Vodou in Haiti

Vodou designates the indigenous religion of Haiti. Emerging out of the contact between enslaved Africans and white planters during Haiti's colonial period (1492–1804), Vodou is fundamentally an African religion, which, in Haiti, given the peculiar historical circumstances, combined in its theology some Roman Catholic beliefs and practices.

Popular Western novels, films, and spurious accounts by tourists have depicted Vodou (and its derivative Voodoo) incorrectly as sorcery, ritual zombification, and ritual cannibalism. Such depictions are derisive or even racist because a close examination of the religion's rituals or practices fails to find any evidence that would give credence to these negative views. The word Vodou derives from the Beninese (or Dahomean) Fon words vodu or vodun, meaning “deity” or “spirit.” The word is used in Benin and Haiti to designate a community of divine and ancestral spirits who are identified with the natural forces of the universe and who participate actively in the lives of their devotees. Like other world religions, Vodou is a system of beliefs that instills in its devotees a need for solace and self-reflection; it is an expression of a people's longing for meaning and purpose. Vodou provides an explanation for death, which is envisaged as a spiritual transformation, a portal to the sacred world beyond this life in which morally upright individuals continue to influence their progeny. By extension, Vodou includes a whole assortment of artistic and cultural expressions and the belief in the efficacy of an elaborate system of traditional healing practices.

The word belief in Haiti and in Benin has a different connotation than it does to Westerners. Belief in English suggests a cerebral process by which one may or may not choose to identify with a system of thought or, by extension, with a community that affirms such a system. To Vodouists, spiritual reality cannot be the subject of casual investigation by skeptics. In the Vodouists' world-view, skepticism is the outcome of an improper or otherwise faulty apprehension of what to them is patently apparent—that the world harbors powerful and mysterious entities that are the cause of all events and ensure the mechanical operation of the cosmos. Asked if they believe in the spirits, Vodouists think of themselves as “obeying the mysteries of the world” or “serving the lwas.” Their statements reflect their outlook on the nature of belief in general. In West African and Haitian cultures, religion is a way of life, and devotees do not merely think of their religion in abstract, but in practical terms. The spirits are the fount of wisdom and the source of all things, and the devotees conceive of themselves as affecting the will of these spirits by the living of life.

Hence, Vodou is an African-derived religion that, through a complex system of myths and rituals, relates the life of each devotee to incommensurable spirits called lwas (pronounced has). These lwas are thought to direct the affairs of humankind by manifesting themselves in the bodies of their devotees in spirit possessions—altered states of consciousness during which the devotees' souls are believed to be temporarily displaced by that of a spirit. During spirit possession, a spirit is believed to mount the body of the devotee like a horse, and it is through this medium that it is given voice with which to impart its wisdom to the members of the community and, conversely, ears to listen to its devotees' concerns. In Vodou, spirit possession is considered a quintessential nonmaterial achievement, during which a believer experiences a direct engagement with the spirit world; it is also a public witness of one's personal commitment to a spirit and a belief in its authority over the community.

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