Vodou

Origins

Vodou developed in the crucible of colonial life. Haitian Vodou is a neo-African spiritual system, philosophical construct, and religion whose core resides largely in Dahomey (presently Benin) and in Yorubaland, in western Nigeria. The term Vodou derives from the Fon word for “god” or “spirit.” It also signifies in a larger sense “in the company of the spirits” or “belonging to the family of the spirits.” Another common interpretation is “introspection into the unknown.” There are other meanings. In Ghana, for example, spirits are called Vodous. Haitians call the deities Lwa, anj, and mystè. What is distinctive about Haitian Vodou additionally is that it incorporated the powerful systems of the Bakongo peoples in Central Africa, creating a synthesis that did not occur elsewhere in the Caribbean or in Latin America. Also, earlier influences were found extant from Islamicized, enslaved Africans. Vodou had been a powerful ideological force in waging the wars of liberation in Haiti, in forging the revolutionary movements that led to the dismantling of slavery and independence. It is certain that Haitian leaders and the mass of insurgents were well versed in these African and neo-African traditions, especially since as many as two thirds of the population had been born in West and Central Africa and not in the colony of Saint-Domingue. Vodou in Haiti seems to have been a deliberate amalgam of various African traditions, cobbled together from similar systems in an effort to unify Africans from various parts of the continent and speaking different African languages well into the first two decades of the 19th century, after independence was proclaimed. Vodou also incorporated some aspects of the religion of the Arawaks, Freemasonry, and, of course, Catholicism. From the latter, it integrated more than juxtaposed the dates of celebrations for the saints now associated with the Vodou Lwa, the Catholic iconography, and the prayers that many still use to open Vodou ceremonies (sèvis Lwa). Vodou—together with the Creole language, which evolved from a similar base—served as a unifier, particularly in the provinces, when the populations retreated from national public life in the form of a quasi-permanent maronnage, in protest against having been marginalized by the Haitian power structure that emerged after independence in 1804. Haiti then found itself isolated and ostracized, but this also gave Vodou time to develop further until the Concordat signed between the Haitian state and the Holy See in 1860. In those six decades, it acquired some of its final forms, unimpeded, alive in both rural and urban settings, not having to share the national space with other religious traditions. After that, things changed. Vodou had to contend with persecutions [Page 1366]from both the state and the Catholic Church during various times in its history, notably in 1896, between 1913 and 1941, during the aftermath of the Duvalier regime, and currently, as Vodou is under constant attack from various Protestant sects.

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