Haitian voodoo has its roots in centuries-old West African religions. Over time in the New World, it absorbed Indian and Christian influences. Voodoo practitioners believe in one god, but invoke an array of intermediate deities, or loa.
They are believed to be able to grant favors or heal the sick. Priests can be male or female, and are respected for their knowledge and power to summon the loa. Many rituals are secret and magical.
One reason, perhaps, why voodoo is so disparaged in the West, where believers are accused of devil worship, superstition, or worse. Some of the harshest condemnation comes from evangelical Protestant preachers. They sacrifice animals.
There is a lot of violence. They eat other people, and they kill people. He made sacrifices.
Max Beauvoir is one of Haiti's best-known voodoo priests, That's the Aizen, or hungans. the royal palm. He says stories abound about voodoo, many made in Hollywood, not Haiti.
For example, he says the much-fabled voodoo dolls are not used in Haiti. As for rituals to inflict harm on others, Beauvoir says abuses can be found in all religions. Like the others, voodoo strives for good over evil and non-violence.
Good and God, we feel they are the same words and they are put together into one word. We call it Bon Dieu. And that Bon Dieu only created what is good.
However, we feel that evil. do exist also but it's the creation of the human being. I think the human being has natural flaws. We have grids.
We have egos. The voodooists have never been against Catholics, nor against any religions. Up to today, there has never been a movement of voodoo against somebody else. In fact, voodoo has constantly been aggressed by the other religion. There's one major exception in history.
Voodoo priests are believed to have inspired the slave revolt that defeated the French colonists in 1804. Ironically, independent Haiti's black leaders themselves cracked down on voodoo priests, fearful of their political power. But as it had earlier European assaults, voodoo survived. It's now largely tolerated by Haiti's predominant Catholic and mainstream Protestant churches. Beauvoir says voodoo influences every aspect of Haitian life, where people seek counsel or healing, the way they worship.
Many people go both to church and to the voodoo peristeel or temple. The Protestants of Haiti are very different from the Protestants of elsewhere. They are the Haitian Protestants, meaning they are Vodou Protestants.
Just like the Catholics of Haiti are different Catholics from the one of Rome. They are Vodou Catholics. And Haiti, Vodou actually, in a way, coalesces all the many elements that are present here. Voodoo itself has drawn from traditions of the Taino Indians, the original inhabitants of this island. Also from Catholicism, which may have helped it survive.
For example, when slave owners forced conversion to Christianity, historians say the Africans changed some practices, but not their beliefs, disguising voodoo in Catholicism. It's one reason some of the best-known spirits invoked in voodoo are represented by images of Catholic saints. Haitian art draws liberally from this amalgam. This is Saint-Gerard who is the voodoo equivalent of Guedet or the Baron.
And the Baron is the guardian of the cemetery. He is life, death, sexuality. He also is a healer and protects children. Nancy Josephson owns an art gallery in Chicago and makes frequent buying trips to Haiti.
So you have kind of this overlay of wonderful Catholic imagery, and in Vodou, they take everything. Everything is used. It's wonderful in that way. It's kind of like the ultimate outsider religion, and all are welcome. Everything is welcome in Vodou.
Black Madonna, an image that actually originated in Czestochowa, Poland, is ubiquitous in Haiti, co-opted in voodoo as Erzuli Dantor. An air-zoulidantor is a petro-spirit. She's a hotter spirit. She's a market woman and she's very, very strong, very protective, very maternal.
And those are her attributes, so when you really need that kind of protection, Erzulie is the one. The dantor is there to help you. You've got the hot spirits and you've got the cool spirits. Her sister, Erzulie Frieda, who is sort of called the goddess of love, is very coquettish, very jealous. She likes perfumes.
But if you have a love problem, you go to Erzulie Frieda. You go to her sister. Voodoo ceremonies are held frequently, although there's no special Sabbath day. They last for hours. Saint-Pierre, Saint-Andouille, Saint-Jacques, Saint-Martin, The spirits or lua are methodically summoned, Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain, each with specific rituals, Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain, prayers, Saint-Germain, Saint-Germain, food, and drink offerings.
Saint-Germ As in some Christian traditions that invoke saints, spirits in the voodoo pantheon are petitioned for favors. Their arrival is signaled by the mood they bring to the service, possessing some particip... who then take on the spirit's hallmark traits. Openly sexual dancing, for example, often manifests Mama Brigitte.
She's a tough-talking, hard-drinking deity, but one with strong curative powers. A voodoo celebration is always a celebration to life. And life starts with sexuality. It's all implicit into there, because the dimension of sexuality, to us, is a very, very important dimension. And it's part of the entire system.
The same as death, as a matter of fact. It starts with that and ends up with death, and the whole thing in between. Anyone can attend services, but becoming a priest involves a series of initiation ceremonies. At this one, Max Beauvoir invoked the spirit of Aison. That chair that we see here is the symbolic representation of a spirit, the spirit of peace.
And it tends to tell us that peace comes from justice and this is why we have a kind of a sword in the hand there, meaning that it is from the sword that comes respect and also justice. Many of voodoo's practices are steeped in mystery, off-limits to non-initiates. That makes it even more difficult to explain such phenomena as zombies and magic, often associated with voodoo.
The secrets could lie in the use of animals that are sacrificed, as well as extracts from plants. I would say that my backyard here includes almost 250 different species of plants that are all medicinal plants. In general, healing in voodoo involves the transfer of energy from other life forms. But there's nothing miraculous about it. It's simply that everything is living.
As a life force, that life energy, and that life energy can be taken from the leaf by you and can be given to someone and that person immediately when we receive it will feel much better. That life force has been harnessed in some spiritual way though, right? I mean, I can't just pluck something off a tree. That is correct.
I think you're correct. You're right. The approach is extremely important, by all means. At the same time, Beauvoir, who has a degree in chemistry from Paris' Sorbonne, believes strongly in Western medicine.
He says the duality presents no contradiction in Haitian life, with this room for atoms, molecules, and spirits. It's one reason Haiti is sometimes described as 80% Catholic, 20% Protestant, and 100% voodoo. For Religion and Ethics News Weekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.