The Faces of the Gods

Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti

Leslie G. Desmangles

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9780807861011
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Folklore & Mythologie

Vodou, the folk religion of Haiti, is a by-product of the contact between Roman Catholicism and African and Amerindian traditional religions. In this book, Leslie Desmangles analyzes the mythology and rituals of Vodou, focusing particularly on the inclusion of West African and European elements in Vodouisants' beliefs and practices. Desmangles sees Vodou not simply as a grafting of European religious traditions onto African stock, but as a true creole phenomenon, born out of the oppressive conditions of slavery and the necessary adaptation of slaves to a New World environment. Desmangles uses Haitian history to explain this phenomenon, paying particular attention to the role of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century maroon communities in preserving African traditions and the attempts by the Catholic, educated elite to suppress African-based "superstitions." The result is a society in which one religion, Catholicism, is visible and official; the other, Vodou, is unofficial and largely secretive.

1 CULTURAL SETTING: RELIGIOUS PARADOX OR SYMBIOSIS

Anyone who has visited Haiti at least once is likely to have heard the maxim that Haitians are 100 percent Catholics and 90 percent Vodouisants. What seems to be a paradox here is no error, for the Roman Catholicism of Haiti is typically Haitian: in its institutional forms, its colorful and formal rituals, and its strict doctrinal emphases, it represents an extensive effort on the part of the clergy to respond to the religious, social, and cultural needs of Haitians. Concurrently, Vodou is the folk religion of Haiti that pervades the framework of Haitian culture.

Thanks to Hollywood and the film industry,¹ what average persons conjure up in their minds when they think of Voodoo is a picture of witches and sorcerers who, filled with hatred, attempt to inflict diseases or even death on other persons by making wax or wooden representations of them, and perforating them with pins. Another popular image of Voodoo or Hoodoo is that of a conglomeration of exotic spells celebrated clandestinely by blacks inebriated with blood: stunned by the invasion of their persons by supernatural forces, they enter into ecstatic and frenzied states of consciousness while performing magical rituals accompanied by occult incantations (Verschueren 1948, 276, 279).

The questionable reputation of Vodou today is due partly to a fictional incident that was said to have occurred in Bizoton, a section of the city of Port-au-Prince, during the latter half of the nineteenth century. On December 27, 1863, Claircine, a little girl, disappeared. The story is told that Haitians from all parts of the country conducted an extensive but futile search for her, with dwindling hope of ever finding her. It was then discovered that she had been killed and eaten by religious fanatics as part of a diabolic Vodou ceremony. An inquest into the matter revealed that fifteen people were responsible for the incident, all of whom were arrested, tried, and subsequently charged with cruelty, sorcery, and murder. Six weeks after the crime, amidst an angry mob that wanted revenge in exchange for Claircine’s life, the accused villains were shot to death.

Whether this incident actually transpired remains a mystery; there are no legal records to substantiate its occurrence. But the publicity surrounding the report captured the imagination of journalists and novelists who, gifted with a flair for the exotic, dramatized the story and added to it details that appealed to a readership with an unquenchable thirst for the macabre and sinister. Their readers assumed that this fictional incident was true, and it reconfirmed in the minds of many what they already knew: that such atrocities were the result of the inherent and untamed savagery of blacks, not only in Haiti but throughout the world.

The intrigue that surrounded this incident both at home and abroad would have passed into oblivion within a few years after its publication, had it not been revived near the end of the century by Spenser St. John, a retired member of the British diplomatic corps in Haiti. Writing at the end of the Victorian era, when pioneers were discovering the interior of “dark Africa” and Christian missionaries were proselytizing its people, St. John described the culture of “primitive” Haitians whom he met during his tour of duty in the country. His book, entitled Haiti and the Black Republic and published in 1884, reflects the Europeans’ widespread notions at that time about the “heathen practices” of unenlightened blacks whose moral laxity could only be redressed by the saving message of Christianity.

Whatever the motives may have been in popularizing such notions about Vodou, a scholarly examination reveals that in practice, none of its rituals confirms these popular views. As a religion, Vodou is practiced by nearly six million Haitians whose lives are shaped by the beliefs and practices of a complex religion with a rich historical tradition. It was brought largely by slaves from the Kongo and Dahomean regions (as well as many other parts) of West Africa to Santo Domingo or Saint-Domingue—as Haiti was called during its colonial period (1492–1804)—and the term Voodoo is a deterioration of the Dahomean term vodu or vodun, meaning “deity” or “spirit.” Hence, Vodou in Haiti is a religion that, through a complex system of myths and rituals, relates the life of the devotee to the deities who govern that life. Like many religions of the world, Vodou is a system of beliefs and practices that gives meaning to life: it uplifts the spirits of the downtrodden who experience life’s misfortunes, instills in its devotees a need for solace and self-examination, and relates the profane world of humans to that of incommensurable mythological divine entities, called lwas, who govern the cosmos. It also provides an explanation for death, which is treated as a spiritual transformation, a portal to the sacred world beyond, where productive and morally upright individuals, perceived by devotees to be powerful ancestral figures, can exercise significant influence on their progeny. In short, it is an expression of a people’s longing for meaning and purpose in their lives. By extension, the use of the term Vodou in Haiti is also generic, referring to a whole assortment of cultural elements: personal creeds and practices, including an elaborate system of folk medical practices; a system of ethics transmitted across generations, which encompasses numerous proverbs and stories, songs and folklore; and various other forms of artistic expression.

As it exists in Haiti, Vodou contains some paradoxes that invite far-reaching speculations, for although it is West African in its form, it has also borrowed much from Roman Catholicism. The connection between the two religions may not be apparent at first glance because Catholicism is visible and official, whereas Vodou is unofficial and, until recently, largely secretive. Historically, Catholics have constituted the bulk of the elite, and they have upheld their religion’s strict traditions and official order. Their churches are large, spacious, and architecturally the most elegant buildings in every town and city. Catholic priests and sisters staff many of the public schools as well as church-related schools, which provide the best available education in the country. Moreover, Catholicism is always represented by its dignitaries in all of the public and official governmental functions. In contrast, Vodouisants, who constitute the bulk of the lower classes and the peasantry, worship in temples that, viewed from any distance, bear few distinguishing marks that would identify them as places of worship; nor do the Vodou priests or priestesses (oungans or mambos) wear distinctive garb.

In the roles that the oungans and Catholic priests play in the performance of their respective rituals, too, one sees the differences between the two religions. In the Mass, the priest serves as the only conduit through which one can gain access to the sacred world; in his role as the sole dispenser of grace, he stands at the crossroads between the sacred and profane worlds. Conversely, the oungan does not control his flock’s contact with the world of the gods, for Vodou is indeed a democratic religion (Davis 1988, 46; Courlander 1960, 9). In Vodou ceremonies, each believer has direct access to the spirit world through spirit possession. Possession is an altered state of consciousness during which a person is believed to be “mounted” like a horse by a lwa (Mars 1955; Bourguignon 1973; Métraux 1958, 118). This invasion of one’s person by a lwa results in the temporary displacement of one’s own personality by the envisaged mythological personality of the lwa. Possession is therefore considered a quintessential spiritual achievement in a believer’s religious life, because it represents a direct engagement with the spirit world. It is also a public commitment to the religion that heightens one’s exercise of religious authority in the community. For these reasons, Haitians would wish to have possession conferred on them, not once, but several times in their lives. In short, the Haitian view of the nature of the rituals of both religions can be summarized by the frequent remark that one goes to Catholic Mass to talk about God, but one goes to a Vodou ceremony to become God (Davis 1988, 48).

Another difference is that, while the Catholic church, in Haiti’s history, has been supported economically by the state, Vodou has enjoyed no such privilege. Further, it maintains no theological or ecumenical centers for the training of its clerics, no formal religious communities, no presses, no editorial staff, and no publications. Nor is there even any formal creed: unlike the content of Roman Catholic theology, that of Vodou varies from one locality to another; it is not unusual to find that within an area of one square mile, two ounfòs (temples) maintain differing myths and rituals regarding divergent pantheons of lwas. Moreover, unlike Catholics, and similar to the devotees of African traditional religions, Vodouisants’ names are not listed in the membership roll of a local temple. Their worldview does not allow them to consider religion as a formal organization with a list of members with whom they may or may not identify. Their religion is a way of life. Vodouisants’ worldview is constructed from certain factual observations of their environment which they hold to be self-evident. Their subjective apprehension of these observations rests upon the immediate understanding that all phenomena are manifestations of supernatural, and yet observable, powers. These powers have two natures. First, they are manifestations of the complex persona of the Godhead (Bondye),² the creator of the universe. Bondye is beyond the individual’s scrutiny and transcends the objective world. The phenomenal world is a posteriori to numerous incommensurable deities whose characteristics and mythological attributes render them ineffable and awesome. Second, Vodouisants conceive of these deities also as immanent; they believe that all existent things in the world are manifestations of these deities, and that their power is forever active in their devotees’ lives.

The concept of belief in Haiti does not have the same connotation that it does in English (Deren 1972). The English word belief suggests an intellectual activity by which one may or may not choose to identify with a system of thought. Vodouisants never think of believing in something in the sense of identifying with a system of thought—or, by extension, with a community that affirms such a system (Deren 1972). Spiritual reality cannot be the object of academic investigation, nor can it be an issue of casual scrutiny for skeptics. Vodouisants have no room in their worldview for skepticism; they regard it as the consequence of an ambivalent attempt to establish rationally the design in the cycle of successive events, to debate the relationships between their parts, and to question the divine hand in their purpose. Skepticism is the outcome of an improper or otherwise faulty apprehension of what should admittedly be self-evident: that the world harbors powerful entities (lwas) that are forever active in human lives, and that such entities are the cause of all occurrences in the mechanical operation of the world.

Asked if they believe in the Vodou deities, notes Maya Deren, Vodouisants never reply that they believe in the gods; rather, they answer, “I serve the lwas,” or “I obey the Mysteries of the world” (1972, 73–74). The significance of their statements lies in their outlook on the nature of belief in general, for they do not think of religion in abstract terms, but in practical ones. Because the lwas are the fount of all wisdom and the cause of all of life’s circumstances, Vodouisants effect the lwas’ volitions merely by the living of life itself. Concurrently, they expect the lwas to respond to their needs and to offer their assistance in practical matters of life. Vodouisants cannot afford the self-surrender of mysticism, nor can they permit themselves the luxury of an idealism that seeks to mask the miseries and frustrations of their existence. Their needs are too immediate for that. Their religion must satisfy actual needs rather than merely invite them to high-flown intellectual exercises of theology. Deren observes that they have neither the time, the energy, or the means for inconsequential activity. She notes that in Haiti, religion “must do more than give moral sustenance; it must do more than rationalize [the Vodouisant’s] instinct for survival when survival is no longer a reasonable activity. It must do more than provide a reason for living; it must provide the means of living. It must serve the organism as well as the psyche. It must serve as a practical methodology, not an individual hope. In consequence, the Haitian thinks of his religion in working terms” (1972, 73).

Although the religious life of the Vodouisants marks one of the overt differences between Catholicism and Vodou, these differences do not prevent them from practicing both religions simultaneously with no attempt to resolve whatever paradoxes may exist between them. These paradoxes can be seen particularly in the details of the cultural and religious life of Haitians, the outcome of which have contributed to a strange intermixture of attitudes, of creeds and rituals, of patriotic pride, and of mental struggles. Religiously, they venerate the saints of the church and the Vodou lwas simultaneously. They will attend a Vodou meeting that begins on a Saturday evening and lasts throughout the night; and while their clothes are still wet with the perspiration caused by the exhausting contortions of their sacred dances, they will walk directly from the ounfò to the four o’clock Mass on Sunday morning. Often the church and the ounfò share the same city block, and the tolling of the bell that announces the beginning of the Mass may be the signal for the Vodou ceremony to end. The priest in his performance of the Mass functions as a point of contact with an impersonal Godhead who maintains the universe, including its mechanical, biological, and stellar operations. In contrast, the oungan in his performance of the Vodou ceremony facilitates the devotees’ contact with minor deities and ancestral spirits who are personifications of Bondye, the Godhead. The lwas are also identified with a variety of cosmological principles of order, and are divine mediators between Bondye and human beings. But the paradox in the Vodouisants’ religious life can be seen particularly when the priest, attempting to keep his parishioners on the straight and narrow, inveighs in his sermon against their participation in the Vodou rituals the night before and against their service to the lwas.

Traditionally, the Haitian elite has comprised approximately 15 percent of the population. They have been ambivalent toward Vodou; many know little about it, most drawing their information from popular books and reports, such as the one mentioned earlier, written on the subject around the turn of the century. Many refer to its morbid nature and regard it as the remnant of “primitive” religious practices that are deleterious to Haitian society, give the country an undesirable international reputation, and impede literacy and socioeconomic development. Yet many members of this same elite are intensely drawn to Vodou, adhering to its teachings and secretly consulting oungans on occasion. They must acknowledge Vodou’s continual presence in Haitian society, and the enduring sustenance it has provided to its devotees for centuries. They are also forced to recognize the historical fact that without Vodou, Haiti could not have become an independent nation as early as the nineteenth century, for its rituals provided the spirit of kinship that fueled the slaves’ revolts against their masters (Desmangles 1990).

As will be described in a later chapter, the church, embarrassed by the encroachment of what it has regarded as “superstitious practices” on its theology, and using the arm of the government, has conducted a number of so-called Antisuperstitious Campaigns in which it has seized, burned, and destroyed a large number of ounfòs and ritual paraphernalia throughout the country. These campaigns have left indelible marks on Haitian society, for they have resulted not only in the secretive nature of the religion, but also in Vodouisants’ ambivalence toward both religions. Vodouisants have traditionally been reluctant to admit openly to their service to the lwas, for fear of grave legal consequences. On the one hand, they have felt the need to participate in the country’s official culture by claiming their unquestionable allegiance to Catholicism, and almost never to Vodou. On the other hand, because it is essential to participate in the sociocultural and religious life of their community, they have felt the need to serve the lwas as well.

But if Vodou as a religion has been able to survive such suppression, it is not only because it is part of the cultural fabric of Haitian life but also, ironically, because it has so frequently been suppressed. Very often, suppression attempts to destroy something that many see as harmful to society—but it also engenders the very sustenance of the precise thing it is attempting to destroy, for the threat of the total eradication of religious values among the oppressed can cause a sudden reawakening of those values. Vodou in Haiti today is a religion whose theology has attempted to sustain many of the religious and cultural African values in Haitian society. Its continued existence in Haitian culture is symbolic of the Vodouisants’ resistance to renouncing their African traditions and acclimating themselves, by force if necessary, to European Catholicism. Hence, Vodou in effect is a reaction to the oppression caused by the intransigent hostility of the Roman clergy. Moreover, the present content of its theology, which includes both Catholic and African religious traditions, derives from the contact between the cultures of two continents on Haitian soil.

Because Vodou is in part a by-product of Catholicism and traditional religions from various regions of Africa, any discussion of it necessitates an analysis of the contact between these two religious sources. Hence, this book has three principal goals:

(1) My first aim is to describe the historical events in Haiti that have caused Vodou to incorporate ethnic religious traditions from diverse regions of Africa into its theology. The historical events will also shed light on the processes by which Catholic doctrines were similarly incorporated. This incorporation of elements from Africa and Europe has often been referred to by scholars as syncretistic, as the fusion of Catholic and African religious traditions (Deren 1972; Herskovits 1972; Métraux 1958). The present study describes the nature of this syncretism—that is, the relation between these religious elements—as a symbiosis.³ As used in this book, symbiosis has a different meaning from that in the biological sciences, where it refers to the living together of dissimilar organisms in a mutually beneficial relationship. Etymologically, symbiosis—from the Greek sún, “with,” and biós, “life”—means “life together with.” In its ethnological sense, symbiosis refers to the spatial juxtaposition of diverse religious traditions from two continents, which coexist without fusing with one another. Just as tiny parts of a stained-glass window are juxtaposed to form a whole, so too parts of the Vodou and Catholic traditions are juxtaposed in space and in time to constitute the whole of Vodou.

As it exists in Vodou, symbiosis takes two forms: symbiosis by ecology, and by identification. The first suggests the juxtaposition of religious elements necessitated by environmental and geographical adaptation, and the second suggests specifically the system by which, on the basis of similarity, Catholic saints were identified with or “transfigured into” Vodou gods. A brief examination of several examples may make the nature of each of these forms of symbiosis clearer.

Symbiosis by ecology refers to Roger Bastide’s notion of syncretism in mosaic (1978, 153), which manifests itself in two paradigms: on the one hand, in the spatial juxtaposition of Vodou (or diverse African-derived) elements and Catholic symbols in the ounfò, as well as in the temporal use of these symbols in the ounfò; and on the other hand, in the prescribed ritualistic observances for the lwas on the Catholic holy days reserved for the saints in the Christian liturgical calendar.

In the first paradigm, the geographical proximity of a church to a ounfò constitutes the spatial juxtaposition of the two traditions. This juxtaposition also exists within the ounfò. A ounfò consists of two main sections, a holy of holies which contains the pe (altar), and the peristil, a terrace-like enclo...