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The trope of the cosmic prism whose intricate facets allow brilliant refraction was chosen to represent the deeply intertwined spirits of Danbala and Ayida Wedo from which complex light beams emanate, (en)lightening paths and passages for mortals and spirits alike. The snake sheds its skin. The rainbow disrobes. United in step, the two slip into an infinite sky—the ultimate reality from which they offer sustenance to Vodou participants living and continuing to find voice in this worldly existence. Kyrah Malika Daniels reflects:
When humans attempt to make contact with the divine realm, when spirits and ancestors arrive to meet the requests of living souls, we recognize this as the moment when earth meets sky …. In Haiti, Danbala, the serpent spirit who winds his way through forests, represents the most terrestrial aspects of life here on earth, while his wife, Ayida Wedo, the rainbow who stretches across skies, embodies the most intangible realm of spirit domains; naturally their union occurs at the crossroads—crossroads that reference the heavy histories of interactions between peoples of the Black Atlantic who stand together at crossed paths, exchanging earthy songs of praise for the gifts of healing and spiritual knowledge.36
Danbala and Ayida, the sinewy serpent and evanescent rainbow attached to sky and earth, embody our dual nature as body and spirit. Dan was the name of a seventeenth-century chief in ancient Dahomey, and in Haiti, “Allah” was added.37 Danbala and Ayida are father and mother in their infinite wisdom.
The egg, representing Danbala, also subsumes its feminine side, Ayida, and represents the outerworld itself, the consummate vessel, seed of life and quintessential shape. It is both absolute circle and infallible cycle. Thus, the sacred egg is both Legba, the vital beginning, and Gede, the hindmost ending. The Gede trace their lineage to the Gedevi (children of Gede), an ancient ethnic group of Dahomey known as “owners of the earth,” who became grave workers, morticians so-to-speak; in Haiti, the Gede family would come to serve as a bridge between this life and the outerlife, connecting the dead and the deities of Africa and the Americas.38 Gede spirits open immense possibilities for understanding passages—life and death in particular—and are closely linked to the ancestors. Danbala, on the other hand, as the ultimate symbol of life in his delicate shell—and with a délicat yet profound cerebral understanding—is directly connected to all deities and to God itself. At the source in old Dahomey, Ayido Hwedo is male; in Haiti, Ayida Wedo is female. This closes the circle, two sides of a coin, a necessity for gendered spirit opposites to unite in their transnational legacy.
Danbala, Oxala, Obatala, Oshumare, Ayida—the deities of the White Cloth—are emblematized by white, the white that represents all colors combined. Ayida, the rainbow, represents balance and equilibrium, and Ayida and Danbala become the yin and the yang. The trope of the prism is a representation of the Lwa Danbala/Ayida Wedo for its properties as a refractor of light. Once a beam of light (often white, Danbala’s color) enters into a prism, it produces a rainbow effect (like Ayida Wedo, the rainbow serpent) on any opaque surface. Grounding these spirits’ very metaphysical attributes in such a material representation, that of a prism, provides greater insight into their complexities and their deep integration. In Haiti, Danbala is the wise snake, so ancient that he does not speak, preceding language. Indeed, the snake (la couleuvre) predates humans on this earth and, as an ancient, shares with us the wisdom of the elders. The accoutrements —white hair, beard, and clothing—echoes the linceuil, shroud of the dead, for those who have departed but remain urgently present in our existence and who continue to be responsive to our needs.
Nan je klè, in semiconsciousness, one of the authors saw a huge snake winding up a hill and, upon close observation, saw that each scale was the face of a (Black) person, living or dead or in transit.39 That vision has never left him, forcing a paradigm shift that provided a glimpse of awareness into humans in their states of being and becoming, their eternal presence and their validity in a grandiose scheme, in a cosmic scream acknowledged by God itself.
The wizened old “man” Danbala (as if he were a person) is represented on altars by white cloth, refined white flour, sweet almond syrup, and eggs. Danbala and his consort Ayida represent two faces of a coin: one slithers on the ground deeply rooting us, the other an ethereal presence that urges us to reach out to the celestial orb. Together, they serve as a compendium of collective konesans, the esoteric knowledge and wisdom acquired by the human race; their images recall what has been learned and what is yet to be learned, what is known and intuitively known, as well as that yet to be discovered or remembered. Their cosmic egg, alive with all its possibilities in its “essential” nature, encompasses in its fragile shell the entire universe and is capable of sustaining all life in its most perfect elliptical envelope. The egg is the beginning of all transient earthly life; it needs Danbala, the spermatozoa, to join with Ayida’s ovum so that our genetic code mirrors that of the cosmos.
The small child knows; we spend the rest of our lives aiming to recapture what we already knew as infants: that intuitive knowledge transmitted via the cosmic nonbrit, the umbilical cord that unites life to life, child to the mother lode, child to cosmos.
In Vodou cosmology, nature does not work with dichotomies or polarities, but with dyads and with an abiding balance and overarching equilibrium. Notions of balance and equilibrium of forces, and an understanding of male and female that are not in stark opposition, create complementarity, resulting in no permanent occlusions between genders but instead a gentle progression. At their foundation, Vodou and many other African religious systems are remarkably free of the impulse to discriminate against women and other-gendered people, a behavior still prevalent in too many societies. The objective for species survival in Vodou emphasizes complementarity rather than sharp competition, a perspective that puts it in accord with observations of the animal kingdom from psychology and the medical sciences. In that regard, Vodou, as with other systems that are close to nature, does not exist in conflict with science.40
The Lwa, as part of nature, operate in similar ways. In fact, Danbala and Ayida as one, as gendered hormones, are housed in each of our own bodies. These spirits become archetypes of energetic forces that embody gendered ideals, purposeful direction, and moral qualities. In the grand scheme of things, these discrete elements of body and soul, equally valid and sacred, form an inescapable reverence for the dynamism of sentient life.
The small child knows; we spend the rest of our lives aiming to recapture what we already knew as infants: that intuitive knowledge transmitted via the cosmic nonbrit, the umbilical cord that unites life to life, child to the mother lode, child to cosmos.
It is after all about eternal life that knows no end and no beginning.
The Coherent Universe
Under the Supreme Entity, Bondye, an impersonal and immaterial force, resides a pantheon of deities—the Vodou Lwa—anchored in various scientific verities, physical and natural phenomena, and moral qualities such as wisdom, justice, and love in its infinite varieties.41 The human being hopes to develop this panoply of qualities within the self and fuses with these physical and material characteristics, since humans are a part of nature, not apart from nature. As animals, we are tethered in our daily existence by our need for subsistence as animals. The physical body as nature is not as highly prized in much Western thought, not as privileged as the immortal soul; this is quite unlike the trifecta of mind, body, and spirit in African and African Diasporic religions.42 As Nigerian scholar Oyèrónké Oyêwùmí has explained, “Different approaches to comprehending reality, then, suggest epistemological differences between societies.”43 In Vodou as in other African-based systems, humans with material bodies, ancestors who are disembodied spirits, and Lwa who are pure energy are equally connected to God, eternal in a coherent whole.
The concept of “nature religions,” a term frequently used incorrectly and disparagingly, and often implying animism, acquires a force not readily understood by many in the West, scholars and common folks alike.44 Instead, we assert that the term ought to signify indigenous religions’ understanding of the world as a matrix of cosmic interconnectedness, where the sky’s brightest planet, the earth’s swiftest forest animal, and the ocean’s deepest fish are all divinely linked and interdependent.45 We must also remind ourselves that Vodou is predicated upon privileged knowledge in the form of sequential initiations, not unlike other “nature religions” around the world. This deep psychic instruction is based on the premise that, as humans, we find ourselves at various levels of our own spiritual development and that not all knowledge can be granted until one has been adequately prepared. Further understanding may even follow our physical death. The older we get, the longer we live, the more we forget our origins, until the moment of death at which time we suddenly remember.46
When ultimately successful in devotional pursuits, the human being—male, female, or other—is “kissed” by the spirits. As such, he or she becomes a nèg or nègès konsekan, a person of substance whose “presence” is felt, beyond class structures, beyond skin color or wealth that the person might have amassed. This individual, not necessarily formally educated and having perhaps few material resources, emerges still as the leader of his or her community. Larger than life, oftentimes this male or female priest, as an imposing figure, brings forth admiration, respect, and desire for emulation as a moral exemplar who has achieved a level of spiritual development that sustains community.47 Such a process of spiritual achievement provides a rather seamless progression between humans and the Lwa—from the person to the persona, into divine principle and into the continuum in which life, death, and rebirth are mere approximations of an awesome reality. This spiritual realm exists far from commonplace dualities and false dichotomies, and equally far from one’s physicality, bringing us closer to the metaphysical and to God. We do not merely live with nature, but in nature; as spirits with material bodies, we are the environment.
However, the materiality of the body and the environment still inhibit certain options because of the mind-body connection. Upon death, when that physicality ceases to exist, the spirit is freer to expand into greater consciousness. This is an amplification of the role often assigned to the human who is not a mere supplicant, but a being possessed of supernatural powers, “magic,” if one must, in which the physical body can house immaterial spirits easily, simply, and at will, within and outside of ritual spaces. Maya Deren addressed the transformation in possession from the person into persona into divine principle.48 The divine principle, the persona of the deity, and the person who undergoes a trance possession all merge, fusing into an indissoluble alloy, while still retaining individual corporeal integrity. In this worldly existence, the person becomes a deity at that precise moment for a short while, and the persona of the Lwa becomes readily apparent and accessible for the community.
In trance possession—a form of both epiphany and hierophany—the person becomes a deity itself and, at that moment, is transmogrified into a Lwa. The metamorphosis is recognized by the community and experienced by all present in real space and time, as the collective finds itself and suddenly faces a divinity. One might assume that the person capable of such natural feats should be able to maintain this connection with the divine throughout his or her existence in the physical plane of earthly life. But this is harder than one may think. We are mired in the limitations of our flesh despite the brief moments in which we are allowed to glimpse and gaze upon suprareality. And these intimate connections unite us all in unbroken sequences, in that human chain in which each maillon, each link, matters. One’s own individual spirit is as wide as the ocean and as deep as Kilimanjaro is high.
The small child knows; we spend the rest of our lives recapturing what we already knew as infants: that intuitive knowledge, transmitted via the cosmic nonbrit, the umbilical cord that unites life to life, child to the mother lode, child to cosmos.
More rarely, upon death it would seem possible for a particular nèg konsekan to evolve into a Lwa, transcending the normal progression to ancestorship altogether into divine status. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Haiti’s first emperor and paterfamilias to the nation, is an illustration of this principle. For many he is considered a Lwa, as he was deified after his death. Similarly, Shango (Sango), a king of Oyo in the Yorùbá tradition, was transformed into an Orisa. Interestingly, both dealt with major dislocation and disruption in their life sequence. Dessalines was assassinated; Shango committed suicide. Could it be that this fissure in the energetic force field of these nèg kònsekan, this splitting rupture, ultimately led to their vaunted status, enhancing further the oneness between creator and the created? Or could it be that, in the larger scheme, the cosmic cracks of their lives and resulting dislocation were actually peripheral in their deification? Perhaps the destinies of Dessalines and Shango had already been chosen (even by themselves), such that it was fated that their followers would establish these mytho-historical figures’ divine potential, if not their outright divinity.49
Unicity of Origin
Based on the oneness of our origin, the relationships and the connections that exist between all things and all beings are intimate and interdependent. Essence remains unchanged. Forms and function precede belief. One need not “believe” in Vodou as one practices Vodou, but one “serves the spirits,” reveres the Lwa, honors the ancestors, and that practice is predicated upon what works, upon the memories and tools available. “Does it work for you?” one asks. If not, the Lwa tell us to move on to Protestantism or some other such system that might well be our religious road in this particular lifetime.50
The fluidity experienced in Vodou is seen in the Lwa themselves as they dictate how to be served or how to serve other deities.51 This sometimes results in peoples and societies who hold two faiths simultaneously and coterminously with little apparent discomfort.52 In their estimation, Vodouists see themselves as excellent Catholics, just as many Japanese celebrate both Shinto and Buddhist systems in their faith and practice. The African spiritual domain in general might be considered henotheistic, as is Vodou—believing that many gods ultimately serve as manifestations of one supreme God.53 However, this pattern of multiple spirit recognition also derives from that other model of oneness—a unified pantheon of deities ultimately represents the immensity and impressiveness of God the Creator, the Destroyer, and the Renewer.54
In this unified field, nature appears at once familiar and familial. Communal ties binding human to human, human to environment, are well above any form of individualism. The species does not hold dominion over nature but lives within its bounds. And the intricate ties of daily existence, as they exist between Lwa, ancestors, oneself, and extended families, can be understood only as linkages existing vertically and laterally—at the crossroads and in the crucible.
However, to make Vodou “work,” the person who shares his/her DNA with all other living creatures, large and small, must develop an innate sense of personal responsibility toward all, and that person’s sense of morality is based on the dictates of circumstance.55 In questions of morality, what is good for the goose ain’t necessarily good for the gander, though both goose and gander share the same vital essence.56 Consequently, the nèg konsekan, the person of substance alluded to earlier—along with the whole community—adapts in order to survive physically and culturally, in friendly environments as in hostile ones, as one suffers trials of endurance and strength, fragmentation and reconstitution. It is in this sense of a lateral and vertical connection that one finds oneself at the crossroads of existence, standing in the name of ancestry and progeny yet-to-come, both ostensibly immaterial, “dead” to this world at any given moment, yet notably present. Nou la, we are here, and our presence reverberates in every realm, struck like a cosmic chord among ancestors, spirits, and those unborn.
In Haiti alone, Danbala is syncretized with the Roman Catholic Saint Patrick (this is the case neither in Brazil nor in Cuba).57 Indeed, nothing in the life of this English saint doing his “best” work in Ireland leads one to think that he would come to represent the corporeal Danbala, save his white and green vestments. And perhaps the snakes at his feet. The serpent—as ancient as a creature can be, at once terrestrial and maritime—predates language, yet shares his common wisdom with his human sisters and brothers. Ayida, his “wife,” does the same, and embodies many of the same principles. The saints, about ten thousand of them, are usually white and largely male. They are mortals and perforce Catholics. The Lwa are spirits and immortal, and often represent natural forces. Though they find themselves on the same Vodou altars, there exists somewhat of a disconnect, a thud of misrecognition, between the saints and the Lwa in attributes and attribution. There exists no deeply embedded connective tissue between Saint Patrick and the two deities, Danbala and Ayida Wedo, who shed their skins in rejuvenation as they renew their covenant. However, the beauty of a Diasporic tradition, disrupted and blended anew, is its work to integrate seemingly unintegrated parts. Here in Vodou, the purposeful engagement of two religious systems, of two sets of pantheons, functions to reorient self and community by recalling sources and repairing fragmentation in the recreation of oneness, by offering a profound spiritual grounding, and by redefining a relationship with recognizable newness. The river that does not know its source(s) soon dries up, goes the saying.
The small child knows; we spend the rest of our lives aiming to recapture what we already knew as infants: that intuitive knowledge transmitted via the cosmic nonbrit, the umbilical cord that unites life to life, child to the mother lode, child to cosmos.
A Paradigmatic Swing
Ultimately, Vodou evolved in Haiti from circumstances that derived from modern conditions. In its present configuration, it is rather “new” in that it emanates from the struggle between antagonistic forces surrounding our Caribbean cradle, the twin scourges of colonialism and racism, resulting in cultural collision, amalgamation, and now even cohesion. It evolves in its current manifestations in response to changing conditions in Haiti and beyond. But Vodou is also as old as humanity in its cosmological underpinnings. “Traditional religion” is simply an expression, since Haitian Vodou is a fact of modernity, a religious exchange between civilizations created by a transnational world.
The changes underway in the analysis of African and transatlantic religions could be viewed as a paradigmatic shift. However, we say paradigmatic swing to connote not only a major and sudden change but also the possibility that the pendulum might swing back and then swing again. The ongoing fight for territory, space, identity, and autonomy endures, the battle for intellectual canons and disciplinary power to move away from long-established domination and closer to platforms of inclusion continues. Our praise song in dual voices for Danbala and Ayida was purposefully crafted as a reflexive piece, willfully and deliberately exploratory, from a place of intuitive konesans, knowledge gained from years of studying this at once ancient and new religion, and with much respect and regard. The machinery of the cosmos is complicated. We paid attention. We tried to recapture some of what we might have known as infants. We listened to elders intently, and stayed receptive to messages passed on by ancestors and other forms of energetic and spirit vibrations.
We acknowledge both the manifested and the unmanifested, the visible and the invisible, as portals between realms. We attempt to stay attuned to awesomeness and nothingness. We pause and reflect on matters of life and death that activate such conflicting emotions and yet remain part of the same continuum. We mull over the immense cosmos that spirits and matter inhabit and our presence within this world. We revere those gone before us, the living, and the not-yet-born. We contemplate. Each individual’s life, each organism, inert matter even, generates a mark, a genome so-to-speak, an imprint in the larger dimensions of a cosmic map. Vodou metaphysics balances the quotidian aspects of our very material lives with the immaterial components of a dreamtime, bringing about equilibrium to those signs and markings we leave as remnants within the finite sphere.
Parallel beings. Parallel universes. Myriad encounters. Coincidence, fate, accident. Vibration of matter. Morality born of matter. Spirit as energetic force. Humans and universe as bouncing, dancing molecules.
A Haitian proverb says: “Everything is poison, nothing is poison.” None of it makes sense. All of it makes sense. None of it matters. It all matters as we tell our own story, finally emerging as the narrators of our destinies.
The small child knows; we spend the rest of our lives recapturing what we already knew as infants, that intuitive knowledge, transmitted via the cosmic nonbrit, the umbilical cord that unites life to life, child to the mother lode, child to cosmos.
We reproduce here this definition of voodoo that for centuries has fed the Euro-American imaginary and Haitian elites in acts of apish mimicry. We offer no commentary except to raise this question: Will we ever believe in the powers of the dictionary again?
voo-doo, n. a polytheistic religion practiced chiefly by West Indians, deriving principally from African cult worship and containing elements borrowed from the Catholic religion … a fetish or other object of voodoo worship … a group of magical and ecstatic rites associated with voodoo … black magic; sorcery … characterized by deceptively simple, almost magical, solutions or ideas: voodoo politics … to affect by voodoo sorcery.58
Adding to the work of scholars who took stands to redress these types of distortions and omissions, a number of newer voices have stepped out from behind the academic curtain to craft nuanced and powerful narratives and reinterpretations that elucidate aspects of Vodou that until now remained the purview of those, often initiates, with profound konesans. Here, we offer one such “alter(ed)native”59 interpretation of Vodou, provided by Haitian theorist-scholar and artist-performer Gina Athena Ulysse: “Besides grilling coffee beans, time and time again, I listen to many of these songs to take me back to Haiti and the V-o-d-o-u that we do…. Those four ohs [Voodoo] have multiple significations. Dolls and zombies, bad Hollywood movies and other sordid fantasies. The V-o-d-o-u that I know and struggle to love is not this stereotype. It is about families, spirits, healing, protection, heritage. Most importantly it is about self-making.”60
We invite readers to engage these two definitions as written worlds apart and to reflect on their inharmonious coexistence. Much in the same way that African indigenous religions and Catholicism must have collided and expanded to incorporate each other historically, we urge readers to contemplate the ontological gaps present before us.
As we reflect upon the insights of Danbala and Ayida Wedo into innerworlds and outerworlds, we recognize the potency of Vodou metaphysics as riddles to unravel the universe’s many mysteries. Koulèv, the snake, Danbala winds the course of his path, leaves tracks in the dirt, and all but disappears when he sheds his skin. Lakansyèl, the rainbow, Ayida Wedo stretches across the sky, arches her back, and disrobes her cloak of invisibility. Together, they emerge as the ontological discourse of a marginalized people, who—with counsel from ancestors and spirits in a rainbow of races—continue to find their voice in a world in transition. It will be eons until Danbala and Ayida become youthful again, as they have been old together for what seems like an eternity. The past is never past, and the present is our future.
The small child knows; we spend the rest of our lives recapturing what we already knew as infants, that intuitive knowledge, transmitted via the cosmic nonbrit, the umbilical cord that unites life to life, child to the mother lode, child to cosmos.
Notes
The authors express heartfelt appreciation to Kyrah Malika Daniels, doctoral candidate in Africana Studies and Religion at Harvard University, for her insightful comments as well as the depth of knowledge that she generously shared with us. In our Vodou world, we would say: ti moun sa a, li konnen, roughly translated “this child knows,” not unlike the sentiments expresed in this article’s recurrent motif “The small child knows….”
1. In this article we use a number of aphorisms or proverbs, as they tend to capture well key aspects of Haitian culture and spirituality.
2. The many scholars who have paved the way for the study of Black Disapora religions are cited throughout this article; see particularly note 14, which mentions scholars who are also initiates. With great respect to historian of religion Charles H. Long, who urges scholars of Africana religions to move away from “theology” and its loaded Christian history, we employ the term theological to speak broadly to audiences with a particular understanding of these frames of analysis.
3. Claudine Michel posits that the Vodou ethos is in essence the same as the Haitian ethos itself and furthers an argument about degrees of religiosity which advances that most, if not all, Haitians are influenced by Vodou notions—even as some reject them. See her work, “Le Vodou Haïtien est-il un Humanisme?” Journal of Haitian Studies 12, no. 1 (2006): 116–36.
4. Across times, meaning at “all” times, since spirit world runs on its own time. In Haitian cosmology, the past, present, and future are never-ending life cycles. African notions of time that are nonlinear and cyclical can be remarkably dissimilar from Western views. See Claudia Zaslavsky’s foundational text, Africa Counts: Number and Pattern in African Cultures, 3rd ed. (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1999); and Wyatt MacGaffey’s Religion and Society in Central Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). This is also reflected in the African American colloquial expression “CP Time” (colored people time), which indicates that among certain populations, time is not a commodity but is rather flexible.
5. Charles H. Long’s writings largely serve as hermeneutical attempts to make sense of the phenomenon of religion in both ancient cultures and modern societies. See Alpha: The Myths of Creation (Toronto, Ont.: Collier Books, 1963) and Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986) as well as many other works.
6. Oyèrónké Oyêwùmí has provided an excellent distinction between European worldview and African worldsense. She explains, “The term ‘worldview,’ which is used in the West to sum up the cultural logic of a society, captures the West’s privileging of the visual. It is Eurocentric to use it to describe cultures that may privilege other senses… [T]herefore, ‘worldview’ will only be applied to describe the Western cultural sense.” See her article, “Visualizing the Body: Western Theories and African Subjects,” in African Gender Studies: A Reader, ed. Oyèrónké Oyêwùmí (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 4.
7. Earlier notions of African retention and continuity can be found in Melville J. Herskovits, Myth of the Negro Past (1941; repr., Boston: Beacon, 1990). In what might be considered a rejoinder, Sydney W. Mintz and Richard Price’s The Birth of African American Culture, 2d. ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992) presented an anthropological perspective that stepped away from such discussions of straightforward continuities from Africa to the Americas. See also Maureen Warner-Lewis, Guinea’s Other Suns (Dover, Mass.: Majority Press, 1991).
8. Examples of new forms of scholarship are many. See, for instance, the work of Diane M. Diakité, Three Eyes for the Journey: African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious Experience (New York: Oxford University Press 2005); Yvonne Daniel, Dancing Wisdom: Embodied Knowledge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba, and Bahian Candomblé (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005); Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, ed., Fragments of Bone: Neo- African Religions in a New World (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005); Vincent Brown, Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008); Tracey Hucks, Yoruba Traditions and African American Reilgious Nationalism (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2012).
9. Kate Ramsey’s work considers Vodou’s long history of villainization in the West and in Haiti itself, noting that for many people, “Vodou is not just unmodern (and thus, in the logic of modernist development, destined to decline), but actively anti-modern. ” Kate Ramsey, The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 22.
10. Furthermore, in Vodou and by extension Santería and Candomblé, up to now what has prevailed is the view “from the street.” The Abrahamic religions very quickly acquired a “literate” mien, as state religions, framed by elites. Also these religions are static vis-à-vis Vodou, which transforms regularly, calling to mind the difference between the mighty oak versus the weed that bends.
11. For example, Shinto and Hinduism demonstrate similarities with Vodou and what may have preceded it in Africa, not so much for rituals that are cultural but for their cosmological insights.
12. See the work of Mircea Eliade, who defines hierophany as a manifestation of the sacred, and an irruption as the sudden entry of the sacred. See especially the foreword to Patterns in Comparative Religion (New York: New American Library, 1958).
13. For a further discussion of balans and konesans, see Barbara Tomlinson and George Lipsitz, “American Studies as Accompaniment,” American Quarterly 65, no. 1 (2013): 14.
14. Trailblazers who revealed intimate knowledge about Vodou and details of their initiations are American anthropologists Zora Neal Huston, Katherine Dunhan, and Karen McCarthy Brown; Russian filmmaker Maya Deren; and French scholars Odette Menensson-Rigaud and Claude Planson, the last of which wrote primarily about his wife Mathilda Beauvoir’s ministrations in Paris. Haitians who provided fresh perspectives include Milo Rigaud, Dr. Jean Holly, and Houngan / Priest Ati Max G. Beauvoir, the elected head of the Vodou religion in Haiti installed in 2008. In 1991 Karen McCarthy Brown and Alourdes Champagne published Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestest in Brooklyn, the first biography of a Haitian manbo. Both women took great risks revealing insiders’ perspectives, merging dissonant voices of Western and Third World feminisms, and repositioning the widely misunderstood religion as a social system lived by Alourdes and those closest to her. It took two more decades before the release of another equally powerful account by a Haitian woman. See Mimerose P. Beaubrun’s magisterial book, Nan dòmi, le récit d’une initation vodou (La Roque d’Anthéron, France: Vents d’Ailleurs, 2010), published in English as Nan Domi: An Initiate’s Journey into Haitian Voudou (New York: City Lights, 2013).
15. Western religious pilgrimages are a good example of the “exalted,” and religious wars stand for the “abominable.” Indigenous and Diasporic African religions, on the other hand, tend not to begin wars for religious purposes because it is an accepted fact that each community evolves its own religion. Also, in these systems exaltation can be found through common daily experiences, including what we call in Haiti pran Lwa, which some in the West label as trance possession.
16. It is imperative that we don’t fall into a functionalist description of religion as being developed solely for the purposes of resistance; it is true that these traditions “became” models of resistance, but that is not the reason that African and neo-African religions evolved in the Americas. They were religions before contact, and remained, as in the case of Vodou, cosmologically intact afterward despite being “remixed.”
17. As Haitian anthropologist, activist, and artist Gina Athena Ulysse rightly insists, “Haiti needs new narratives” (http://www.ginaathenaulysse.com.sci-hub.org). Also see “Why Haiti Needs New Narratives,” in Techtonic Shifts: Haiti since the Earthquake, ed. Mark Schuller and Pablo Morales (Sterling, Va.: Kumarian Press, 2012).
18. Originally, lakou referred to a compound grouping rural families, each with its perystil, or sacred temple. Nowadays, the lakou refers also to urban sites and other relational spaces even beyond Haiti. See Charlene Désir, “Diasporic Lakou: A Haitian Academic Explores Her Path to Haiti Pre-and Post-Earthquake,” Harvard Educational Review 81, no. 2 (Summer 2011): 278–95.
19. Haiti was ignored and disparaged by all-too-real dominant international forces. See Susan Buck-Morris, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009); Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon, 1995); and Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, Haiti: The Breached Citadel, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2004).
20. For an analysis of the category of “world religions,” see Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
21. This proselytizing continues to date with the heavy presence in Haiti of evangelicals and other Christians seeking to convert Haitians.
22. The Lwa are the spirits of the Vodou pantheon. Nowadays it is believed that as much as 30 percent of the population in Haiti may have converted to evangelical Protestantism. Some claim that Protestantism may have achieved what Catholicism could not do for centuries—that is, replace Haiti’s Afro-Kreyol religious foundations. Others remain skeptical and maintain that fundamental values and ethos remain present even when converts demonize Vodou.
23. Sylvia Ardyn Boone further elaborates on the qualities of this keen perception, noting, “Initiates have had their eyes opened, so they have ‘eyes to see.’ These ‘eyes’ are metaphysical: an informed intellect, a widened vision, a deepened discernment.” See Boone’s Radiance from the Waters: Ideals of Feminine Beauty in Mende Art (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1986), xi. In Haiti, priz de zye is the last stage of initiation even though some may have received this gift outside initiation.
24. Léopold Sédar Senghor from his 1939 essay, “Ce que l’homme noir apporte,” cited in Marc Tardieu, Les Africains en France: De 1914 à nos jours (Monaco: Editions du Rocher, 2006), 58.
25. Authors’ translation.
26. Conversation with LeGrace Benson, Montreal, Canada, June 2011. In the practicality of that phrase we also find the overarching question, does Vodou work for you?
27. Beng peoples of Côte d’Ivoire explain that infants carry an innate knowledge emanating from past spiritual lives. See Alma Gottlieb, The Afterlife Is Where We Come From: The Culture of Infancy in West Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
28. Eliade, foreword to Patterns in Comparative Religion, xviii.
29. Those principles that emerge from practice are often to be deciphered from Vodou cryptic songs, sayings, and proverbs, and from popular wisdom.
30. All peoples developed their own religious systems unique to their group. The break and the rupture for West and Central Africans occurred because of slavery and colonialism when African individuals were forced to convert to Christianity. Individualism rather than collective personhood was, in essence, introduced by the West.
31. The word zo signifies heat in the Fon language of West Africa. Heat activated is what we call chofe in Vodou. It is energy at work: fòs kap travaj pou moun, a force that works for humans.
32. See Jacob K. Olupona, ed., African Spirituality: Forms, Meanings, and Expressions (New York: Crossroads, 2000); Peter J. Paris, The Spirituality of African Peoples: The Search for a Common Discourse (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995); John S. Mbiti, African Religion and Philosophy (Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1969); John Mbiti, Introduction to African Religions (Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, 1992); B. O. Bodunrin, ed., Philosophy in Africa: Trends and Perspectives (Ile-Ife, Nigeria: University of Ife Press, 1985); D. A. Masolo, African Philosophy in Search of Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994); and Tsenay Serequeberhan, ed., African Philosophy: The Essential Readings (New York: Paragon House, 1991).
33. For humanistic views at the core of Haitian Vodou, see Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (Kingston, N.Y.: McPherson and Company, 1953); Claudine Michel, Aspects Moraux et éducatifs du Vodou Haïtien (Port-au-Prince: Le Natal, 1995); and Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn, 3rd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).
34. In the Western corpus, God is good, therefore creating the necessity to anthropomorphize the notion of evil as Satan.
35. See Reginald Crosley, The Vodou Quantum Leap: Alternate Realities, Power and Mysticism (St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn, 2000).
36. Kyrah Malika Daniels, unpublished paper. The title, “When Earth Meets Sky,” was chosen as the theme for the KOSANBA tenth international conference, presented under the auspices of Danbala Wedo and Ayida Wedo, Harvard University, October 18–20, 2013. See http://VodouKosanba.org.sci-hub.org.
37. See J. Cameron Monroe, “In the Belly of Dan: Space, History, and Power in Precolonial Dahomey,” Current Anthropology 52, no. 6 (2011): 769–98. In this article we use a more recent spelling of Danbala, but we note here that traditionally Damballah was the more common usage. This spelling is possibly linked to “Allah,” the Muslim term for God. Indeed, Makandal, Boukman, and Cécile Fatiman, initiators of the Haitian Revolution, were all said to be Muslims. For more insight on the Islamic influence on Vodou, see LeGrace Benson, “How Houngan Use the Lights from Distant Stars,” Journal of Haitian Studies, 7, no. 1 (2001): 106–35. See also Aisha Khan, “Islam, Vodou, and the Making of the Afro-Atlantic,” New West Indian Guide 86, nos. 1–2 (2012): 29–54.
38. See Edna G. Bay, Wives of the Leopard: Gender, Politics and Culture in the Kingdom of Dahomey (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998), 45, 74.
39. To understand the concept of nan dòmi —semiconsciousness, half-sleep, dream state, otherworldliness—all conditions that are between state and between space, see the formidable account of an initiation in Beaubrun, Nan dòmi.
40. As James Sweet has explained: “Christian scholars assume that the ultimate goal of religion is communion with and worship of the one inscrutable God … Most Africans … viewed their religions as a way of explaining, predicting, and controlling events in the world around them…. As such, [African] religion provided man of the explanations for what Westerners call ‘science.’” Sweet, Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441–1770 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 108.
41. For a discussion of the Supreme Entity, see the important work of Laënnec Hurbon, Dieu dans le Vaudou Haitien (Port-au-Prince: Editions Henri Deschamps, 1987).
42. In the Western imaginary, body and soul are la belle ou la bête, beauty or the beast, with the body, the ragged, material part of self, and the transcending soul representing beauty/purity. Those classical artists who praised bodies, particularly nude bodies, oftentimes encountered difficulties with ecclesiastical authorities. In sum, body and soul remain largely divided in the West. In African religious systems, as with many other indigenous religions of Asia and the Americas, there exists little, if any, such birfurcation. All merge. We are a whole—body, mind, spirit/soul.
43. See Oyêwùmí, “Visualizing the Body,” 4. For an understanding of the intricate inner workings of the body/mind/soul in Vodou, see Roberto Strongman, “Trans-corporeality in Haitian Vodou,” Journal of Haitian Studies 14, no. 2 (2008): 4–29.
44. The term nature religion was first coined by Catherine Albanese in her book Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). The term is now used to designate various indigenous religions where the natural world is an embodiment of divinity and the sacred. Indigenous European-based faith traditions such as Druidism, Wicca, and other Goddess movements are also considered nature religions.
45. Recent scientific research from South Africa and Sweden has remarkably demonstrated that dung beetles, creatures with supposedly little brainpower, rely upon gradients of light emitted from the Milky Way galaxy to orient themselves in rolling their dung piles to their final destinations. “Dung Beetles Use Stars to Orient Themselves,” University World News, February 2, 2013,http://www.universityworldnews.com.sci-hub.org/article.php?story=20130131091329529.
46. For Deren, these kinds of transformations and metamorphoses occur for each human being even after death. She proposes that (wo)man “has a material body, animated by an esprit or gros-bon-ange —the soul, spirit, psyche or self—which, being non-material, does not share the death of the body. This soul may achieve (by stages…) the status of loa, a divinity, and become the archetypal representative of some natural or moral principle,” Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (Kingston, N.Y.: McPherson and Company, 1953), 13–14.
47. See Claudine Michel, “Women’s Moral and Spiritual Leadership in Haitian Vodou: The Voice of Mama Lola and Karen McCarthy Brown,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 17, no. 2 (Fall 2001): 61–87; Karen McCarthy Brown, “Alourdes: A Case Study of Moral Leadership in Haitian Vodou,” in Saints and Virtues, ed. John Harley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
48. See Maya Deren’s “The White Darkness,” in Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (Kingston, N.Y.: McPherson and Company, 1953), 247–62.
49. Yorùbá communities across the Atlantic explain that people choose their own destiny, their Ori, before entering this world. It is only in passing by the Tree of Forgetfulness along the way to being born that one “forgets” this chosen path. As such, it is the family’s responsibility to conduct naming ceremonies for initial insight and clarity about newborn babies. Additionally, it is one’s own duty to live life purposefully and seek out divination in order to discover or “remember” this forgotten destiny. Conversation with Funlayo Wood, Santa Barbara, May 2012.
50. One of the authors encountered an Afro-Brazilian man who was about to be initiated into Candomblé. Just before his initiation, this man received a message from the Orixas (Brazilian spelling), who told him that though they loved him, they needed him instead to become a Catholic priest. This would be “his” road in this lifetime. Regarding one of the author’s early interests in Kabbalah, the Lwa Gran Brijit came and declared, Bliye sa, “Forget this.” It was no longer his road; the African route was his destination “this” time around!
51. Each Lwa necessitates certain rituals and offerings. They teach us how to feed and honor them, and they can be at times unpredictable.
52. At a broader level, this includes the incorporation of spirits from other religious traditions. Consider, for instance, the incorporation of Hindu deities into the pantheon of spirits in indigenous Ghanaian religious systems or the Spanish-speaking spirits that mount Vodou participants on the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
53. In contrast to previous scholars’ descriptions of African-based religions as monotheistic (belief in only one God) or polytheistic (the belief in many gods), we rely on the term henotheism (belief in many gods as manifestations of one God), which was historically attributed to Hinduism by scholars of religion Frederich Max Müller and Gerardus van der Leeuw. For more on this concept, see Christopher Elsas’ henotheism in the Encyclopedia of Christianity (2001), which draws from the work of Max Müller and Gerardus van der Leeuw. Elsas explains, “Henotheism refers to veneration of a single god as the true deity. It is a relative of monotheism that does not rule out the existence of other gods (polytheism).” He continues, “This form of religion … makes it possible for one god to be invoked after another, each having the attributes of a supreme being not transcended by the others” (524).
54. This trope of a God/god being both destroyer and regenerator is not unique to African-based religions, as evidenced by Shiva, the Hindu spirit of fire, destruction, and also renewal.
55. In addition to the more common knowledge that we share approximately 98 percent of our DNA with bonobos and chimpanzees (http://news.sciencemag.org.sci-hub.org/sciencenow/2012/06/bonobo-genome-sequenced.html), humans also share between 25 and 48 percent of their DNA with bananas and broccoli, respectively. Proof, once again, that our physical being is linked to all other physical beings. See Ann Gibbons, “Bonobos Join Chimps as Closest Human Relatives,” Science-NOW, June 13, 2012, http://news.sciencemag.org.sci-hub.org/sciencenow/2012/06/bonobo-genome-sequenced.html; and “What Is Life?” Making the Modern World, http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk.sci-hub.org/stories/defiant_modernism/01. ST.02/?scene=6&tv=true.
56. There are different modes of reality and alternate forms of morality in given societies. See Heidi Verhoef and Claudine Michel, “Morality within the African Context: A Model of Moral Analysis and Construction,” Journal of Moral Education 26, no. 4 (1997): 389–407. Similarly, Audre Lorde notes that acknowledging our equality does not mean positing that we experience the same realities but, rather, that we ought to have mutual respect and regard for each other’s poignant differences. Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Trumansburg, Calif.: Crossing Press, 1984).
57. In Brazil and Cuba, Danbala/Obatala is known respectively as Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) and Our Lady of Mercy.
58. Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (1996 ed.), 2132.
59. http://www.ginaathenaulysse.com.sci-hub.org.
60. Gina Athena Ulysse, comment on “Living with Music: Madison Smartt Bell,” Paper Cuts: A Blog about Books, comment posted January 11, 2009.
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