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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