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SECRETS OF VOODOO
by Wesley M. Wilson
The author has made several trips through West Africa, studying local books in French about voodoo
Voodoo probably originated among the Ewé (Evhe ) of Togo, Benin, and nearby countries. Slaves brought it to Haiti, Brazil, and other countries. During several trips to West Africa, including travels there in seven countries, I have learned that their views about voodoo are considerably different from that of a typical American or European.
A typical American view is that voodoo is an evil form of magic, that its practitioners are often in a trance or a spell, that their priests or priestesses cast a spell, or bewitch, other people, to cause harm to them. West Africans claim that only part of those beliefs are true. They claim that their voodoo is good. It was modified by slaves in the Americas, where it was sometimes used to hurt slave owners or other enemies. West Africans say that sorcerers are their greatest enemies, because they use the power of voodoo to bring harm to others. In the Americas, "Whites" often confuse and mix voodoo and sorcery, because some practitioners of voodoo combined its powers with sorcery to bring harm to their enemies. Sorcery is the use of supernatural power over others through the assistance of spirits--similar to witchcraft. Americans and most Africans believe that sorcery is usually used for an evil purpose. Voodoo believes that a pair of twins created the world. One became good, a voodoo priest, the other became bad, a sorcerer. Afa (the messenger of divination) and the two twins have much control over the world. Nothing, such as strikes of lightning, happens by chance-- everything has a cause.
Togo, idol keeps evil spirits away from village Benin, dancing Legba "guardians" wear a cloak made of hay
Togo, live rooster before attacked Dead rooster after voodoo ceremony
Many traditional people throughout Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, and elsewhere believe that natural objects--rocks, hills, trees, etc.--have a conscious life of their own, a spirit. [See my Curious Customs and Bizarre Beliefs Around the World, summarized on this web site.] Animism is concerned with the supernatural and the power of nature and spirits. It is different from voodoo. Most Africans and many others follow various animistic beliefs. South of Africa’s Sahel, animistic beliefs have long been the most popular--far more popular than Christianity or Islam. There is some overlap among practices of voodoo, sorcery, and other animistic religions or beliefs.
Followers of voodoo in Africa usually have an idol, a concrete or stone mound only a few feet high, at the entrance to a village, to prevent evil spirits from entering the village. The idol has particular markings. Offerings to the gods are also made periodically in the forest at the edge of a village. I have watched voodoo ceremonies. As the crowd gathers, the high priest speaks, prays to the spirits, then pours red palm oil onto the ground, to feed the spirits. In the past blood was poured onto the ground. The drums begin to sound. Men women, youths, and girls dance. The drums are beaten faster and faster, louder and louder. A youth enters a trance, dancing like a drunk. A young woman may be next, constantly moving, waving her arms but in a relaxed fashion, like a person walking in her sleep. A rooster or sheep is brought to be sacrificed. A man holds it firmly around its body, the head faces another man who winds and unwinds a cord around a stick He advances within a few steps of the rooster or sheep, then retreats a few steps. This continues for several minutes, as drums beat louder and several dancers in a trance wobble drunkenly. The man continues to advance toward the rooster or sheep, making glaring threats with his eyes and face, winding and unwinding the cord around the stick. The head of the rooster or sheep sags and seems to be paralyzed. Upon checking, it sometimes revives. The man with the cord continues to intimidate and scare it. Some men and women dancers fall down, rolling the body and face into the dirt. Local people say that when a person is in a trance, "they are very strong. No one can stop them." Drums beat still louder and faster. More people dance. The rooster or sheep finally dies, and is sacrificed by cutting off its head. Does it die from fright? In Zanzibar, East Africa, I saw dancers thrust sticks, representing jinns, into the ground, to form a circle around the dancers. In the past they stuck swords into the ground. When I watched voodoo dances in Togo, and saw male and female dancers in a trance, local people said the jinn had entered their bodies.
West African villages hire several men, representing Legba, to dance in the village, usually weekly, to guard and protect the village from evil spirits. Each man wears a cloak made of hay bound together with cord, so not even his feet show. He looks like a dancing haystack. Sometimes the hay, thatched together as a unit, for a dancer is removed, he continues to dance. The hay is put back over him. Once, when it was removed again, the man was gone but only a male and a female doll were revealed. Another time, lifting the dancing haystack revealed only a duck. The performances looked convincing, like a performance by a good magician. Men on stilts, often longer than the man’s height, are common in African dances. Women in colorful skirts whirl fast in a circle, the body at an angle of at least 45 degrees, perhaps using inertia to defy gravity.
A voodoo dance is sometimes held at the harvest of corn or millet. Traditional people everywhere have a harvest dance or festival, and often have dances at planting time, when hunters or fishermen return, and at birth, initiation, marriage, and death ceremonies. Loud music, usually with drums, beaten faster and faster, are used to create a mood, a form of hypnosis, in many parts of the world. Alcohol or drugs may speed up the effect. North American Indians are among those who beat drums louder and faster, until they seem to be under the control of some occult force. Young people at a rock concert may also become hypnotized with the loud beat of the music.
The voodoo market near Lomé, Togo has 20 or more large booths, selling all kinds of gris gris fetishes--objects used by shaman. They include the skin and bones of several types of animals, skins of snakes, alligators bones, feathers and other parts of particular birds, cowry shells, stones, dolls, statues, and particular plants. The skulls are considered to be very important. Any object should be blessed by a shaman to be effective. On my first visit I paid a shaman, the proprietor of a booth, to explain how the objects are used. He explained that supernatural forces, including spirits of ancestors, may cause trouble. The supernatural forces are said to be created by Mahou, the Supreme Being. Mahou is said to have created some 600 deities, the spirits. Many represent natural phenomena, such as disease, thunder, or lightening. The cults worship specific deities. Only the deities can communicate with God. The shaman told me he can communicate with the great spirits. He explained how a stick held by a man is used to increase his virility, and a rock held by both a man and a woman is used for fertility. Two flat round stones rubbed on the head help make a child more intelligent and results in better memory for adults. Two small cowry shells on a stick are used to kill an enemy. Obi or Obeah is the Ewé goddess of evil. An Obeahman may use particular fetishes to get rid of an evil spell. They include a kind of blood, an alligator’s tooth, a parrot’s beak, dirt taken from a cemetery, balls of clay with feathers and a cord, and eggshells.
West Africans believe that "God" created hundreds of voodoo spirits or fetishes, each has supernatural power. Below them are the ancestors and priests. Priests (shamans) are the only humans who can communicate with the voodoo and the dead spirits. The fetishers help the priests in the rites. Each tribe worships a particular voodoo, often in a fetish temple. People make offerings to them to be blessed, such as when they want the birth of twins. They must also appease the evil force, Legba, often represented by a phallus, or bad things will happen. In Benin many believe that Agassou, a fetish of the Dahomey royal family, was born of the union of a woman and a talking animal. A person’s soul can be reincarnated, it can be influenced by the casting of a spell. Each newborn baby is believed to be the reincarnation of a deceased local person. When the baby is a week old the diviner (shaman) is asked to tell who that baby was. Benin’s Sacred Forest has many statues of voodoo gods, usually carved in wood. Voodoo is "based upon doing good." in life.
The bois bois dolls sold in the Lomé, Togo, fetish market, are used to harm an enemy, by giving the doll the enemy’s name, then rubbing it with hair, fingernail clippings, feces, an article of clothing, or anything else that was touched by the victim. The sorcerer then sticks pins into the dolls, like sticking nails into the victim. Bois bois dolls are also common in Caribbean countries. In the Marquesas Islands and many other traditional societies a chief or shaman carefully hides, burns, or buries any discarded personal item, including uneaten food and feces, to prevent a sorcerer from using it to get power over him. A powerful man, a sorcerer, is believed in Africa to eat others, just as in Europe some men are more powerful than others. In battles between traditional peoples the body of a dead warrior must be taken to a friendly place, so the enemy won’t get it to eat, or to torment the soul of the dead warrior.
Brazil’s huge Ver-O-Peso market in Belem, near the mouth of the Amazon, sells voodoo charms and dried snakes, plus dried alligator and animals skulls, for shamans and others. A macumba voodoo ceremony is held every few nights in Belem. In Senegal’s Ile de Goree, vultures circled overhead when our guide explained that spirits, the macumba, are said to live on the island. West Africa, Brazil, Haiti, and other places with former slaves still have frequent macumba ceremonies. Vultures were first attracted to the Ile de Goree by bodies buried in big hollow baobob trees. Now bodies are buried elsewhere.
In West Africa I heard that zombies have existed. Several local people, including my university- educated guides, said that a powerful drug given to an enemy takes away his memory but he may continue to live, like an automaton, for many years. There have been reports of zombies in Haiti. Investigators found that tetrodotoxin, a poison from a puffer fish, may have been injected into a victim. He appears to be dead and is buried in mud. The shaman then recovers the victim, exhumes him, gives him a herbal antidote, and sends the "zombie," an automaton, off to a life of slavery some distance away. When an Ewé baby is born it is believed to be the reincarnation of someone in the area who died. The shaman is asked to tell who the baby was in its prior life. Many traditional people, plus most Buddhists, believe in one or more rebirths after death. In Togo a young man and a young woman, both graduates of a local university, explained to me that there are several types of death: (1) someone killed in an auto or other accident is buried outside of the village, "they are not dead, and can be called back." (2) only those who die a natural death may be buried in the village. They said "a man was shot with bullets, but he was bulletproof." I also heard in several West African countries that my narrators had seen men and women cutting themselves deeply with a knife while in a voodoo trance, "but they didn’t bleed." My guides said "when the spirit comes, many people speak strange languages, they cut themselves, but no blood appears." Red represents blood, white and black are the other voodoo colors. My guides also said "we don’t have to understand how voodoo works, but it works." I bought several books and booklets in West Africa, describing voodoo. All are in French, but I am fluent in French. I have watched barefoot men walk through red-hot coals in several Asian and Pacific countries, they did not seem to be hurt. My wife, a physician, examined their feet and found little blisters on the toes, but they said there was no pain. Before the walk the men became hypnotized by using methods they learned in their Buddhist or Hindu religion.
In the past, voodoo followers were illiterate and agricultural. Several of my guides in West Africa were graduates of a local university, but they believed as strongly in voodoo as some Americans or Europeans believe in Christianity. It is common for "believers" of any religion to believe the god (or goddesses) of their religion is the supreme god, that followers of all other religions are misled.
Voodoo varies somewhat in different regions of West Africa. A family is expected to give one son to become an apprentice to learn voodoo, just as a family in many European countries was expected to provide a son to become a priest or a minister. Sometimes the novice is a girl, as some European girls became nuns. The Vodussi (advanced apprentice) novice lives with a new family, the Voduno, for most of the period of apprenticeship. In most places a novice must wear the same loin cloth (white or violet) for the apprenticeship of four months or more. Some voodoo masters prohibit the washing of that loincloth. If a Vodussi becomes sick, he/she must again wear a white loincloth. An apprentice must wear around the neck two Vodu-ka or cords--the first symbolizes that voodoo has possession of the apprentice, the second is a white cotton cord. My guides said "everyone in West Africa knows that he/she must marry within the social group to preserve the heredity of the voodoo cult." Vodoo followers believe it helps to preserve the equilibrium of the world. They believe "the sun is son of the sky and the sea, as he grows up and becomes hotter, he must be kept farther away."
In West Africa, the dieu de la foudra (god of lightning) of the Ewé has many common traits with the voodoo Heviesso of the Ouatchi in Ghana and Togo. Heviesso is also called Yephe or Hu. The forest is associated with danger and solitude. Hu-mena means that everyone must keep the secret of voodoo. Huka means the placenta, the vital force that accompanies a baby to be among the living. Mawu is the highest divinity in the religious hierarchy of the Ouatchi. Dâ, symbolized by a rainbow, is the voice like thunder of Heviesso. The Dâ, in the form of a serpent, is believed to have the capacity to bring lightning. The serpent and lightning are two of the symbols of voodoo. Feasts honoring Heviesso include sacrificing a ram to Afa (the god in charge of divination); 10 days before, the songs of Dâ are sung. Agbui (also called Dossu or Avlekete) is the voodoo of the sea, and the wife of Heviesso. The followers of Agbui wear bizarre torn clothes. She keeps Heviesso calm so he doesn’t kill people with lightning. Afa is also called voodoo, Afa is said to have helped the twins and the chameleon "create the world." Legba is a guardian, a messenger, a haystack, who enforces the decisions of voodoo and Afa. Legba’s symbol is the dog, a watchdog, or a phallus. Adanu are sacred objects are "instruments of rage" of voodoo. They include the cymbals, ax of voodoo (used to cut victims in two parts after their death), the sobi or flash of lightning, the vhudi or little drum, and the Sokpe or prehistoric flint rocks. On the new year, the Ouatchi pray for long life, good health, and more money. They want prosperity for the fields and market. (See Heviesso et le bon Ordre du Monde, by Bruno Gilli, published in Lomé and Les Trois Héros de Ouidah, by Eric Adja, published in Belgium)
Obi or Obeah is the goddess of evil, in the black magic cult. Local people believe there are many supernatural forces, including spirits of ancestors, that may cause trouble. They are said to be created by Mahou, the Supreme Being. A shaman is said to communicate with great spirits, such as Dan, Egou, and Hébiesso.
In West Africa, voodoo includes much more than religious beliefs, it includes the way of life. Herbs that purify or heal are voodoo. Hot herbs are spicy, cool or fresh herbs are to appease and purify, they are used in ritual ablutions. The ram, rooster, and leopard are the sacred animals, also two kinds of fish--silure or silurid, and a particular fish that puffs up and escapes when bit. Those sacred fish are not eaten. The crocodile is king of the water, vodoo followers don’t eat them. The big "croc" is sacred, as in the Western Pacific. The rooster is powerful in its head and its cry, dancers imitate flapping the rooster’s wings. A wooden figure with a human head at each end is a symbol of voodoo, representing the twins who are believed to have created everything.
Believers in voodoo say sorcery is an annoyance, but the Ouatchi priests say they "won’t let sorcerers destroy the world." If a sorcerer has children, "one is sure to become a sorcerer." The Vodussi are also required to initiate at least one of their children into voodoo. A sickness, mental or physical, also "can destroy an individual slowly, like sorcery." Voodoo seeks the submission of the individual to maintain the social order and cosmic order. The sorcerer also seeks submission, but for personal egotistical reasons. Voodoo "can kill the sorcerer, the recalcitrant, and those who don’t keep their promises, it can harm an entire family if it does not insist that one of the family follow voodoo." Anyone "killed" by voodoo in West Africa can lose his/her property, and becomes a social outcast, a sort of animal. Some people promote discord or quarrels (ke-to), Africans believe it doesn’t happen just by chance, but "there are forces of union and forces of disunion."
The supreme being, Mawu (Mahou), cannot be contacted directly, he has helpers. The helpers are more important, they do the work. Togo’s National Monument honors independence, after many years of French occupation. A topless woman holding a lamp high is on the top of the monument. The more important part, however, the base, shows only Mahou’s helpers, not Mahou. Voodoo, like the village chief, has legislative and executive power. Voodoo punishes, directly or indirectly, individually for an individual’s mistake, or a group for a group’s mistake. In Africa, several of my guides said "anything done following tradition is well done and will succeed, it maintains the social order." The voodoo religion is like an ancestor, it is one reason for the adhesion of a social group. West Africans believe that "God" created hundreds of voodoo spirits or fetishes, each has supernatural power. Below them are the ancestors and priests. Priests are the only humans who can communicate with the voodoo and the dead spirits. Only the deities can communicate with God. The fetishers help the priests in the rites. Each tribe worships a particular voodoo, often in a fetish temple. People make offerings to them to be blessed, such as by the birth of twins. They must also appease the evil force, Legba, or bad things will happen. In Benin many believe that Agassou, a fetish of the Dahomey royal family, was born of the union of a woman and a talking animal.
A German traveler in Togo in 1884, Hugo Zöeller, reported that the fetish sanctuary was in Bé, just west of Lomé, where the fetish market is today. Zöeller reported that both local males and women had to be nude to visit it, also white men, but white women were not permitted there. The many idols were well made and protected by a small roof. Snakes, crocodiles, and leopards were sacred objects, a local person who killed one had to pay. Zöeller’s porters did not want to go through the forest at night, they were afraid of the devil, Legba. Zöeller also reported that the Ewé call the supreme god Mawu, the Yoruba (in Nigeria) call him Olorun. They have many other divinities, all of nature. They believed that Mawu is so good "we don’t need to pay any attention to him," but they offered sacrifices to the devil or devils, to prevent harm. Is that a more practical point of view than followers of many other religions, who make offerings only to the "good" god? The local people believed White Man is more like the devil.
Serpents, especially the python (Zöeller called it a "boa"), were worshipped. Ouidah, Benin, had the temple of serpents. White men killed snakes "but local people never did," Zöeller reported. (See Le Togo en 1884, Selon Hugo Zöeller, published in Lomé.) Pythons are an important part of the voodoo cult. A snake swallowing its own tail represents the continuity of life.
Voodoo apprentices are expected to live alone awhile in the forest, to commune with nature. Voodoo believes that a person’s spirit may be taken when he stays alone for three months in a forest, so the apprentice makes an idol, as a home for his spirit. When he becomes a priest, anyone with a problem goes to him. My guides said if anyone makes a promise to the voodoo priest (such as to pay him on a certain date) he must keep it "or there are serious problems."
The voodoo priests and priestesses, in Africa, Papua New Guinea, and elsewhere have an elaborate hierarchy or pecking order. Those with greater status or experience in Papua New Guinea wear feathers of a particular color. A graduate of a period of voodoo apprenticeship gets a new name and the day of graduation is considered to be the day of his/her birth. If an apprentice learning voodoo dies, no one but a Huno or older Vodussi may touch the corpse. Any spectators at the funeral rites must turn the back to the corpse. The drums must be played and the body buried at night. Three years later the parents, to protect their future, must give the Huno six bottles of palm wine, to perform a ceremony.
In Africa ju ju priests are often found in public markets. They sell fetishes and charms. They often appear to be only a few cowry shells, glued to a stick, or made into a necklace. To be effective, I was told they must be first blessed by a ju ju priest. Africans have much faith in the ju ju priests and their charms and fetishes. They are said to protect the wearer from all kinds of evil. If the wearer touches a ju ju charm, then touches a lover seven times, he/she "will be yours."
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Last modified: 25 Oct.., 2006
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