Haitian Vodou

Vodou is the religion of Haiti, formed in the plantation society of Saint-Domingue out of Fon, Ewe, Kongo and other West and Central African systems, under French Catholicism and chattel slavery. The rising of August 1791 that became the Haitian revolution is traditionally dated from a ceremony at Bwa Kayiman, and the religion and the nation were made together; Vodou was then suppressed by the state and by the Church for most of two centuries and came out of that suppression into public life only in the late twentieth century. It is served by priestesses (manbo) and priests (oungan) who lead congregations (sosyete) through a cycle of rites and initiations.

Vodou is a religion that contains magic, not a magic system with religion attached. The lwa are served with food, drink, song, drumming and possession; ancestors are fed and remembered; healing, protection, divination and the making of charged packets and bottles are done by the same priests, as part of a relationship with spirits and dead that is entered by initiation and sustained by offering. A client may buy a reading or a service, but the rite that makes a priest is not sold.

Vodou is a living, initiated religion of the Haitian people. Initiation (kanzo) is closed, the rites and the handling of consecrated objects belong to initiates and to the sosyete that makes them, and the tradition's own authorities decide who may be taught and who may serve. This entry describes the religion from the outside; it does not describe how anything is done, and the absence is deliberate rather than an oversight. 'Voodoo' as a word for curses, zombies and pins is an invention of occupation-era writing and of Hollywood, and it has done real damage to a people who have also been punished for the religion politically.