The ultimate — what this line takes as final
B
Bondye.
He made everything, including the lwa, and then delegated. No temple, no offering, no song, no drum, no possession. Haitians will explain without embarrassment that Bondye is too great to be troubled about a specific person's rent, and that this is precisely why there are lwa.
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Gods & powers — the presences it names and addresses
P
Papa Legba — the gate.
Old man of the crossroads: without his leave no lwa passes, so every ceremony begins by asking him to open the way.
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D
Danbala.
The great white serpent, the oldest and coolest of the Rada, whose wife Ayida is the rainbow. When he comes into a body the person drops to the ground, cannot speak, and hisses; they are given a raw egg on a mound of flour and take it with their mouth. His colour is white and he does not tolerate disorder.
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E
Erzulie — love, twice.
Freda, love's luxury and its tears; Dantor, the fierce single mother with a dagger — love's two true faces, served separately.
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O
Ogou.
Iron, war, machetes, rum, cigars and politics. He is the lwa of the revolution and of every Haitian government that followed it, and when he mounts someone he is furious and frequently correct — Ogou arrives to say who has betrayed whom, and Haitians take that seriously as political commentary.
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B
Baron Samedi — death, laughing.
The dandy of the cemetery: obscene, hilarious, and final — and therefore the healer of last resort, since death must consent to every cure.
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E
Ezili Freda.
She arrives beautiful, is washed and perfumed and dressed in pink, is given cake, champagne and jewellery, flirts with everyone, and then begins to weep because nothing is sufficient and never will be. Every service she attends ends the same way, and it is understood as an accurate account of a certain kind of longing.
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E
Ezili Dantò.
The other Ezili: dark, scarred, a working mother with a daughter, a knife, and no capacity for speech — the sound she makes is ke-ke-ke, because her tongue was cut. She is served with fried pork and unsweetened black coffee. Where Freda wants to be adored, Dantò defends, and she is the lwa of women who are managing alone.
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Ancestors & spirits — the dead, the local, the household
T
The Gede.
The dead as a crowd — Bawon Samdi in his top hat, Manman Brijit, and dozens of others. They arrive filthy and obscene, wear dark glasses with a lens missing, drink raw rum steeped with the hottest peppers available, dance the banda, and insult everyone present. They are also the lwa most often asked to save a sick child.
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L
Lemò — your own dead.
Served before the lwa in most households, by name, with a candle and a glass of water. A dead relative who has not been fed is understood to cause exactly the sort of trouble a living one would, and the obligation is ordinary rather than solemn.
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Adversaries — named in order to be refused
T
The one who works with both hands.
Vodou has no devil, so wrongdoing has to be attributed to people. A bòkò is a practitioner who will take money to do harm — and the distinction between the oungan who serves with the right hand and the bòkò who uses both is drawn by practitioners themselves, argued about, and not always clear from outside.
⚖ contested within
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The shared center — held across the tradition
You serve; you do not worship.
The verb is servi. Vodouwizan say they serve the lwa, and the relationship is described in the language of obligation, contract and family duty rather than adoration. A lwa that is served properly delivers; one that is neglected causes trouble, in the way a slighted relative does.
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Bondye is far; the lwa are near.
God made the world and does not micromanage it — the lwa handle the particulars, and it is with them one works.
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The lwa have nations.
They are grouped into nanchon. Rada are cool, ancient, Dahomean in origin, patient and correct; Petwo are hot, quick, created in the Caribbean out of the conditions there, and effective. It is not good against evil — the same person serves both, and there are situations that only a Petwo lwa will deal with.
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Possession is communion, not affliction.
The lwa arrive by riding their servants — the horse lends the body, the community meets the spirit face to face.
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The dead are the first obligation.
Lemò come before the lwa in most household practice. The family dead are fed, spoken to, and expected to look after their descendants, and the funeral is not the end of the arrangement but the beginning of a new stage of it.
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To serve is the religion.
Sèvis: the lwa are fed, saluted, danced, and honored — and in return they hold up the lives of those who serve.
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A person has more than one soul.
The gwo bonanj is the animating self and the ti bonanj is the conscience or the spark. The gwo bonanj is displaced when a lwa mounts, which is why the horse has no memory. At death it must be separated from the body and later recovered from the waters — and it can be interfered with, which is what a zonbi is.
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Ginen is under the water.
The ancestral homeland, Africa, is located below the sea, and the dead go there for a year and a day before being drawn back up. A religion made by people who were carried across an ocean in ships put the place they came from at the bottom of it.
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The saints and the lwa share images.
Ogou is Saint James on a horse; Danbala is Saint Patrick because of the snakes; Ezili Dantò is the Black Madonna of Częstochowa, whose lithograph reached Haiti with Polish soldiers who deserted to the revolution. Whether this began as camouflage or as recognition is argued about, and practitioners generally decline the question.
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There is no devil in this.
No adversary of Bondye, no principle of evil, no hell. There is harm, and harm has a source — a person who paid for it, a neglected obligation, an ancestor who was not fed. The problem is always somebody's conduct, which is a considerably more uncomfortable theology than a devil.
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Contested within — affirmed by some schools, refused by others
Vodou is not the word.
In Haiti the word names a particular dance and rhythm; the religion is what you do, and people say they serve the lwa. Voodoo in English is an American invention of the occupation years and means something Haitians do not recognise, which is why the spelling of the word is itself a political position.
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Cosmos & Afterlife
how reality is built, and what follows deathAfter death
The dead cross beneath the waters; ancestors return in the family