Thoughts about Vodou

I don’t use this blog nearly enough. This year, I hope to change that. If there are specific topics that you might be interested in me posting about, please contact me (andezo at gmail dot com) and let me know! I’m collecting ideas to make this a much more regular space. Social media, which is useful for short-term and breaking news, is becoming increasingly less useful for talking about bigger subjects, and it’s time to return to the long form.

Today marks seven years from the major earthquake that killed many people in Haiti, including some of my own family members. Time continues its march forward. Some things change, some things don’t change. Haiti has (yet another) new president, but no less controversy. The US continues to meddle in Haitian affairs. The UN, which suddenly issued an apology for its causing the cholera epidemic post-earthquake (but most likely only because the outgoing secretary is thinking about a presidential run in Korea and wants to look good), sent more peacekeepers to the country this week, but didn’t bother to vaccinate them against cholera until a public outcry was made – and now only they are treated. (Nothing at all has been done for the Haitians who live where they are).

It’s heartbreaking and frustrating and rage-inducing to know what’s going on in Haiti (to be fair, we’ve got those feelings about places outside Haiti currently as well, don’t we?). It becomes a serious effort to stay focused and not let it get you into a pit of despair and anger that does nothing at all except feed on itself.

But that effort is important. It is perhaps even more important when the stakes are this high. Stay informed. Read from many sources. Check your sources. Check them again. Learn about what’s going on behind the clickbait and the headlines. Get out of your comfort zone. To borrow a phrase from the justice movements in the US: stay woke. Remind yourself and your world: we’re here. We’re not going anywhere. We will continue. Strength makes them see.

 

PS: I’ll be appearing at Paganicon 2017, and am also one of the sponsors of the Pagans of Color & Allies suite that will be open during the event. We’ll have Vodou programming among many other things. Join us if you can.

Nels at Pagan Newswire Collective Minnesota interviewed me last week, in advance of my appearance as one of the guests of honor at Paganicon in Minneapolis, March 18-20, 2016.

It was a long but very positive conversation. We got to talk about Vodou, what brought me to it, and how I think Haitian Vodou is the most valuable Western Hemispheric spiritual experience for many reasons other than why one might want to practice it. We also chatted about cultural relations, the problems and challenges of appropriation and privilege in such relations, religious experiences in a multicultural society, how activism and religious practice are and aren’t related, and other deep subjects. I enjoyed the interview thoroughly – it’s not often I get to talk about all those things at once! – and hope that you will enjoy reading it.

You can read a transcript of our discussion at the PNC website. I’m looking forward to meeting many new people and having a good experience at the convention. Hope to see you there!

Another New Year’s Day is upon us, and it’s time for soup joumou. (Why? You can read about that in a previous New Year’s post, here.) You can also sing the Joumou rap with Haitian Jonas, here. These two things always make me smile.

What also makes me smile, is the knowledge that I’ll be in Haiti again in a week’s time. It’s been ten years, even before the quake that changed everything. Some things of course haven’t changed much – suspended government and a “president” ruling by emergency decree, MINUSTAH still not taking a damn bit of responsibility or concern for causing a cholera epidemic. But I’m sure others have. All the little kids in the lakou will be teenagers now. I won’t get to see my godmother (who died in the quake) or my maman hounyo (who died later), and a few other people who have passed. Coming home is well overdue, bittersweet, but good. See you soon, Ayiti.

And I’ll be back to post about it sooner than I did last year.

A current trending topic among friends and colleagues is the discussion of sacrifice and its place in religious practice. Far more eloquent people than myself have said some excellent things. I’ve been asked to share my own thoughts, and I’d like to offer an excerpt on this topic from a book I wrote a couple of years ago as my response. It’s still as relevant now as it was then, or when I was asked to speak on a panel about the topic at PantheaCon last February. It’s a long read, but I think it will be helpful.

Excerpted from HAITIAN VODOU, Chapter 3: Sacrifices in Vodou

Getting back to Haitian Vodou, we address perhaps the largest confusion and/or controversy that outsiders to the tradition will confront: the nature of sacrifice, and particularly animal sacrifice. The Lwa of Haitian Vodou request, and are given, many things as offerings or gifts as part of their ceremonies and service. Some Lwa want special candles or tangible objects like perfume, mirrors, or drums. Some Lwa might demand various drinks, from cool water to fiery kleren (pronounced kleh-REN, a high-proof, raw rum). Still other Lwa want various kinds of foods including fruits, vegetables, fancy pastries, breads, candies, and specially prepared dinners. Very few of our Lwa are vegetarians, and most of our Lwa eat meat, just as most Vodouisants eat meat. Remember that the practice of vegetarianism, or other decisions about what to eat or not eat, are generally considered luxuries in a country where food shortages and famines are far too frequent.

There’s a Haitian proverb:

mambo (houngan) pa travay pou gran mesi
“Mambo (Houngan) doesn’t work for a big thank you.”

This means not only that good mambos or houngans aren’t doing spiritual work for the adulation of the millions, or for the show of it – but also that they don’t work for free.

There is a distinct difference between charging for one’s time/effort/materials and the prices I see some people charging for their services. I have seen variances of hundreds of percent. I know a houngan who charges less than $50 for a reading that takes him the better part of a day to prepare for; I know another who spends considerably less time, charges several hundred – and gets it.

Is there a difference between charging and overcharging, or is every Vodouisant who asks to be paid for his or her work a bad person?

You get what you pay for, and what you pay for something is not always in money, whether in Haiti or anywhere else.

I cannot attest to knowing a single initiate, “good” or “bad,” who works for absolutely nothing in return, even if that payment is non-monetary in origin.  Everything costs something to somebody.  There is no such thing as free when it comes to the spirits.  If it doesn’t cost you in dollars, it’s going to cost you attention, work, effort or maybe even responsibility.  It WILL cost you something, period.

This is not a bad thing at all.  It is the way the entire universe works.  The Lwa themselves cut deals with people and each other, and sometimes those deals are sealed with money.  If Metres Mambo Ezili Freda tells me that the work I want her to do for me is going to cost me a party I have to pay for in her honor, does that mean she’s a fraud too?  After all, the grocery store isn’t going to accept my undying love and thanks in return for all that champagne and cake…

What I have learned over the years is the sign of a good mambo or houngan that can be seen in the way they price their services is that the good ones ALWAYS work with each individual and that individual’s personal circumstances.

If you really need work done but you cannot afford it, ethical Vodouisants will arrange payment plans,  scale down the work or accept lesser payment.  Sometimes they’ll let you pay for work later, or pay for it in forms that aren’t monetary, if their own finances allow it, and sometimes if they don’t, if Spirit tells them to.

Additionally, during the entire process, they will be honest and up front with you about costs.  If something is going to cost more than it was estimated, they’ll explain why and quickly. You won’t suddenly be told after you have invested in a reading or a work that suddenly it’s now going to cost you another (insert ridiculous amount here), or suddenly that there are MORE problems than the original reading/work revealed that (surprise!) require yet more money.

Just like if you were shopping for a dentist or a guy to fix your plumbing, you have to be savvy.  Ask any potential Vodouisant you are considering to hire to do magical work on your behalf for estimates on that work.  Comparison shop.  Talk to their clients, both the satisfied ones and the unsatisfied ones.   The “good” mambos and houngans sort themselves out fairly quickly if you do this for yourself.

Enough rant for one night, but this is a subject that irritates me on both its extremes:  the one extreme where people think that the more you pay for something the better it must be AND the other extreme, where money is evil and anyone who wants or needs it must also be evil.

People should not assume that just because they paid $2000 for something it’s guaranteed to work when only Bondye can guarantee anything, or, conversely, that a houngan who can barely feed his kids is “bad” if he asks for $50 to spend the next three days working on your problem.  Both extremes are far from the truth.