We don't believe in heaven and hell. There is only life. Voodoo is an Afro-Caribbean nature religion.
It essentially is a monotheistic religion. They believe that there is only one God, but that God is distant. He's unreachable.
And so that God communicates to us through what they refer to as the law. They're sort of partly saints, partly spirits. Each one of them has a particular function. If you have love issues, you go to one particular law. If you have issues about security or safety or money, you can go to a different law.
These laws form a relationship with the voodoo East. They become essentially the same kind of relationship that many Catholics have with their saints. The center of voodoo currently, of course, is the island nation of Haiti.
But voodooists will tell you that voodoo itself is a religion that goes back centuries and centuries all the way to Africa. It's a religion that the slaves brought to Haiti themselves. Modern Haitian history begins in 1791 when a group of Voodooists, slaves, came together, made a vow to each other and to the Lawa to fight for their liberation.
That moment launched the only successful slave revolt in history. It resulted in a free and independent Haiti. This moment has also become a flashpoint in modern Haitian politics. It is a source of conflict between those Haitians, proud Boudouists, who see this this moment as the beginning of the birth of their nation.
And those Christians, primarily evangelical missionaries, who believe that in calling on the law to help, that Satan has now taken possession of Haiti. And indeed, that all of Haiti's problems, its economic stagnation, its corruption, and rampant crime problems, come down to this moment in which Satan entered the island.