements as is practiced in West Africa.[citation needed] These and other African-diasporic religions such as Lukumi or Regla de Ocha (also known as Santería) in Cuba, Candomblé and Umbanda in Brazil, all religions that evolved among descendants of transplanted Africans in the Americas.
Beliefs
Haitian Vodouisants believe, in accordance with widespread African tradition, that there is one God who is the creator of all, referred to as Bondyè (from the French “Bon Dieu” or “Good God”). Bondyè is distinguished from the God of the whites in a dramatic speech by the houngan Boukman at Bwa Kayiman, but is often considered the same God of other religions, such as Christianity and Islam. Bondyè is distant from his/her/its creation though, and so it is the spirits or the mysteries, saints, or angels that the Vodouisant turns to for help, as well as to the ancestors. The Vodouisant worships God, and serves the spirits, who are treated with honor and respect as elder members of a household might be. There are said to be twenty-one nations or "nanchons" of spirits, also sometimes called lwa-yo. Some of the more important nations of lwa are the Rada (corresponding to the Gbe-speaking ethnic groups in the modern-day republics of Benin, Nigeria, and Togo); the Nago (synonymous with the Yoruba-speaking ethnicities in Nigeria, the Republic of Benin, and Togo); and the numerous West-Central African ethnicities united under the ethnonym Kongo. The spirits also come in families that all share a surname, like Ogou, or Ezili, or Azaka or Ghede. For instance, Ezili is a family, Ezili Dantor and Ezili Freda are two individual spirits in that family. The Ogou family are soldiers, the Ezili govern the feminine spheres of life, the Azaka govern agriculture, the Ghede govern the sphere of death and fertility. In Dominican Vodou, there is also an Agua Dulce or Sweet Waters family, which encompasses all Amerindian spirits. There are literally hundreds of lwa. Well known individual lwa include Danbala Wedo, Papa Legba Atibon, and Agwe Tawoyo.
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 congenial, while Petwo spirits are more combative and restless. Both can be dangerous if angry or upset, and despite claims to the contrary, 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 his/her 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.
Most Vodouisants are not initiated, referred to as being bosal; it is not a requirement to be an initiate in order to serve one's spirits. There are clergy in Haitian Vodou whose responsibility it is to preserve the rituals and songs and maintain the relationship between the spirits and the community as a whole (though some of this is the responsibility of the whole community as well). They are entrusted with leading the service of all of the spirits of their lineage. Priests are referred to as houngans and priestesses as manbos. Below the houngans and manbos are the hounsis, who are initiates who act as assistants during ceremonies and who are dedicated to their own personal mysteries. One does not serve just any lwa but only the ones they have according to one's destiny or nature. Which spirits a person has may be revealed at a ceremony, in a reading, or in a dream. However, all Vodouisants also serve the spirits of their own blood ancestors, and this important aspect of Vodou practice is often glossed over or minimized in importance by commentators who do not understand the significance of it. The ancestor cult is in fact the basis of Vodou religion, and many lwa like Agasou (formerly a king of Dahomey) for example are in fact ancestors who are said to have been raised up to divinity.
Possession in Haitian vodou is described as god seizing a horse (the human being) who is ridden, sometimes to exhaustion or death.
Liturgy and practice
After a day or two of preparation setting up altars, ritually preparing and cooking fowl and other foods, etc., a Haitian Vodou service begins with a series of Catholic prayers and songs in French, then a litany in Kreyòl and African langaj that goes through all the European and African saints and lwa honored by the house, and then a series of verses for all the main spirits of the house. This is called the Priyè Gine or the African Prayer. After more introductory songs, beginning with saluting the spirit of the drums named Hounto, the songs for all the individual spirits are sung, starting with the Legba family through all the Rada spirits, then there is a break and the Petwo part of the service begins, which ends with the songs for the Gede family. As the songs are sung spirits will come to visit those present by taking possession of individuals and speaking and acting through them. Each spirit is saluted and greeted by the initiates present and will give readings, advice and cures to those who approach them for help. Many hours later in the wee hours of the morning, the last song is sung, guests leave, and all the exhausted hounsis and houngans and manbos can go to sleep.
On the individual's household level, a Vodouisant or sèvitè/serviteur may have one or more tables set out for their ancestors and the spirit or spirits that they serve with pictures or statues of the spirits, perfumes, foods, and other things favored by their spirits. The most basic set up is just a white candle, a clear glass of water, and, perhaps, flowers. On a particular spirit’s day, one lights a candle and says an Our Father and Hail Mary, salutes Papa Legba and asks him to open the gate, and then one salutes and speaks to the particular spirit like an elder family member. Ancestors are approached directly, without the mediating of Papa Legba, since they are said to be in the blood.
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 evidence of 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 history in healing teachings as identifying pressure points. How it became known 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, is a mystery. Some speculate that it was one of many ways of self defense by instilling fear in slave owners. This practice is not unique to New Orleans voodoo, however, and has as much basis in European-based magical devices such as the poppet and the nkisi or bocio of West and Central Africa. They 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.
Although Voodoo is often associated with Satanism, Satan is purely an Abrahamic belief and has not been incorporated in Voodoo tradition. When Mississippi Delta folksongs mix references to Voodoo and to Satan, what is being expressed is social pain such as from racism, which is couched in Christian terms and blamed on the devil. Those who practice voodoo do not worship or invoke the blessings of a devil.
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