It is likely that no other topic on this site is as misunderstood as Voodoo. Movies, television, and novels have been merciless in delivering to the public a highly disorted picture of what is as legitimate religious practice of 80 percent to 90 percent of the people of Haiti. In this article, Karen McCarthy Brown explains that Voodoo, or Vodou according to Haitian Creole orthography, is an African-based, Catholic-influenced religion. She also points out the differences between urban and rural Voodoo, and discusses African and Roman Catholic influence in the development of the religion. In addition, Brown discusses Voodoo spirits, Voodoo ceremonies, and the relationship of magic to Voodoo. The article concludes with some comments on the massive emigration of Haitians, mostly to Miami, New York, or Montreal, where Voodoo ceremonies are carried on in storefronts, rented rooms, and apartments.

Voodoo or Vodou (according to official Haitian Creole orthography), is a misleading but common term for the religious practices of 80 to 90 percent of the people of Haiti. A mountainous, poverty-stricken, largely agricultural country of approximately six million people, Haiti has a land area of 10,700 square miles that covers the western third of the island of Hispaniola, which it shares with the Dominican Republic.

The term voodoo (or hoodoo, a derivative) is also used, mostly in a derogatory sense, to refer to systems of sorcery and magic or to specific spells, or charms, emanating from such systems, which are for the most part practiced by the descendants of the African slaves brought to the Western Hemisphere.

Outsiders have given the name Voodoo to the traditional religious practices of Haiti; only recently, and still to a very limited extent, have Haitians come to use the term as others do. The word can be traced to vodu [spirit or deity] in the language of the Fon peoples of Dahomey (present-day Benin). In contemporary Haiti, vodou refers to one ritual style or dance among many in the traditional religious system. Haitians prefer a verb to identify their religion: they speak of "serving the spirits".

Sensationalized novels and films, as well as spurious travelers' accounts, have painted a highly distorted picture of Haitian religion. It has been incorrectly depicted as magic and sorcery that involves uncontrolled orgiastic behavior and even cannibalism. These distortions are undoubtedly attributable to racism and to the fear that the Haitian slave revolution sparked in predominantly white nations.

Haiti achieved independence in 1804, thus becoming a black republic in the Western Hemisphere at a time when the colonial economy was still heavily dependent on slave labor.

Voodoo is an African-based, Catholic-influenced religion that serves three (not always clearly distinguished) categories of spiritual beings: lemò, lemistè, and lemarasa [respectively, "the dead", "the mysteries", and "the sacred twins"]. While certain Voodoo prayers and invocations preserve fragments of West African languages, Haitian Creole is the primary language of Voodoo. Creole ( in the orthographical system employed in this article) is the first and only language of 80 persent of contemporary Haitians; it has a grammatical structure influenced by West African languages and a largely French vocabulary.

Although many individuals and families regularly serve the Voodoo spirits without recourse to religious professionals, Voodoo does have a loosely organized priesthood, open to both men and women. The male priest is called oungan and the female, manbo. There are many different types of Voodoo ritual, including individual acts of piety, such as the lightning of candles for particular spirits, and large feasts, sometimes of several days' duration, which include animal sacrifice as part of a meal offered to the spirits.

Energetic drumming, singing, and dancing accompany the more elaborate rituals. In the countryside, rituals often take place outdoors on family land that has been set aside for the spirits. On this land there is often a small cult house, which houses the Voodoo altars. In the cities, most rituals occur in the ounfò [temple]. Urban altars are maintained in jèvo, small rooms usually off the peristil, which is the central dancing and ritualizing space of the temple.

The goal of Voodoo drumming, singing, and dancing is to chofe, that is, to "heat up", the situation sufficiently to bring on possession by the spirits. As a particular spirit is summoned, a devotee enters a trance and becomes that spirit's chwal [horse], thus providing the means for direct communication between human beings and the spirit. The spirit is said to ride the chwal. Using the person's body and voice, the spirit sings, dances, and eats with the people and offers them advice and chastisement. The people, in turn, offer the spirit a wide variety of gifts and acts of obeisance whose goal is to placate the spirit and ensure his or her continuing protection.

There are marked differences in Voodoo as it is practiced throughout Haiti, but the single most important distinction is that between urban and rural Voodoo. The great majority of Haiti is agricultural, and the manner in which peasants serve the spirits is determined by questions of land tenure and ancestral inheritance. Urban Voodoo is not tied to the land, but the family connection persists in another form. Urban temple communitites become substitutes for the extended families of the countryside. The priests are called "papa" and "mama"; the initiates, who are called "children of the house", refer to one another as "brother" and "sister". In general, urban Voodoo is more institutionalized and more elaborate than its rural counterpart.

Haiti's slave population was largely built up in the eighteenth century, a period in which Haiti supplied a large percentage of the sugar consumed in Western Europe. Voodoo was born on the sugar plantations out of the interaction among slaves who brought with them a wide variety of African religious traditions. But, due to inadequate records, little is known about this formative period in Voodoo's history. There are, however, indications that Voodoo played a key role in the organization of the slave revolt (Leyburn 1941), as it apparently did in the downfall of President Jean-Claude Duvalier in February 1986.

Three African groups appear to have had the strongest influence on Voodoo: the Yoruba of present-day Nigeria, the Fon of Dahomey (present-day Benin), and the Kongo of what are now Zaire and Angola. Many of the names of Voodoo spirits are easily tracable to their African counterparts; however, in the context of Haiti's social and economic history, these spirits have undergone change. For example, Ogun among the Yoruba is a spirit os ironsmithing and other activities associated with metal, such as hunting, warfare, and modern technology. Neither hunting nor modern technology plays a significant role in the lives of Haitians. Haiti does, however, have a long and complex military history; thus the Haitian spirit Ogou is a soldier whose rituals, iconography, and possession-perfomance explore both the constructive and destructive uses of military power, as well as its analogues within human relations - anger, self-assertion, and willfulness.

Africa itself is a powerful concept in Voodoo. Haitians speak of Gine [Guinea] both as their ancestral home, the continent of Africa, and as the watery subterranean home of the Voodoo spirits.

Calling a spirit frangine [lit, "frank Guinea", truly African] is a way of indicating that the spirit is good, ancient, and proper. The manner in which an individual or a group serves the spirits may also be called frangine, with similar connotations of approval and propriety.

The French slaveholders were Catholic, and baptism was mandatory for slaves. Many have argued that slaves used a veneer of Catholicism to hide their traditional religious practices from the authorities. While Catholicism may well have functioned in this utilitarian way for slaves on the plantations, it is also true that the religious of West Africa, from which Voodoo was derived, have a long tradition of syncretism. Whatever else Catholicism represented in the slave world, it was most likely also seen as a means to expand Voodoo's ritual vocabulary and icongraphy. Catholicism has had the greatest influence on the traditional religion of Haiti at the level of rite and image, rather than theology.

This influence works on two ways. First, those who serve the spirits call themselves Catholic, attend Mass, go to confession, and undergo baptism and first communion, and, because these Catholic rituals are at times integral parts of certain larger Voodoo rites, they are often directed to follow them by the Voodoo spirits. Second, Catholic prayers, rites, images, and saints' names are integrated into the ritualizing in Voodoo temples and cult houses.

An active figure in Voodoo is the pretsavan [bush priest], who achieves his title by knowing the proper, often Latin, form of Catholic prayers. Though neither a Catholic nor a Voodoo priest, he is called into the Voodoo temple when the ritualizing has a significant Catholic dimension.

Over the years, a system of parallels has been developed between the Voodoo spirits and the Catholic saints. For example, Dambala, the ancient and venerable snake deity of the Fon peoples, is worshiped in Haiti both as Dambala and as Saint Patrick, who is pictured, in the popular Catholic chromolithograph with snakes clustered around his feet. In addition, the Catholic liturgical calendar dominates in much Voodoo ritualizing. Thus the Voodoo spirit Ogou is honored on 25th July, the feast day of his Catholic counterpart, Saint James the Elder.

Bondye, the "Good God", is identified with the Christian God and is said to be the highest, indeed the only, god. The spirits are said to have been angels in Lucifer's army whom God sent out of heaven and down to Gine. Although the spirits may exhibit capricious behavior, they are in no sense evil. Rather, they are seen as intermediaries between the people and the high god, a role identical to the one played by the so-called lower identical to the one played by the so-called lower deities in the religions of the Yoruba and Fon. Bondye is remote and unknownable. Although evoked daily in ordinary speech (almost all plans are made with the disclaimer "if God wills"), Bondye's intervention is not sought for most of life's problems. That is the work of the spirits.

The Catholic church of Haiti has sometimes participated in the persecution of those who follow Voodoo. However, the last "antisuperstition campaign" was in the 1940s, and currently there is an uneasy peace between Voodoo and the Catholic church. Until quite recently, the Catholic clergy routinely preached against serving the spirits, and those who served routinely remarked, "That is the way priests talk". Most Catholic events have a simultaneous Voodoo dimension that the Catholic curch for the most part ignores. Since Catholicism is the official religion of Haiti and the church has been to some extent state-controlled, the degree to which Voodoo has been tolerated, or even encouraged has been at least partly a function of politics. For instance, Haitian presidents Dumarsais Estime (1946-1950) and Francois Duvalier (1957-1971) were known for their sympathy with Voodoo.

The Voodoo spirits are known by various names: Iwa [from a Yoruba word for "spirit" or "mystery], sint [saints], mistè [mysteries], envizil [invisibles], and, more rarely, zanj [angels]. In the countryside, the spirits are grouped into nanchon [nations]. Although no longer recognized as such by Haitians, the names of the Voodoo spirit nations almost all refer to places and peoples in Africa. For example, there are nanchon known as Rada (after the Dahomean principality Allada), Wangol (Angola), Mondon (Mandingo, Ibo, Nago (the Dahomean name for the Ketu Yoruba and Kongo). In rural Voodoo, a person inherits responsibilities to one or more of these nanchon through maternal and paternal kin. Familian connections to the land, where the Iwa are said to reside in trees, springs and wells, aslo determine which spirits are served.

In urban Voodoo, two nanchon, the Rada and the Petro, have emerged as dominant largely by absorbing other nanchon. Rada and Petro spirits contrast sharply in temperament and domain. The Rada spirits are dous [sweet] and known for their wisdom and benevolence. The Petro spirits were probably named for the Spanish Voodoo priest Dom Petro; they show a marked Kongo influence and are considered cho [hot], and their power is stressed. Each spirit group has drum rhythms, dances, and food preferences that correspond to its identifying characteristics. For example, Dambala, the gentle Rada snake spirit, is said to love orja, a syrup made from almonds and sugar. His worshipers perform a sinuous spine-rippling dance called yanvalou. By contrast, the Petro rhythm, played for such rumdrinking spirits as Dom Petro and Tijan Petro, is energetic and pounding, and the accompanying dance is characterized by rapid shoulder movements.

In Voodoo teachings the human being is composed of various parts: the body, that is, the gross physical part of the person, which perishes after death, and from two to four souls, of which the most widely acknowledged are the gro bonanj and the ti bonanj.

The gro bonanj [big guardian angel] is roughly equivalent to consciousness or personality. When a person dies to gro bonanj survives, and immediately after death it is most vulnerable to capture and misuse by sorcerers. During possession, it is the gro bonanj that is displayed by the spirit and sent to wander away from the body, as it does routinely during sleep.

The ti bonanj [little guardian angel] may be thought of as the conscience or the spiritual energy reserve of a living person and, at times, as the ghost of a dead person. Each person is said to have one spirit who is the mèt-tet [master of the head]. The mèt-tet is the major protector and central spirit served by thtat person, and it is that spirit that corresponds to the gro bonanj. Because the gro bonanj is the soul that endures after death and because it is connected to a particular Iwa, a person who venerates the ancestors inherits the service of particular spirits.

In addition to the master of the head, each person has a small number of other Iwa with whom there is a special protective connection. There is a rough parallel between the characters of the spirits and those of the people who serve them. Thus the language of Voodoo is also a language for categorizing and analyzing the behavior of groups and individuals. For example, when an individual, family, or temple is described as worshiping in a mode that is Rada net, [straight Rada], a great deal is also being said about how that person or group functions socially.

In both urban and rural Haiti, cemeteries are major ritual centers. The first male buried in any cemetery is known as the Baron. Baron's wife is Gran Brijit, a name given to the first female buried in a cemetery. Every cemetery has a cross either in the center or at the gate. The cross is known as the kwa Baron [Baron's cross], and this is the ritualizing center of the cemetery. Lighted candles and food offerings are placed at the foot of Baron's cross. In addition, many rituals for healing, love, or luck that are performed in the rural cult houses or the urban temples are not considered complete until the physical remnants of the "work" are deposited at crossroads or at Baron's cross, which is itself a kind of crossroads marking the intersection of the land of the living and the land of the dead.

Haitians make a dstinction between lemò [the dead] and lemistè [the mysteries]. Within Voodoo, there are rituals and offerings for particular family dead; however, if these ancestral spirits are seen as strong and effective, they can, with time, become mistè. The group of spirits known as the gèdè are not ancestral spirits but misté, and their leader is the well-known Baron Samdi, or Baron Saturday. In and around Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti and its largest city, the gèdè are the object of elaborate during the season of the Catholic Feast of All Souls, or Halloween.

The gèdè are not only spirits of death but also patrons of human sexuality, protectors of children, and irrepressible social satirists. Dances for gèdè tend to be boisterous affairs, and new gèdè spirits appear every year. The satirical, and often explicity sexual, humor of the gèdè levels social pretense. Appearing as auto mechanics, doctors, government bureaucrats, Protestant missionaries, and so forth, the gèdè use humor to deal with new social roles and to question alienating social hierarchies.

In rural Voodoo, the ideal is to serve the spirits as simply as possible because simplicity of ritual is said to reflect real power and the true African way of doing things (Larose, 1977). In practice, rural ritualizing tends to follow the fortunes of the extended families. Bad times are said to be due to the displeasure of the family spirits. When it is thought to be no longer possible to satisfy the spirits with small conciliatory offerings, the family will hold a large drumming and dancing feast that includes animal sacrifice.

Urban Voodoo, by contrast, has a more routine ritualizing calendar, and events tend to be larger and more elaborate. Ceremonies in honor of major spirits take place annually on or around the feast days of their Catholic counterparts and usually include sacrifice of an appropriate animal - most frequently a chicken, a goat, or a cow. A wide variety of ceremonies meet specific individual and community needs: for example, healing rites, dedications of new temples and new ritual regalia, and spirit marraiges in which a devotee "marries" a spirit of the opposite sex and pledges to exercise sexual restraint one night each week in order to receive that spirit in dreams.

There is also a cycle of initiation rituals that has both public segments and segments reserved for initiates. The latter include the kanzo rituals, which mark the first stage of initiation, and those in which the adept takes the asson, the beaded gourd rattle that is the symbol of the Voodoo priesthood. Certain rituals performed during the initiation cycle, such as the brule zen [burning of the pots] and the chire ayzan [shredding of the palm leaf] may also be used in other ritual contexts. Death rituals include the desounen, in which the gro bonanj is removed from the corpse and sent under the waters, and the rele mò nan dlo [calling the dead up from the waters] a ritual that can occur any time after a period of a year and a day from the date of death. Good-luck baths are administered during the Christmas and New Year season. Many of the rituals of urban Voodoo are performed in rural Haiti as well.

Annual pilgrimages draw thousands of urban and rural followers of Voodoo. The local point of events, which are at once Catholic and Voodoo, is usually a Catholic church situated near some striking feature of the natural landscape that is believed to be sacred to the Voodoo spirits. The two largest pilgrimages are one held for Ezili Dantò (Our Lady of Mount Carmel) in mid-July in the little town of Saut d'Eau, named for its spectacular waterfall, and one held for Ogou (Saint James the Elder) in the latter part of July in the northern town of Plain du Nord, where a shallow pool adjacent to the Catholic church is sacred to Ogou.

Serge Larose (1977) has demonstrated that magic is not only a stereotypic label that outsiders have applied to Voodoo, but also a differential term internal to the religion. Thus an in-group among the followers of Voodoo identifies its own ritualizing as "African" while labeling the work of the out-group as maji [magic].
Generally speaking, this perspective provides a helpful means of grasping the concept of magic within Voodoo. There are, however, those individuals who, in their search for power and wealth, have self-consciously identified themselves with traditions of what Haitians would call the "work of the left hand". This includes people who deal in pwen achte [purchased points], which means spirits or powers that have been bought rather than inherited, and people who deal in zombi.

A zombi may be either the disembodied soul of a dead person whose powers are used for magical purposes, or a soulless body that has been raised from the grave to do drone labor in the fields. Also included to the category of the left hand are secret societies known by such names as Champwel, Zobop, and Bizango. These powerful groups are magic not for personal gain but to enforce social sanctions. Wade Davis (1985) claims that zombi laborers are created by judgements of tribunals of secret societies against virulently antisocial persons.

The "work of the left hand" should not be confused with more ordinary Voodoo ritualizing that also has a magical flavor, such as divination, herbal healing, and the manufacture of charms for love or luck, or for the protection of the home, land, or person. Much of the work of Voodoo priests is at the level of individual client-practitioner interactions. Theirs is a healing system that treats problems of love, health, family, and work.

Unless a problem is understood as coming from God, in which case the Voodoo priest can do nothing, the priest will treat it as one caused by a spirit or by a disruption in human relationships, including relations with the dead. Generally speaking, cures come through a ritual adjustment of relational systems.

Drought and soil erosion, poverty, high urban unemployment, and political oppression in Haiti have led to massive emigration in the last three decades. Voodoo has moved along with the Haitians who have come to the major urban centers of North America in search of better life. In Miami, New York, and Montreal, the cities with the greatest concentraions of Haitian immigrants, Voodoo ceremonies are carried on in storefronts, rented rooms, and highrise apartments.

North American rituals are often truncated versions of their Haitian counterparts. There may be no drums, and the only animals sacrified may be chickens. However, it is possible to consult a manbo or oungan in these immigrant communities with ease, and the full repertoire of rituals is found there in one form or another. Even the pilgrimages are duplicated. On 16 July, rather than going to the mountain town of Saut d'Eau to honor Ezili Dantò, New York Haitians take the subway to the Italian-American Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in the Bronx.