21917: From Mambo Racine, About Human Sacrifice in Vodou (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Racine125@aol.com

This topic is worth re-examining in the light of the recent accusations against pro-Aristide Haitian political activist "So Ann", that she is a "voodoo priestess" and that she has sacrificed children in magical ceremonies.
Now, So Ann is a Mambo as far as I know, so I guess the American press can refer to her as a "voodoo priestess", since they can't seem for the life of them to learn how to spell V-o-d-o-u, or to capitalize the word.  Has she performed human sacrifice, as she is accused?  I doubt it, but... let me say just a few words on this topic.
To establish a framework for this discussion, I would like to clearly distinguish between religion, which is for the most part public and has as its objective the improvement of the participant; and magic, which is private and has as its objective a desired change in the external environment.  I want to note here that Houngans and Mambos are both religious leaders and magicians, and we are expected in the normal course of things to both hold religious ceremonies and perform magical rituals.  Accusing a Mambo of working 'wanga' (magical spells) is like accusing a doctor of writing prescriptions!  It's part of what we do, and our reputations depend in part on demonstrating magical ability.
The Vodou religion does not require human sacrifice.  Human sacrifice is not a part of any recognized Vodou religious ritual or ceremony.  When a person becomes an initiate, they undergo a sham death, but we don't actually kill them!  And if we do want to really kill someone, we do it through magic, not by actually grabbing them and throttling them or something, good gosh!  Alternatively, in extreme cases, the Sanpwel (a secular organization composed of Vodouisants) could zombify a person, thus rendering them effectively "dead", but this takes place far less frequently than capital punishment in the United States and in this circumstance the person is not actually killed, the body of the person remains animate.
Now, having said all that, there are a few more things I would like to say, although quite candidly I fear to tread this ground.  I don't want to sensationalize the topic and I don't want to cast a lurid light on the Vodou religion.  I know that as you, gentle Corbetteers, read what I am about to say, I will hear outcries of "Prove it!  When?  Where?  Give us names?  You are making this up!"  So if you don't want to believe what I am about to tell you, that is fine.  Don't ask me how I know, because I am not going to tell you, with the exception of one particular case in the USA.  You'll just have to take my word for it, or not, as you choose.
There have certainly been instances in Haiti, and in the USA, in which people were killed as part of a Vodou-type ceremony conducted for the purpose of attaining specific magical goals.  These killings have been undertaken by Houngans, Mambos, Bokors, uninitiated serviteurs, all sorts.  Though these ceremonies are not part of the standard liturgy of Vodou, they are couched in a religious context.  That is to say, the objectives and expectations of the people doing this sort of activity are congruent with the Vodou world-view.
It's as though a bunch of Catholics turned Satanist, and they did human sacrifice to both mock and appropriate the Crucifixion of Christ.  Have you read Anne Rice's "Blood and Gold" or "The Vampire Armand", with her stunningly imaginative description of "Satanic vampires"?  The point I am making is that the vocabulary of the religion is not changed - Satanists still refer to the Trinity or to Heaven and Hell.  Vodouisants who are bent on evil-doing, or who are willing to dare any means to their objective still believe in the lwa, in the drums, in the formulary character of magic, in the phenomenon of possession.  So their activities resemble in many ways ordinary Vodou ceremony, though they are not a part of usual Vodou practice at all.
I wish I could find in the Reuter's archive the report of that fellow in Louisiana, calling himself a "Vodou priest", who dressed himself in sacred white and was willingly ritually killed on videocamera by his chosen successor, as part of some sort of nutcase insurance scam I think. It was quite bizarre, and I am sorry I can't furnish the details at this moment. But even though these folks were white Americans, the objective of the activity, to use the killing as a means to magically obtain a goal, was authentically Vodouisant in thinking.
During the end of the "Cedras" right-wing coup (there have been so many!  I am not sure how to reference them all... ) in 1994, a ceremony was performed near St. Marc that included the killing of several unfortunates, with the objective of preventing the return of Aristide.  The victims were buried under the floor of the peristyle, and apparently the peristyle itself was soon afterward slabbed over with concrete and made into a gas station or depot of some sort.
The people chosen as victims in that incident were homeless people, mentally retarded or deranged people who slept in the streets at night, people who nobody missed.
During that same period of time there was in Cite Soleil a truly evil individual, I don't know if he was a Houngan or if he was an uninitiated bokor or serviteur, called Ti-Paul.  He had a hounfor, a temple, in which he kept his magical objects.  He had a handgun that he named "Ti-Marie Djol Santi", Little Mary Stinkmouth, and with that gun he killed quite a few of the young men of Cite Soleil.  The motive for the killings was political - he was FRAPH and he killed pro-democracy, pro-Aristide men.  But when he killed them, he often sliced off their faces, and took their faces back to his hounfor, his temple.  Sometimes he took the entire head.  His hounfor positively reeked!  It was no secret in the neighborhood what he had inside there, and people were absolutely terrified of him.  The purpose of his necromancy was to gain power, to make the dead men tell him things he wanted to know, and to make himself immune to any sort of retaliation or punishment.
When the UN/OAS intervention came in 1994, Ti-Paul defied his neighbors, brandished his weapon, and was overpowered, macheted, and finally burned to death by the local population, which obviously had suffered much at his hands.  The UN soldiers came, Americans that time, and when they went in that hounfor and saw what was in there, the shock and horror on their faces were worth millions, I wish I would have had a camera with me that day.  In fact, they brought cameras, on the double, and took pictures, though what they did with them or in what sense they understood what they saw, I don't know.
Some of the civilian UN personnel were at that time quartered at a certain relatively posh Petionville hotel.  It is widely held that under the foundation of that hotel lie the bodies of three men sacrificed and placed there to guard and assure the prosperity of the hotel!  I can not say to any degree of certainty if this story is apocryphal or genuine, but the average majority-class Haitian resident of Petionville clearly thinks such a thing possible.
There have certainly been cases of simply, plainly and murderously insane Houngans, or sheerly criminal Houngans, who have done murder in the course of robbery or land seizure.  When they do so, however, they inevitably surround the killing with ritual, and dispose of the remains in a manner intended to feed and propitiate a lwa who is then supposed to protect them from punishment.
This should not surprise anyone - every religion has it's renegade priests, it's criminal or deranged practitioners.  Why should Vodou be any different?
In all the cases I have described, the person doing the killing or trophy-taking is aiming at gaining power through these activities.   They aren't cannibals, they don't eat the person they kill - although let me note in this context that in Jamaica, it is believed that eating a bit of a murder victim's tripe will guarantee the killer against punishment, and that this sort of cannibalism has certainly taken place there, so it might well have taken place in Haiti too, though I have never heard of it.
The person doing the killing wants the victim's blood and life force to feed a "djab", some lwa or other which they serve.  These lwa are generally not the classic lwa of the Rada, Petro or ancestral groups, instead they are often personal lwa, aggressive lwa served by only one person, to whose command alone they respond.  Once fed, such a lwa is expected to perform a stated task, which it is assigned to the lwa in a formal way.  It's often, though not always, an act of desperation - people who feel they have much to lose, people who are furiously angry or who are just mad for power are apt to reason that if a goat is good for their lwa and a cow is better, a man, woman or child would be best of all!
Once again, usually in such cases the person who sets out to kill another person in a magical context does so through magical means, and then they trap the soul or life energy of the person and give it to their lwa.  The expression used to describe this activity is, "Djab la manje moun nan", the djab ate the person. The flesh of the victim is not consumed, it's the life energy of the person which is appropriated.  But sometimes, as I have shown, a deranged or very bold practitioner of magic will literally kill a person.
About a year ago a little girl went missing in Jacmel, and it developed that she was taken away by a Port-au-Prince Mambo.  The girl has never yet been found, and the general belief is that she has not been made a "restavek" since she is not to be found in the Mambo's house and since the Mambo has plenty of people in her house already.  It's widely assumed that the little girl has been sacrificed.  Perhaps this is as wrong as the belief in corporeal "lougarou", perhaps not, but the average Jacmelien clearly believes it possible.
Has Mambo So Ann done the sacrifice of a child in a Vodou-like context?  Who knows?  But we can not automatically assume that such charges must, by definition, be unfounded.  On the principle that what the right wing magician does, the left wing magician will do as well, we cannot automatically discount the accusations against her.  Accusations of human sacrifice and cannibalism are used to demonize Vodou, it is true, but it is also true that actual instances of human sacrifice in a Vodou-like context have taken place in the past and therefore must be regarded as within the realm of present possibility.
Peace and love,
Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen
"Se bon ki ra" - Good is rare     Haitian Proverb
The VODOU Page - http://members.aol.com/racine125/index.html
(Posting from Jacmel, Haiti)