Preview

Voodoo In Haiti

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1253 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Voodoo In Haiti
Voodoo is portrayed as a dark religion, but in reality it’s not. Voodoo has been practiced for hundreds of years and it all started in haiti, which is known as the home of voodoo. It’s been a crutch for many African Americans and slaves when they had nothing else to turn to. Although Voodoo originated in Haiti and was mainly practiced by African Americans. It is now practiced by millions of people of all races all throughout the world.
The dominant religion of Haiti is voodoo (Corbett). Haitian voodoo is also called Sevis Gineh or “African Service” (“About Haitian Voodoo.”). “Voodoo is a creolized religion forged by descendents of Dahomean, Kongo, Yoruba, and other African ethnic groups who had been enslaved and brought to colonial Saint-Domingue
…show more content…
Lwa, are the various spirits of the family members: the spirits of the major forces of the universe-good, evil, reproduction, health, and all aspects of daily life. They will interact with people of the earth and “mount” onto people during religious ceremonies and give messages. Iwas can even cause good or bad things to happen to the people (Corbett). “In Haiti, during the days of slavery, while performing their religious ceremonies, the slaves honored the ancestral Spirits of all the ethnic groups living on the plantation.” “The Lwa were given to us to act as intermediaries between humans and Bondye.” Lwa are mostly ancestors, and some are older than others (“Lwa”). The twin spirits are known as the Marassa of the voodoo faith. (“Marassa”) “A curious and rather mysterious set of forces of contradictories: good and evil, happy and sad etc.” If they are honored in a religious service, they will help you have a better side of life (Corbett). They are small children, but they are wise and powerful. The twins are considered to be the first children of God (“Marassa”). The dead are mainly the souls of family members who have passed but not yet been “reclaimed” by the family. Dead family members that are ignored are dangerous, but honored and cared for family members will help (Corbett). Baron Samedi is a Loa of the dead, and head of the Ghede family of Loa, possibly even their spiritual father. Baron is known under other incarnations such as, Baron Cimetiere, Baron La Croix, and Baron Kriminel (Lawrence). Danballah Wedo, The Great Serpent, is considered to be the primordial creator of all life forms, and also carries all of the ancestors on his back, which makes him our first ancestor. A nanchon is a group of spirits that are specific to an area of West Africa, where they originated. During the days of slavery in Haiti, the slaves would honor the ancestral spirits of all the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Essay On Haiti

    • 500 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Haiti is part of the Caribbean, the Caribbean is a region that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands, and the surrounding coasts. Haiti is known for its food, dances, and music. Around the 1980s Haiti was known for their best coffee. I know that Haiti had went through a terrible earthquake January, 12, 2010. Haiti is a unique country because it is the first Black Country to have independence.…

    • 500 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In chapter 13 zombies was a popular myth in Haiti; and was believed to be people who die and are called back to life by witchcraft. This chapter talks about Zora’s personal experiences in Haiti and Jamaica where she participated as in initiate rather than just an observer of voodoo practices. During her visits she stayed with several types of voodoo priests. (Houngans and Bocors) She witnessed various ceremonies with her own eyes. The religion is a mishmash of Christian and African elements. Often after reciting a Catholic litany of saints, a litany of loas (voodoo gods) is chanted as well. The voodoo gods are separated into the Rada or Arada gods (the good ones) and the Petros gods (the evil one). Zora never says if raising the dead is done…

    • 305 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Voodoo Research Paper Topics

    • 2298 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Voodoo is a religion like many others. Voodoo has fallen victim to persecution and tagged with a negative connotation due to misconceptions and poor education about various religions found throughout the world. It is a religion that is divided like many other religions.…

    • 2298 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Voodoo Religion In Haiti

    • 280 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Haitian Voodoo, or properly referred to as Vodou, is characterized by various ritual ceremonies, typically called a “Service to the Loa” often translated to “African Service”. Vodou is typically described as more than just a religion and instead more of an experience that connects the body and soul. The popularized concept of connecting a soul to a tangible object in the Vodou practice is derived from the Congolese tradition of Kanga in which a similar act is performed. Vodouisants believe there is an esoteric Supreme Creator by the name of Bondye. According to the religion Bondye arbitrate in the practices of man in this way they present their…

    • 280 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mama Lola

    • 698 Words
    • 3 Pages

    I found Karen McCarthy Brown’s Mama Lola to be an innovative and intimate “ethnographic spiritual biography” exploring the lived realities, material and immaterial, of a Haitian Voudou priestess and her family in New York City from the late 1970’s through the 1980’s. (xiv) Brown’s approach is innovative because she treats her subjects’ as multi­vocal and fluid. Brown heeds her own advice and contrary to most ethnographic scholars before her, appropriately represents her own, albeit limited, voice, and positionality as similarly multiplicitous and in flux, reciprocally performing “meaning­making” with Alourdes and family. Brown’s many voices aptly declare numerous interrelated aims, including “to describe as fully and accurately ... Alourdes’ day­to­day practice of Haitian Vodou”, to “plant images of quotidian Vodou practice in the minds of thinking people, images that would linger and soften the formulaic association of Vodou with the superstitious and the satanic”, and to portray “Vodou embedded in the vicissitudes of particular lives.” (xv, xiv, 15)…

    • 698 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Mama Lola Book Review

    • 2103 Words
    • 9 Pages

    This book talks about Mama Lola life and family heritage and how she becomes a healer in the Vodou religion. Marie Therese Alourdes Macena Champagne Lovinski or known as Mama Lola to everyone. She is the most famous Vodou priestess in the United States. The ethnographic book was written by Karen McCarthy who came in contact with Mama Lola in the 70’s and came very interested in the culture of Haitian Vodou. McCarthy becomes part of Mama Lola’s family and documents her life and her past. McCarthy wanted to learn about the Vodou culture, how it operates, who the spirits in the culture are and how you can please them. But her ultimate goal in this research is to find out how Vodou is a religion and how people relate to the culture. Mama Lola has become an important spiritual leader with the practice of Vodou in the United States where she lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.…

    • 2103 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Many people think that Voodoo is an evil practice. That it is about nothing but curses and shrunken heads. Well, that is far from the truth.…

    • 546 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Language Practicum In Haiti

    • 3993 Words
    • 16 Pages

    Bondye gives powers to the “loa” which are involved in human affair. Each “loa” is associated with a catholic saint and a natural element. The natural elements are fire, water, air and earth. The “loa” may be good or evil. The name of the good “loa” is known as the Rada the evil is known as the Petro. The Rada is considered to be protective and generous. Petro “loas” are demanding, malevolent and aggressive. People who follow the religion of voodoo pray to their God the “loa”. Followers may set up alters dedicated to their “loa”. They usually place pictures or figures of their “loa” on alter. Sacrifices and offerings are also offered done on alter.…

    • 3993 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    People make pilgrimages to a series of holy sites. Those sites became popular in association with manifestations of saints and are marked by unusual geographic features such as the waterfall at Saut d'Eau, the most famous of sacred sites. Waterfalls and certain species of large trees are especially sacred because they are believed to be the homes of spirits and the conduits through which spirits enter the world of living humans. For practitioners, or Vodouisans, Vodou rituals are part of a philosophy that ties individuals to society, their community, and the environment. Death and the Afterlife. Beliefs concerning the afterlife depend on the religion of the individual. Strict Catholics and Protestants believe in the reality of reward or punishment after death. Practitioners of voodoo assume that the souls of all the deceased go to an abode "beneath the waters," that is often associated with lafrik gine ("L'Afrique Guinée," or Africa). Concepts of reward and punishment in the afterlife are alien to…

    • 436 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Most of the Haitian population was originally from Africa, which supports the transformation from the Kongo culture to Haitian Vodou. The Encyclopedia of Global Religion reads, “What is distinctive about Haitian Vodou additionally is that it incorporated the powerful systems of the Bakongo [Kongo] peoples in Central Africa.”21 In addition, Paul Gardullo writes in his review of Donald Consentino’s Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, “The roles of various spirit repositories and containers or Paket Kongo are described, as well as their ties to Nkisi, their Kongo counter-parts.”22 The most distinct similarity between these two objects are their relations with the spirits they ‘hold.’ Both minkisi and paket kongos can help someone communicate between the spiritual and living world in each of their respective cultures. They both have a master ritualist that uses that communication with the spirits to assist their clients. And finally, many paket kongos are tied with a crucifix atop the container, shown in figure 2. Not only is this another example of the Haitian Vodou…

    • 2964 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Yorùbá Religion

    • 1011 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In the early eighteenth century the Spanish Catholic church allowed for the creation of societies called cabildos, modeled on religious guilds existing in Spain, which were primarily for African ethnicities and provided means for entertainment and reconstruction of many aspects of ethnic heritage. Yorùbá slaves practiced Yorùbá religious ceremonies in these cabildos, along with religious and secular traditions from other parts of Africa, combining and amalgamating their masters' pantheon of Catholic saints with their own pantheon of Orisha which is the Yorùbá word for god” (www.newworldencyclopedia.org). The Yorùbá religion is formed of a combination of various traditions; after the slave trade these traditions spread in various countries and Cuba was one of them. The Yoruba religion was adopt within the Cuban community and the religion of Santeria or La Regla Lucumí (Lukumí) was born. Santería practices, songs, dance, initiations, and rituals. Also, when reciting prayers of the religion, the sacred language of Lucumí is…

    • 1011 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Chiefdom Of Haiti

    • 691 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Haiti has had political violence for most of its history. Haiti went through a series of occupations by the U.S. , and been ruled by dictators François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and “Baby Doc,” his son. During that time, an 30,000 Haitians were killed for being rebels against the Duvalier rule. The country had a few months of democratic rule with President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was overthrown in a sudden seizure of the government that led to help by the United Nations.…

    • 691 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Voodoo is an ancient religion with a belief in one Supreme Being. Bonyde, the unknown and uninvolved being, created the whole universe. (Radford, 2013). Damballah, the serpent god of the sky created the…

    • 859 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Smallpox Research Paper

    • 2054 Words
    • 9 Pages

    The island of Haiti was first inhabited by Taino Natives the most advanced Indians in all of the Caribbean. While in Haiti around 1496, before Columbus returned to Spain he told his brother Bartolome to do a headcount of all Natives on the island. Bartolome reported that there was ~1.1 million male adults; he didn’t count children and females. It’s safe to say there used to be about 3 million people. Some researchers argued that there was up to eight million natives in Haiti at the time of Columbus’s arrival. Also, Spanish brought slaves to Haiti in 1507. Slave ships were notorious for being extremely dirty and disease ridden. The Spanish claimed that slaves brought smallpox that infected the native’s tribes on Haiti. Small pox swept through the Haiti mercilessly killing millions. By 1517, 26,000 Taino were alive, and then by 1542, that number reduced to about two-hundred Taino. Documents say Taino went extinct in Haiti two decades…

    • 2054 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Voodoo

    • 548 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Population | 161,083,804 (July 2012 est.) | Age structure | 0-14 years: 33.6% (male 27,489,425/female 26,705,051) 15-24 years: 18.8% (male 14,079,450/female 16,124,609) 25-54 years: 37.2% (male 28,328,628/female 31,625,777) 55-64 years: 5.6% (male 4,627,372/female 4,413,711) 65 years and over: 4.8% (male 3,763,528/female 3,926,253) (2012 est.)…

    • 548 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays