Haitian Vodou: A System of Survival

by Ellen Taylor

In Vodou, the majority religion of Haiti, the highest value is survival.1 Vodou survived colonial brutality, widespread poverty, political instability, and centuries of stigmatization and repression both in Haiti and around the world.2 Vodou exemplifies the essentially Creole use of bricolage,3 or the integration of available, disparate resources and influences to produce a new tradition.4 Vodou preserved the memory of West and Central Africa while adapting to the hostile landscape of Saint-Domingue, or colonial era Haiti.5 Vodou thrives through its adaptability to change, its responsiveness to other cultures, and its predilection for complexity, practicality, inclusion, and accumulation.

The American cultural imagination paints a pointedly negative image of Vodou that scarcely reflects the reality of the tradition when it resembles it at all. Representations in film, television, and literature frequently portray Vodou as an amoral, malevolent, “primitive” religion characterized by “black magic” and demonic worship.6

W.B. Seabrook’s 1929 book, The Magic Island, describes Vodou practitioners as “blood-maddened, sex-maddened, [and] god-maddened;”7 and in his 1935 study of Vodou, Richard A. Loederer falsely aligns the religion with the ritual slaughter of children and “disgusting cannibal orgies.”8 Such ideas about Vodou were born of falsehood and racist fantasy yet remain stubbornly persistent in American society.9 In contemporary political discourse and popular culture, Vodou continues to be misunderstood, demonized, and even blamed for economic, political, and ecological crises throughout Haiti.10

These egregious misrepresentations commit great injustice to Vodou, a sophisticated religious system that was forged in the context of survival. Vodou emerged to provide meaning, order, and strength to its devotees amid the trauma, horror, and chaos brought about by their enslavement. Vodou empowered a displaced population to preserve the memory, beliefs, and practices of their homeland.11 Like many world religions, Vodou primarily serves to promote moral comportment, communal responsibility, spiritual introspection, and the physical and emotional well-being of its practitioners.12 Vodou’s significant role in the slave revolution that granted Haiti independence in 1804 attests to the religion’s fundamental impulse toward uplifting the dignity of human beings and granting voice and power to the disenfranchised.13

Vodou is a syncretic religious tradition of African, American, and European influences. Vodou arose from the chaos of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and plantation life in Saint-Domingue, the island’s name under French colonial rule.14 In the eighteenth century, Saint-Domingue was known as the “Pearl of the Antilles,” as its sugar, cotton, indigo, and coffee plantations were among the most productive in the French empire.15 The colony provided immense wealth for France while exploiting and subjugating slaves under some of the harshest conditions in the New World. France’s code noir dictated all slaves convert to French Catholicism, yet West and Central Africans enslaved in Saint-Domingue continued to preserve and practice traditional African religions.16 Although slaves hailed from numerous tribes across Dahomey, Kongo, and Yorubaland, each espousing unique religious traditions and ways of life, the experience of displacement and enslavement caused Africans to unite shared beliefs and to synthesize divergent ones into an integrated religious structure.17

West and Central African religious traditions formed the foundation of Vodou’s cosmic structure of a high, distant god and a pantheon of lesser, mediatory spirits.18 Vodou devotees, or serviteurs, direct their worship toward spirits and revered ancestors known as Les Mystères, or loa.19 All loa remain below the supreme god, Bondye, who created the universe. Bondye’s supremacy means he occupies his time with heavenly affairs beyond the small scope of human life. As Mama Lola, a Vodou mambo (or priestess), explains, Bondye is “too busy” to oversee and manage personal matters.20 The loa therefore function as mediators between Bondye and humankind. The loa provide the serviteurs with instruction, guidance, reassurance, and insight needed to navigate their personal, familial, and communal lives.

Some loa are closely tied to natural elements, such as Agwe, king of the ocean, or Grand Bois, the spirit of the forest. Yet the role of the loa cannot be reduced to animism, or the belief that nature or objects themselves are divinities or contain spiritual energy.21 Rather, the loa are invisible, immaterial, and abstract representations of principles or archetypes, symbolizing the full tensions and complexities of particular aspects of reality and human life.22 Hundreds of loa occupy the Vodou pantheon. Erzulie Freda is the loa of love; Ogoun is the warrior loa; Azaka is the loa of agriculture and the harvest; Papa Legba oversees the crossroads between Les Mystères and human beings; and Ghede rules the crossroads between the living and the dead. The loa possess changing personalities and experience unpredictable moods. They comfort, instruct, and protect, but they also rage, weep, and complain.23 Those who serve the spirits construct densely-decorated altars covered in the loa’s favorite colors, symbols, objects, food, and drink. If serviteurs neglected the emotional and material demands of the spirits, the spirits would lose the capacity or desire to aid and protect. Such neglect may invite evil to surface.

When West and Central Africans were exposed to French Catholicism in the eighteenth century, many converted while simultaneously practicing Vodou.24 Today, despite accusations that Vodou is “anti-Christian,” most Haitians adhere to Catholic beliefs and practices while continuing to serve the Vodou spirits.25 For these serviteurs, there is no contradiction in this syncretism. Indeed, the characteristics and roles of the Catholic saints resemble those of the loa. Both are once-human, now-divine mediators between the heavenly and earthly realms.26 Both oversee an aspect of life and patronize certain professions.27 Just as many Catholics devote extra attention to especially important saints in their lives, Vodou serviteurs often foster intimate relationships with or special reverence for certain loa.28

West and Central Africans observed these similarities and absorbed the Catholic saints into their pantheon of spirits. In this syncretic process, each loa was assigned a Catholic alternate. For example, Erzulie, loa of love, became associated with the Virgin Mary; Ogoun, the loa of warfare and power, was linked to St. James the Greater; and Damballah Wedo, the serpent spirit, was syncretized with St. Patrick.30 When missionaries brought color lithographs of the saints to Haiti, serviteurs eagerly incorporated these cheap but beautiful and brightly-colored images as representations of the Vodou spirits. For the Haitian who serves both the Catholic God and the spirits of Vodou, these lithographs encompass a two-part significance: the Marian icon of the Mater Dolorosa evokes both Erzulie Freda and the Virgin Mary.31

Most loa originate from the spiritual pantheon worshiped in Dahomey, an agriculture-based kingdom in present-day Benin that had a well-articulated, hierarchical social and political structure.32 Order and stability characterized both life in Dahomey and the temperaments of the spirits that oversaw the kingdom. Once imported to Saint-Domingue from Africa, the Dahomean rites and loa were called “Rada,” a term taken from the town of Allada in Dahomey.33 Rada loa are generally forgiving, benevolent, and even-tempered. Although other African groups maintain their own rites in Haitian Vodou, such as the Kongo and the Ibo, Dahomean influences were the most dominant among African traditions, and the Rada loa and rites have come to symbolize past life in Africa.36

Yet the stable, ordered lifestyle supported in Dahomey could not be found in the chaotic, merciless conditions of Saint-Domingue.37 The softness and passivity of the Dahomean spirits failed to resonate with the new needs and fears catalyzed by colonialism and enslavement. For West and Central Africans to adapt to their hostile, alien environment and to fight for their lives and dignity, they required spirits who could articulate their indignation and empower them to take militant action against their colonizers.38 In response to these New World needs, the Petro emerged.39 Petro rites and loa find their origin in the brutal violence of Saint-Domingue, as well as in the more aggressive, less forgiving spirits of the Kongo in Africa and of some indigenous American traditions.40 The Petro spirits are severe, demanding, and violent. They are less tolerant and more practical than their gentler Rada counterparts. In Petro rites, drummers play off-beat, in contrast to Rada drumming, which is always steadily on-beat.41

The uninitiated should avoid conflating Rada with “goodness” and Petro with “evil” – the Rada and the Petro do not constitute such a moral dichotomy. Although the Petro spirits boast hotter temperaments, and although failure to serve them properly may incite evil, both Rada and Petro contribute significant roles in moral development, communal improvement, and social justice. Rada loa behave compassionately and symbolize protective powers, while Petro represents the righteous raging against the injustice of enslavement. In her book, Divine Horsemen, Maya Deren powerfully articulates the place of Petro in the history of Vodou and Haiti:

Petro was born out of this rage. It is not evil; it is the rage against the evil fate which the African suffered, the brutality of his displacement and his enslavement. It is the violence that rose out of that rage, to protest against it. It is the crack of the slave-whip sounding constantly, a never-to-be-forgotten ghost, in the Petro rites. It is the raging revolt of the slaves against the Napoleonic forces. And it is the delirium of their triumph. For it was the Petro cult, born in the hills, nurtured in secret, which gave both the moral force and the actual organization to the escaped slaves who plotted and trained, swooped down upon the plantations, and led the rest of the slaves in the revolt that, by 1804, had made of Haiti the second free colony in the western hemisphere.42

Foregoing the passivity of Rada, Petro incites action. Together, Rada and Petro attest to the depth and complexity of Vodou spirituality and morality. Vodou’s pantheon contains a multitude of spirits that intricately reflect the diversity of life’s experiences.43 Most major loa have several Rada or Petro forms or other variants. Often these variants evoke starkly divergent spirits, exemplifying Vodou’s capacity to hold together apparently contrary ideas.44

The example of the Erzulie family of loa provides insight into the relationship between Rada and Petro and the spiritual complexities apparent in Vodou tradition. Jean-Louis Edgar’s shimmering flag, Erzulie, represents the Rada variant, Erzulie Freda. Erzulie Freda is the loa of love and beauty.45 Following Vodou aesthetic tradition, Edgar portrays the loa according to the Marian iconography of the Mater Dolorosa (Our Lady of Sorrows): a halo surrounds her head, she wears an elaborate crown and Mary’s blue mantle, a bejeweled sword pierces her heart, and symbols of the flaming immaculate heart fill the background.46 Erzulie Freda is an elegant and coquettish light-skinned woman who delights in all things delicate and feminine.47 The magenta and gold embellishments and the soft pink foundation cloth evoke the loa’s favorite colors. The presence of gold, silver, gemstones, and pearls reinforce Erzulie Freda’s penchant for luxury. Swaths of golden bracelets, necklaces, and rings adorn her body. Erzulie Freda possesses a limitless desire for expensive, feminine gifts like jewelry, fancy perfumes, pink dresses, fragrant bars of soap, rich creams, and flowers, most of which cannot be easily acquired by the average serviteur, who lives in poverty.48 Yet no matter how many lovely gifts a serviteur offers Erzulie Freda, her demands are never satisfied, and she pouts or weeps dramatically over not receiving enough affection, attention, and wealth.49

The Petro spirits of the Erzulie family greatly diverge from Erzulie Freda’s dreamy realm of luxury, romance, beauty, glamour, and dainty tears. The most significant of these is Erzulie Dantor, who is the subject of Eviland Lalanne’s ritual flag that is startling in its poignancy. As in Lalanne’s flag, Erzulie Dantor is traditionally represented as a dark-skinned, black, solitary mother, and her iconography refers to the Mater Salvatoris.50 Rather than occupying herself with frivolities and flirtation like Erzulie Freda, Erzulie Dantor principally oversees childbirth, childrearing, and single motherhood. Erzulie Dantor models fierce protection, tender care, courage, passion, and hard work.51 Yet Dantor also experiences seething rage, loneliness, and suffering. In Lalanne’s flag, Erzulie Dantor’s wide eyes fix intensely on the viewer: her gaze echoes Mama Lola’s description of Dantor’s “‘big, white, and shiny,’ ever-watchful eyes of the mother.”52 Her Petro quality instills in Dantor a ferocity that aggressively fights to protect her children. According to legend, the two long, black scars that tear across Dantor’s right cheek recall wounds she sustained while battling for Haitian Independence.53 Dantor’s brave and violent efforts to liberate the people of Haiti can be attributed to her Petro nature that translates necessity into action. Karen McCarthy Brown, commenting on the multitudes embodied in the Erzulie, asserts these female loa “become mirrors that give objective reality to what would otherwise remain, as it does in so many cultures, women’s silent pain and unhonored power.”54

The flags by Edgar and Lalanne function as ritual objects for saluting the depicted spirits during Vodou ceremonies.55 All Vodou ceremonies commence with a salute to either Legba, the guardian of the crossroads between human beings and the spirits, or Ghede, who mediates between the living and the dead. Once Legba or Ghede has been saluted, the houngan or mambo (priest or priestess) begins inviting other spirits to arrive, depending on the purpose of each ceremony. Vodou ceremonies empower communities to convene with spirits or revered ancestors in order to obtain guidance, reassurance, and insight. The primary manner in which the loa exert their desire, authority, and instruction is through the normative ritual of possession.56 During possession, a spirit temporarily dislodges the gros-bon-ange, or psyche, of a participant, usurping control of his or her body.57 In Vodou, the traditional metaphor of possession compares the spirits to riders who “mount” their horses (i.e. the possessed serviteurs).58 The voice, speech, behavior, and emotions of those possessed belong to the spirit riding them.59 Possessions represent not individualistic expressions but rather the wills of the possessing spirits. Indeed, while possessed one attains little to no memory of the events that transpire, and he or she cannot be held personally accountable for what transpires.60 Through performances of possession, a Vodou community invokes spiritual presence to confront, work through, and remedy individual and communal issues.

Haitian Vodou is a system of survival, and its origins in surmounting the horrors of slavery and its perseverance despite widespread repression attest to this system’s potency. In Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn, Karen McCarthy Brown expresses a conception of Vodou as survival:

It is no exaggeration to say that Haitians believe that living and suffering are inseparable. Vodou is the system they have devised to deal with the suffering that is life, a system whose purpose is to minimize pain, avoid disaster, cushion loss, and strengthen survivors and survival instincts. The drama of Vodou therefore occurs not so much within the rituals themselves as in the junction between the rituals and the troubled lives of the devotees. People bring the burdens and pains of their lives to this religious system in the hope of being healed.61

Vodou provides few absolutes, promises no utopic afterlife, and operates without a formal church, clergy, or doctrine.62 Vodou is not imposed from above by the powerful. Rather, Vodou is rooted in the sacredness of ordinary human beings and their daily lives. Vodou prioritizes nothing above the immediate well-being of its devotees. From its traumatic origins in Saint-Domingue to its perseverance throughout the Haitian diaspora, Vodou encapsulates a democratic, functional space in which human beings engage with the divine and imbue their lives with purpose, wisdom, and strength.

1 Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 242.
2 Claudine Michel, “Of Worlds Seen and
Unseen:The Educational Character of Haitian Vodou,” Haitian Vodou: Spirit, Myth, & Reality, eds. Patrick Bellegarde-Smith and Claudine Michel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 34.
Hybridity and Vodou in Haitian Art 41
3 Karen McCarthy Brown, “The Art of Transformation: An Exploration of Vodou Cosmology and Vodou Aesthetics,” Tracing the Spirit: Ethnographic Essays on Haitian Art (Davenport: Davenport Museum of Art, 1995), 35.
4 Marc A. Cristophe, “Rainbow over Water: Haitian Art, Vodou Aestheticism, and Philosophy,” Haitian Vodou: Spirit, Myth, & Reality, eds. Patrick Bellegarde-Smith and Claudine Michel. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 91.
5 McCarthy Brown, “The Art of Transformation,” 12.
6 Michel, “Of Worlds Seen and Unseen,” 33.
7 Seabrook, W.B., The Magic Island (New York: The Literary Guild, 1929). 42.
8 Richard Loederer, Voodoo Fire in Haiti (New York: The Literary Guild, 1935), 17.
9 Laënnec Hurbon, “American Fantasy and Haitian Vodou,” Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, ed. Donald J. Cosentino. (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1995), 181.
10 Hurbon, “American Fantasy and Haitian Vodou,” 192-193.
11 Cristophe, “Rainbow over Water,” 95.
12 Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (London: Thames and Hudson, 1953), 27.
13 Ibid., 62.
14 Robert Farris Thompson, “The Rara of the Universe: Vodun Religion and Art in Haiti,” Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy (New York: Vintage Books, 1984).
15 McCarthy Brown, Karen. “The Art of Transformation,” 12.
16 Ibid.
17 Thompson, “The Rara of the Universe.”
18 Deren, Divine Horsemen, 55.
19 Ibid.
20 McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola, 6.
21 Deren, Divine Horsemen, 36.
22 Ibid., 56.
23 Ibid, 33.
24 Michel, “Of Worlds Unseen,” 32-34.
25 Ibid., 33-34.
26 Deren, Divine Horsemen, 56.
27 Ibid.
28 McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola, 222.
29 Ibid., 3-4.
30 Deren, Divine Horsemen, 56.
31 Christophe, “Rainbow over Water,” 93-95.
32 Deren, Divine Horsemen, 60.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid., 61.
35 Milo Rigaud, Secrets of Haitian Vodou (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1985), 44.
36 Deren, Divine Horsemen, 60.
37 Ibid., 61.
38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.
40 Thompson, “Rara of the Universe.”
41 Deren, Divine Horsemen, 61.
42 Ibid., 62.
43 Michel, “Of Worlds Seen and Unseen,” 39.
44 Ibid., 38.
45 Deren, Divine Horsemen, 61.
46 McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola, 236.
47 Deren, Divine Horsemen, 62.
48 McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola, 248.
49 Ibid.
50 McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola, 229.
51 Ibid., 228-229.
52 Ibid., 229.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid., 221.
55 Rigaud, Secrets of Voodoo, 88-89.
56 Deren, Divine Horsemen, 16.
57 Ibid., 29
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid., 30.
61 McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola, 10.
62 Michel, “Of Worlds Seen and Unseen,” 34.