Haitian Vodou is a fascinating spiritual tradition rich with ceremonies and magic, songs and prayers, dances and fellowship. Yet outside of Haiti, next to no one understands this joyous and profound way of life. ln Haitian Vodou, Mambo Chita Tann explores the historical roots and contemporary practices of this unique tradition, including discussions of: Customs, beliefs, sacred spaces, and ritual objects Characteristics and behaviors of the Lwa, the spirits served by Vodou practitioners Common misconceptions such as "voodoo dolls" and the zombie phenomenon Questions and answers for attending ceremonies and getting involved in a sosyete (Vodou house) Correspondence tables, Kreyol glossary, supplemental prayer texts, and an extensive list of reference books and online resources Well-researched, comprehensive, and engaging, Haitian Vodou will be a welcome addition for people new to Haitian spirituality as well as for students, practitioners, and academics.

An introduction to Haitian Vodou, exploring its historical roots and contemporary practices.

Vodou has often served as a scapegoat for Haiti’s problems, from political upheavals to natural disasters. This tradition of scapegoating stretches back to the nation’s founding and forms part of a contest over the legitimacy of the religion, both beyond and within Haiti’s borders. The Spirits and the Law examines that vexed history, asking why, from 1835 to 1987, Haiti banned many popular ritual practices. To find out, Kate Ramsey begins with the Haitian Revolution and its aftermath. Fearful of an independent black nation inspiring similar revolts, the United States, France, and the rest of Europe ostracized Haiti. Successive Haitian governments, seeking to counter the image of Haiti as primitive as well as contain popular organization and leadership, outlawed “spells” and, later, “superstitious practices.” While not often strictly enforced, these laws were at times the basis for attacks on Vodou by the Haitian state, the Catholic Church, and occupying U.S. forces. Beyond such offensives, Ramsey argues that in prohibiting practices considered essential for maintaining relations with the spirits, anti-Vodou laws reinforced the political marginalization, social stigmatization, and economic exploitation of the Haitian majority. At the same time, she examines the ways communities across Haiti evaded, subverted, redirected, and shaped enforcement of the laws. Analyzing the long genealogy of anti-Vodou rhetoric, Ramsey thoroughly dissects claims that the religion has impeded Haiti’s development.

This collection introduces readers to the history and practice of the Vodou religion, and corrects many misconceptions. The book focuses specifically on the role Vodou plays in Haiti, where it has its strongest following, examining its influence on spiritual beliefs, cultural practices, national identity, popular culture, writing and art.

This abundantly illustrated anthology brings together sixteen essays by artists, scholars and ritual experts who examine the sacred arts of Haitian Vodou from multiple perspectives. Among the many topics covered are the ten major Vodou divinities: Vodou's roots in the Fon and Kongo kingdoms of Africa and its transformation in the experiences of slavery, and the encounter with European spiritual systems; Vodou praxis, including its bodily and communal disciplines, the cult of St. James Major (Ogou), and the cult of twins.In the final section, essays by Elizabeth McAlister, Patrick Polk, Tina Girouard, and Randall Morris look at Vodou arts and artists, Oleyant, and the legacy of ironworker Georges Liautaud.The Envoi, by Donald J.Cosentino, is devoted to the Gedes, spirits of death and regeneration.

Margaret Mitchell Armand presents a cutting edge interdisciplinary terrain inside an indigenous exploration of her homeland. Her contribution to the historiography of Haïtian Vodou demonstrates the struggle for its recognition in Haïti’s post-independence phase as well as its continued misunderstanding. Through a methodological, original study of the colonial culture of slavery and its dehumanization, Healing in the Homeland: Haitian Vodou Traditions examines the sociocultural and economic oppression stemming from the local and international derived politics and religious economic oppression. While concentrating the narratives on stories of indigenous elites educated in the western traditions, Armand moves pass the variables of race to locate the historical conjuncture at the root of the persistent Haïtian national division. Supported by scholarships of indigenous studies and current analysis, she elucidates how a false consciousness can be overcome to reclaim cultural identity and pride, and include a sociocultural, national educational program, and political platform that embraces traditional needs in a global context of mutual respect. While shredding the western adages, and within an indigenous model of understanding, this book purposefully brings forth the struggle of the African people in Haïti.

Haitian Vodou breaks away from European and American heuristic models for understanding a religio-philosophical system such as Vodou in order to form new approaches with an African ethos. The contributors to this volume, all Haitians, examine the potentially radical and transformative possibilities of the religious and philosophical ideologies of Vodou and locate its foundations more clearly within an African heritage. Essays examine Vodou's roles in organizing rural resistance; forming political values for the transformation of Haiti; teaching social norms, values, and standards; influencing Haitian culture through art and music; merging science with philosophy, both theoretically and in the healing arts; and forming the Haitian "manbo," or priest.

Connecting four centuries of political, social, and religious history with fieldwork and language documentation, A Transatlantic History of Haitian Vodou analyzes Haitian Vodou’s African origins, transmission to Saint-Domingue, and promulgation through song in contemporary Haiti. Split into two sections, the African chapters focus on history, economics, and culture in Dahomey, Allada, and Hueda while scrutinizing the role of Europeans in fomenting tensions. The political, military, and slave trading histories of the kingdoms in the Bight of Benin reveal the circumstances of enslavement, including the geographies, ethnicities, languages, and cultures of enslavers and enslaved. The study of the spirits, rituals, structure, and music of the region’s religions sheds light on important sources for Haitian Vodou. Having royal, public, and private expressions, Vodun spirit-based traditions served as cultural systems that supported or contested power and enslavement. At once suppliers and victims of the European slave trade, the people of Dahomey, Allada, and Hueda deeply shaped the emergence of Haiti’s creolized culture. The Haitian chapters focus on Vodou’s Rada Rite (from Allada) and Gede Rite (from Abomey) through the songs of Rasin Figuier’s Vodou Lakay and Rasin Bwa Kayiman’s Guede, legendary rasin compact discs released on Jean Altidor’s Miami label, Mass Konpa Records. All the Vodou songs on the discs are analyzed with a method dubbed “Vodou hermeneutics” that harnesses history, religious studies, linguistics, literary criticism, and ethnomusicology in order to advance a scholarly approach to Vodou songs.

Throughout Haitian history—from 17th century colonial Saint-Domingue to 21st century postcolonial Haiti—arguably, the Afro-Haitian religion of Vodou has been represented as an “unsettling faith” and a “cultural paradox,” as expressed in various forms and modes of Haitian thought and life including literature, history, law, politics, painting, music, and art. Competing voices and conflicting ideas of Vodou have emerged from each of these cultural symbols and intellectual expressions. The Vodouist discourse has not only pervaded every aspect of the Haitian life and experience, it has defined the Haitian cosmology and worldview. Further, the Vodou faith has had a momentous impact on the evolution of Haitian intellectual, aesthetic, and literary imagination; comparatively, Vodou has shaped Haitian social ethics, sexual and gender identity, and theological discourse such as in the intellectual works and poetic imagination of Jean Price-Mars, Dantes Bellegarde, Jacques Roumain, Jacques Stephen Alexis, etc. Similarly, Vodou has shaped the discourse on the intersections of memory, trauma, history, collective redemption, and Haitian diasporic identity in Haitian women’s writings such as in the fiction of Edwidge Danticat, Myriam Chancy, etc. The chapters in this collection tell a story about the dynamics of the Vodou faith and the rich ways Vodou has molded the Haitian narrative and psyche. The contributors of this book examine this constructed narrative from a multicultural voice that engages critically the discipline of ethnomusicology, drama, performance, art, anthropology, ethnography, economics, literature, intellectual history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, religion, and theology. Vodou is also studied from multiple theoretical approaches including queer, feminist theory, critical race theory, Marxism, postcolonial criticism, postmodernism, and psychoanalysis.

Goes beyond the stereotypes to restore Vodou to its proper place as a powerful shamanic tradition • Provides practical exercises and techniques from the Vodou tradition that can be used as safe and effective means of spiritual healing and personal transformation • Shows how to remove evil spirits and negative energies sent by others • Written by a fully initiated Houngan (Vodou shaman) Providing practical exercises drawn from all aspects and stages of the Vodou tradition, Vodou Shaman shows readers how to contact the spirit world and communicate with the loa (the angel-like inhabitants of the Other World), the ghede (the spirits of the ancestors), and djabs (nature spirits for healing purposes). The author examines soul journeying and warrior-path work in the Vodou tradition and looks at the psychological principles that make them effective. The book also includes exercises to protect the spiritual self by empowering the soul, with techniques of soul retrieval, removing evil spirits and negative energies, overcoming curses, and using the powers of herbs and magical baths.