From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term Vodou (Vodu or Vudu 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. 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 offensive by the Afro-Diaspora practicing communites. However, the different spellings of this term can be explained as follows:

The word "Voodoo"' is used to describe the Afro-creole traditon 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. When the word "Vodou/Vodoun" is capitalized, it denotes the Religion proper. When the word is used in small caps, it denotes 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% of the population, or some 4½ million people. The word Vodún "Vodoun" "Vudu" is the Fon-Ewe word for spirit. Voodoo 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 slavey and Reconstruction in the United States, but maintained most of its West African elements.

Until recently, many assumed that the admixture 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 Arara.

Vodun/Vodoun is a name attirbuted 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 of Africa. They are arguably some of the oldest religious sytems 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 Vodu, 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/desses 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 iradicate the tradition. Today in West Africa, the Vodou religion is estimated to be practised by over 30 million people

Haitian Vodou

Haitian Vodou practiced by less than 1% of African-Americans is the most widely known and written New World Vodou religion, and is the religion of Haiti. 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.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.

The majority of the Africans who were brought as slaves to Haiti were from the Guinea Coast of West Africa, and their descendants are the primary practitioners of Vodou. The Vodoun pracitioners brought over and enslaved in the United States primarily descend from the Ewe, Anlo-Ewe,and other West African groups. The survival of the belief systems in the New World is remarkable, although the traditions have changed with time. One of the largest differences however between African and Haitian Vodou is that the transplanted Africans of Haiti were obliged to disguise their lwa (sometimes spelled loa) or spirits as Roman Catholic saints, a process called syncretism.

Most experts speculate that this was done in an attempt to hide their "pagan" religion from their masters who had forbidden them to practice it. To say that Haitian Vodou is simply a mix of West African religions with a veneer of Roman Catholicism would not be entirely correct. This would be ignoring numerous influences from the native Taíno Indians, as well as the evolutionary process that Vodou has undergone shaped by the volatile ferment of Haitian history. However, without the Vodou deities, and their corresponding ritual element the religion known as "Vodou" could not exist.

Vodou as it is known in Haiti and the Haitian diaspora is the result of the pressures of many different cultures and ethnicities of people being uprooted from Africa and imported to Hispaniola during the African slave trade. Under slavery, African culture and religion was suppressed, lineages were fragmented, and people pooled their religious knowledge an from this fragmentation became culturally unified. In addition to combining the spirits of many different African and Indian nations, Vodou has incorporated pieces of Roman Catholic liturgy to replace lost prayers or elements. Images of Catholic saints are used to represent various spirits or "mistè" ("mysteries", actually the preferred term in Haiti), and many saints themselves are honored in Vodou in their own right. This syncretism allows Vodou to encompass the African, the Indian, and the European ancestors in a whole and complete way. It is truly a Kreyòl religion.

The most historically important Vodou ceremony in Haitian history was the Bwa Kayiman or Bois Caïman ceremony of August 1791 that began the Haitian Revolution, in which the spirit Ezili Dantor possessed a priestess and received a black pig as an offering, and all those present pledged themselves to the fight for freedom. This ceremony ultimately resulted in the liberation of the Haitian people from French colonial rule in 1804, and the establishment of the first black people's republic in the history of the world and the second independent nation in the Americas.

Haitian Vodou grew in the United States to a significant degree beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the waves of Haitian immigrants fleeing the Duvalier regime, taking root in Miami, New York City, Chicago, and other major cities.

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 Republic 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 their 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 dreams. 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.