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#1106: Vodou, Dayan's HAITI, Simidor's humble opinion (fwd)
From:Karioka9@cs.com
My most important insight this year about Vodou came not from my houngan
contacts, nor from funny online mambos, but from the anthropologist George
Simpson who had this to say in his article, "The Vodun Cult in Haiti,"
published in African Notes (Institute of African Studies, Univ. of Ibadan,
Jan. 1966):
"Moreau de Saint Mery, a French priest stationed in Haiti during the latter
part of the eighteenth century, witnessed some of the rites which took place
around 1790. According to his accounts, the first part of the ceremony
consisted of the officiant's interpretation of the wishes of the divinity,
symbolized by a snake. The dance followed this service, and included
singing, fainting, intense nervous excitement and some rather violent
behavior. AT THIS POINT THE CATHOLIC ELEMENTS IN THE RITUAL WERE PRACTICALLY
NON-EXISTENT [emphasis mine]. Gradually a more or less standardized set of
rites emerged. During the next one hundred and fifty years the beliefs and
rituals of the cult became more elaborate, the Catholic components increased,
and regional differentiation developed."
In other words, the enslaved Africans kept their belief system clean of
European influence up to the General Uprising of 1791. Religious syncretism
more likely developed between 1801 and 1860 (the pre-Concordat years), when
the Pè Savann and an indigenous/renegade clergy ruled the land, "serving with
both hands."
Dayan is probably overstating her case in tying Vodou terminology too closely
with slavery. The vocabulary is certainly creole, but the experience it
relates is more likely the remnant of feudal practices from the Dahomean
kingdom, reinforced under the feudal rule of Toussaint, Christophe, Boyer, et
al. They are translations and remnants of the past, but of which past? That
language and its affects were current twenty years ago both in Haiti and for
Haitians in the DR. Unfortunately, anthropology and Vodou studies have not
taken count of the dramatic changes since 1986. As for the European and
North American diaspora, it is a new reality where the power of Vodou is
sought more as magic than as religion.
Daniel Simidor