Voudou FAQ
From Barbelith
This is a page to answer questions about African syncretic religions and magical practices, including hoodoo, Santeria/Lukumi, Candomble and Palo Mayombe.
Hopefully, it'll get expanded out into a Genuinely Valuable Resource<tm> for anyone with questions about any of these practices. People seem to ask about them quite frequently.
Although it's not quite proper, I'm starting out using "Voudou" as a general term for the Yoruba/Congo religions in the New World, rather than the specific family of beliefs that developed among the freed slaves of Haiti. Hopefully, as the wiki evolves, these distinctions will become clearer, and someone will eventually edit this paragraph out of existence.
So, let's start with some basic questions and work our way up.
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Where does Voudou come from?
And why are you spelling it that way?
It comes from Africa as part of the slave trade, created when the religions of the Yoruba, Ibo, Congo and other enslaved races syncretized (http://www.answers.com/syncretism) with the European Christianity of slave-owning cultures. These are mostly Catholic, non-English-speaking cultures, because the English/American slave owners had rules against teaching the slaves too much about the Bible, and because Catholic saints were very convenient archetypal figures to fuse with African deities. The nearest equivalent in Protestant America would be the folk traditions of hoodoo.
For various reasons, the first of these African syncretic religions to capture the public imagination was the one practiced by the French Creole-speaking former slaves in Haiti and Louisiana. French speakers heard the African word vodun, or "spirit," and transformed that into "voudoun," and then "voudou." English speakers heard that French word, and spelled it phonetically as voodoo.
Today, after several waves of Cuban immigration, it seems likely that the greatest number of African syncretic believers in America actually belong to one of the Santeria/Lukumi traditions.
What about Santeria?
"Santeria," like "Quaker" and "Mormon," is a name that came from outside the religion, and literally means "saint-ery" or "working with the saints."
This is an Afro-Cuban faith, born out of the slave societies (and later social clubs) of Cuba. Different slave ethnicities (Yoruba, Fon, Ibo, Congo) formed different clubs in the 18th and 19th centuries, keeping alive their native languages and native beliefs as best as possible while still maintaining the external appearance of being pious Catholics.
As a result, you'll see different saints elided with the same African god across traditions -- Eleggua, the Lord of Crossroads, is seen as Saint Anthony by some believers, and as Saint Lazarus by others.
Santeria bears the distinction of having created the first legally organized African syncretic church in the United States, the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye (http://www.church-of-the-lukumi.org/), which went to the U.S. Supreme Court to defend its right to sacrifice animals.
What about Candomble?
Candomble (http://www.answers.com/candomble) would be the same thing from the former Portuguese colony of Brazil. Again, the name focuses on an external element of the practice -- in this case, the ritual drum music. It's also known as umbanda (popularly thought of as the "dark" version, just as palo mayombe is the "dark" version of Santeria).
What are the basic beliefs?
- Cosmology -- There are spiritual forces who take an interest in human affairs. Some of these are the spirits of deceased ancestors, but the primary ones are the lwa (or orisha), who are the servants of a relatively distant Supreme Creator. As such, they are less like gods and more like angels... or, in Catholic practice, saints. Each is patron over a certain area of human endeavor, such as communication, conflict, love, creating tools, curing illness, growing food or sailing the seas. Since these spiritual messengers have human (or human-like) desires, they can be negotiated with, and tit-for-tat arrangements are a common feature of the belief system.
- Priesthood -- In all traditions, this tends to be matriarchial (as in Marie Laveaux, the "Voodoo Queen" of New Orleans (http://www.parascope.com/en/articles/voodooQueen01.htm)), or at least woman-centric. Houngans (priests) and mambos (priestesses), like other initiated believers, have a special relationship with one particular lwa, but are also sensitive to the requirements of all other spirits.
Communication with the spirit world is done through the auspices of babalawos, or diviners, who use a system called Ifa.
- Practices -- Unlike Western religions, the divine forces take an active role during worship rituals and are invoked by the worshippers. In the literal sense, to "invoke" is to "bring in" -- that is, through a combination of hypnotic rhythms, ecstatic dance and chanting, the spirits are invited into their worshippers' bodies. They like the sensation of borrowing a human form, and some of their personas can be quite earthy, making demure maiden aunts swig rum by the bottle and swear like sailors. During some possession states, the horse, or possessed person, is capable of extraordinary physical feats, like walking through bonfires or eating broken glass without injury. For giving the lwa temporary use of their bodies, believers can then ask for favors in return.
Lwa are "fed" by animal sacrifices -- small favors might require the death of a chicken or chickens, while a large favor might require a goat. They also enjoy other offerings, which can include fruits, candy, savory foods, coins, liquor and tobacco.
The favors offered to a lwa or orisha are collectively known as ebo.
What are the lwa?
The lwa (or loas) are the spirits, demigods, "powers from beyond" in Voudou.
Are these the same thing as orisha?
Sort of. Not exactly. Orisha are the Santeria/Lukumi version. They have different names, play slightly different roles, and have different characters, but are based on the same African divinities.
Ganked from one of Gypsy Lantern's posts over here (http://www.barbelith.com/topic/20738), discussing the difference between the three versions of Papa Legba in Voudou, Santeria/Lukumi and Candomble:
...there seems to be an awful lot of blurring going on between Legba, Ellegua and Eshu in this thread as well... I think, at one level, they do tend to blur into one another in terms of role, broad personality type and proclivities, but I'd also say that they are three distinct personalities from three distinct religions and shouldn't necessarily be treat as the same thing. Even if they are rooted in the same African Elegbara source God, the experience of talking to Legba Atibon is a different deal from speaking to Eshu on full devil road. For instance, I'm not sure to what extent I'd consider Pomba Gira as Papa Legba's wife... Since She's a female counterpart of Eshu in Candomble and doesn't really appear in Haitian Vodou at all.
What is ebo?
What is ashe?
Ashe (pronounced ah-SHAY) is a spiritual potency or sensitivity -- you can have lots of ashe or only a little, and the level of ashe determines your effectiveness at communicating with the orisha.
What is a veve?
A veve (or wewe) is a symbol used to attract the attention or draw the influence of one of the lwa. In Haitian Voudou, veves often appear on ceremonial flags, although the ritual patterns drawn on the ground in corn-starch or chalk are also veves.
It appears that veves descend from African written languages.
Look on this page (http://www.ziva.org.zw/afrikan.htm), about halfway down, for an example from the Nsibidi language of Nigeria.
What is ifa?
Ifa is the name of the divination system in Yoruba religion. It uses palm nuts or cowrie shells scattered across a board, mat or marked field. Depending on what side up the markers fall and what region they land in, the diviner is given a particular number -- sort of like the I Ching. This number stands for a sign, or odu/odun. There are more than 250 of them, and a proper babalawo knows all of them by memory.
Each odun (http://www.lucumi.com/odunsigns.cfm) is associated with certain energies, certain rituals and a specific pataki or itan -- that is, a proverb or teaching story.
In Santeria/Lukumi, the babalawos of each family get together once a year and cast the odu for the year, which determines how the year will go, what sacrifices followers should make, and the general spiritual tone of the practice.
Confusingly, "ifa" can refer to the process of divination, the orisha who rules divination, or even the entirety of Yoruba traditional religion, depending on who you ask.
Where can I read more about this?
Web Resources
Voudou:
- Mambo Racine Sans Bout (http://members.aol.com/racine125/) operates the best Haitian Voudou resource on the net. Go here first.
Santeria/Lucumi:
- The Moonweb Santeria page (http://w3.iac.net/~moonweb/Santeria/Santeria.html) has a goofy name, but some great information about the orisha and especially traditional ritual drumming. Musicians, don't miss this!
- The Historical Museum of Southern Florida hosts an exhibition of "Orisha Arts" (http://www.historical-museum.org/exhibits/orisha/orisha_start.htm), showing traditional representations of the orisha as well as ritual costumes and tools used by babalawos.
- Lucumi.com (http://www.lucumi.com/) is an online botanica, but it also has some great stories, vocabulary lists, and general information about Santeria/Lukumi and Palo Monte specifically.
- La pagina de Babalawo Enrique de la Torre (http://www.babalawocubano.com/), con una botanica electronica, noticias, informacion de los Quatros Santos Querreros y mucho informacion de divinacion Ifa.
General African syncretic religions:
- Mary Ann Clark's Afro-Cuban links page (http://sparta.rice.edu/~maryc/AfroCuban.html) is a trove of information, not just about Lukumi, but also Voudou, Candomble, and the African faiths from which they spring.
- As usual, the ReligiousTolerance.org page (http://www.religioustolerance.org/voodoo.htm) is indispensable in covering the scope and social impact of these religions.
- Irunmole (http://irunmole.org/articles.html) offers a few great articles from an African traditionalist perspective. There's a bit of an "oh, what are these crazy Americans doing to our beautiful religion?" undertone to a lot of it.
- You might be interested in Ifa College's (http://www.ifacollege.com/faculty.htm) web site, but it seems a little hinky to me.
Books and Other Media
- Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen:The Living Gods of Haiti (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0914232630/noahwylemanorani). Written in the early 1950s, this is still the seminal text on Voudou and Yoruba syncretic religion, written by a white woman (an experimental filmmaker, not an anthropologist) initiated into Haiti's secret religion.
- Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520224752/noahwylemanorani). This has become an important text in contemporary ethnography, written by an academic who treated her subject not as a curiosity but as a collaborator. Brown, an anthropologist, is initiated into Mama Lola's spiritual family, and intersperses her academic observations with first-person family stories and Vodou legends. A valuable book.
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