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7139: Around internet dialogue on Vodou -Response to Max Beauvoir (fwd)
From: Marc Christophe <mactof@erols.com>
Hi Max,
I have been following, from a distance, your conversation with Leslie
Desmangles and Manbo Racine Sans Bout on and around Haitian Vodou and
I think that your comments on the Vodou Lwa are very incisive. I also
thimnk that they emanate not only from one who is a Houngan, but also
one who is interested in the cosmological framework of Vodou.
I have always believe that Vodou is a concept in transformation,
that it is a metaphysical construct still awaiting for Houngans or
Manbos capable of looking at it from within and underline its
principal tenets in the same way that Paul, Thomas of Aquinas and
Augustine "conceptualized" Christianity and moved it away from its
Jewishness and from so call "paganistic" believes like Zoroastrianism
or Arianism. What today is considered as the Churche's dogmas (the
divinity of Christ, the Trinity) were, say from the sixth century on,
results of highly intellectual discussions among the Churches's
bishops.
I am particularly interested in your view of the lwa as
manifestations, expressions of the divine, avatars(?). Is there a
similarity between your perception of the lwa as parcels or diverse
manifestations of the divine, and the concept of the divine
encountered in Hinduism (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna and the other
Hindu gods being also mafestations, avatars of a Godhead?).
Coincidentaly, The Haitian Institute of Washington, on Sunday March
4, is organizing a comparative Religion Program during which two
documentaries will be screened: "Legacy of the Spirits", a film by
Karen Kramer, and "Puja, Expressions of Hindu Devotion" produced by
the Smithsonian Institution. I believe that both films support your
observation on the correlation between a supreme entity (a God) whose
divinity or divine parcels are expressed into lesser (?) gods, spirits
or Lwas.
I recommend these two documentaries to anyone interested in Haitian
Vodou, its urban transformation in New York City, or its metaphysical
similarities with Hinduism and the Hindu rituals of "Pujar".