7896: Re: 7841: lougawou and skin walkers (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Racine125@aol.com

<< The Navajo nation is 
 terrorised by 'skin walkers' who do exactly that,
 shed their skin and go about at night to steal peoples souls. Do they 
 specialise in eating childrens souls? I don't know,
 but I have noted ( to myself ) in the past how this skinless notion of 
 the lougarou sounds so much like the skin walkers. >>

No kidding????  This is fascinating - I wonder if this is a very old myth, so 
old that many cultures have a version?  I mean, it doesn't sound like 
something you would easily imagine, the idea of taking off one's skin!

You know that when a person in Haiti is killed by means of magic, the 
expression is "Yo manje li", they ate him, not "they killed him".  I remember 
one day some years ago I was sitting with some Jamaican farmworkers, who 
violently rejected the Vodou tradition no matter how much I tried to compare 
it to traditions familiar to them, "Pocomania" and obeah.  The conversation 
veered into malevolent magic, and one of the men muttered under his breath, 
"that is how they do, they eat the man and when he dies they say they don't 
know".  So when I hear expressions like that, references to unusual images or 
idioms, common to cultures in two different places, I suspect a common root, 
but it doesn't always have to be.

Hmmmm....

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