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THE VOODOO CULT
The slaves deportation brought from the Africa gods and cults up to the South America and the West Indies . So it was in these regions that started a secular struggle in order to establish the content and form of a religion which started early to be transformed under the pressure of the dominating classes. The planters and the slave traders had interest to Christianize the deported Africans to let them more docile.
It is in that context that voodoo is born. It is a mixture of Yoruba deities with the figures of the Old Testament, a new interpretation of the character of the holy Christians, a Christian denomination of African deities, and finally, an establishment of the moral criteria according to a divine image apparently opposed to the Christian image.
The starting point of that movement is Dahomey (the present-day Benin ). In their new fatherland, the deported people baptized their gods “Rada” according to the name of their village of origin, Arada. If the American situation is henceforth among the major interests of the anthropologists and theoreticians of religion, the African origins start rising also the attention.
While studying the religion of the Yoruba of Nigeria, science discovered a spiritual and fascinating world, whose intelligence and originality Europe and America have largely under-estimated. We recognized divine concepts, which had been the attribute of the great civilizations of antiquity. The Afro-American syncretism shows in its manifestations of buffoon surrealism elements revealed in Europe by Freud, Adler or Jung.
The voodoo movement is rooted once again on the African western coast thanks to uprooted Africans who came back home as foreigners to their homeland. A great religion which left Africa early some centuries came back home modified, falsified, degenerated, but always alive and with passionate dynamism.
African gods were mixed to the holy spirits of the Christian Church, and the religious symbols had taken in the Christian as well as in the African spirit a totally new acceptation.
[The African form of voodoo is then the origin and the temporary outcome of religious evolution, which does not have its equal in the world.
To grasp it, one has to know certain data of the Yoruba traditional religion.
a) THE FETISH
In the traditional circles of the Yoruba people of Nigeria, the notion of fetish is negative. It is current in the French speaking countries of the western coast and expanded with the adepts of the animistic and voodoo religions. It is in this African meaning that I will use the word fetish.
The fetishes are comparable to the Orishas of the Yoruba. They are neither gods nor men, minerals, plants, but participate to all this.
A fetish can be god as it can be a human being; it can be a plant, animal, and substance according to the ritual situation he encounters. As the say goes, in the early times, every human being carried in him a part of divinity, and gods participate to a man state.
The task of the ritual is to strengthen or active these elements so that man could have the possibility to reach the deity for a given time.
b) THE TRANCE
It constitutes the key situation and permits to human being to participate to the divinity. It is also in the state of trance that is realized the human part of god. When the ritual had successfully attracted the deity, the dancer looses his identity in favor of the god.
c) VOODOO DEITIES
They are identical to the fetishes and to the Orishas. They can be hostile, contrary to the Europeans divine representations, because they gather in them the different aspects of their physical and metaphysical existence.
The Voodoo deities are derived from God the Creator Mawu, considered as a whole, without the distinction between good and bad. The Voodoo deities have powerful auto-dynamism, which can either help men, or be prejudicial to them. They live a proper life, which can also be directed against men.
d) THE SACRIFICE
It is an essential condition to establish good relation with the fetishes, the Orishas, Voodoo deities. The Voodoo deities have a human aspect. They claim food and drinks, tobacco, and perfume. Some require the blood of the victim animals; others are quite “spiritual” to enjoy especially songs and dances. The sacrifice is a part of the ritual and starts with the invocation of deities.
The adept of Voodoo lives like the Yoruba in his world, which can not distinguish the physical from the metaphysical. Both elements are closely linked and can be understood only when they are together. The world of the human beings and the one of the deities are interwoven and the divine aspect of men allows them to go beyond the threshold of the metaphysics. The awareness of that possibility gives him strength and trust.
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