Language of the Blues - Edmonton Blues Society

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Vodun posits a supreme creator who is an all-powerful, yet unknowable, creative force.
The Dahomey (Fon) people of Benin represent this creator as a giant snake named Dan
that supports the universe with its coils. Today, in Haiti and in American Vodou
strongholds such as New Orleans, Dan is worshipped as Damballah, the Grand Zombie.
Below this almighty God, spirit-gods called loa (or lwa) rule over such matters as family,
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made to the appropriate loa to ensure success in those Severine
Singh explained
in Voodoo Crossroads.
efer to the whole Vodoun universe, as in
priestess and author of Vodou Visions: An Encounter With Divine Mystery 369
Propitiating the loa is a daily spiritual practice for adherents to the Vodou faith. Families
keep representations of favorite loa in the home and make offerings to them. When
Vodou practitioners gather to perform their ceremonies, however, the goal is no longer
simply to propitiate the loa. The goal is to experience possession by a loa, in order to
The state of possession in Vodou is not the demon-possession that has been portrayed by
Hollywood movies, but rather the same state of union with the divine that is the goal of
Pentacostal Christian tradition, reaching the Buddhist state of nirvana, or attaining the
samadhi.
The chanting, drumming, singing, and dancing of Vodou ceremonies are efforts to reach
higher levels of consciousness. The priest or priestess attempts to invoke the loa to
descend the centerpost of the hounfour(temple) and possess or
congregation. A god will descend to ride the body of the worshipper who is prepared to
attain a state of ecstatic union with the divine. The morality implicit in this is stated in the
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Vodun was transplanted to the to the Americas and the Carribean when the Dahomey
conquered their neighbors, the Ewe, in 1729 and sold prisoners to the slave ships, in trade
for European goods. Many people from Dahomey were also kidnapped and traded into
slavery. Some of the captured were priests who found themselves en route to French and
Spanish colonies in the Carribean. 371
Although they were barred on penalty of death from practicing their religion, enslaved
priests in the largely Catholic West Indies quickly grasped the similarity between their
tradition of appealing to loa to intercede in their favor with God, and Catholics praying to
their saints for similar intercession. By superimposing Catholic saints over their loa, they
created a hybrid religion, known as Santeria (saint worship) in the Spanish Islands and
Vodou in Haiti.
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