Teaching Theology and Religion, ISSN 1368-4868, 2006, vol. 9 no. 2, pp 91–96.
Vodou: A Sacred Multidimensional, Pluralistic Space
Dowoti Désir
Brooklyn College
Abstract. This paper uses the language of Vodou doc-
trine to articulate its key tenets and speak to how the
challenge of plurality or diversity in the twenty-first
century has been and continues to be addressed among
African and Afro Atlantic spiritual leadership. Follow-
ing the slave trade and colonialism’s aftermath, a plu-
ralistic vision, reflecting the harsh new global order,
permitted spiritual sustainability by reconfiguring
African ontologisms. Embracing pluralism through
annexation of non-native spiritual practices augmented
the power of African rulers, providing them with other
epistemes and access to spiritual forces they believed
enhanced their position. The issue of preparing for the
priesthood in a global or pluralistic society is examined
in this essay through the historical and metaphysical
framework that shaped the making of our societies.
Afro Atlantic Religions
Vodou, Lukumi, Santeria, Candomble, and Sango are
all sister religions whose spherical and non-linear brand
of monotheism is found primarily in the Africancentric
communities of the Caribbean, Latin America, and
South America. They share a “canon” based on the
empirical and the unseen. Their collective understand-
ing of the unknown and the knowable is ecologically
oriented; tied to the four movements of the sun, that is,
recognition of the cardinal points; and a built relation-
ship to the ancestral past. Cosmological order is rooted
in nature. It connects God to humankind in a manner
that requires training of religious leadership in terms
that are as pragmatic, logical, and tangible as much as
they are ritualistic, sacerdotal, and “theological”. In
Afro-Atlantic religions, the existence of human life and
human action must move harmoniously around the
sacred calabash that is life.
© 2006 The Author
Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
The passage of knowledge and the teachings of these
traditions for priests is still largely part of the fabric of
oral history in these societies. There are no Bibles,
Kor’ans, Torahs, scrolls, or other written texts to refer-
ence. But discipline, intense memorization, ritual, and
daily life make us the living word of Bondje or God.
Education in more literate societies, however, compels
the new generation of priests to take the extra steps of
incorporating the social histories, ethnographic and
linguistic studies, philosophic discourse, and other
documented materials available into the pool of
consciousness he or she uses as a balm to soothe exis-
tence. There are priests in the Santeria and Lukumi tra-
ditions, scholars such as Baba l’orisa John Mason and
Iya l’orisa Dr. Marta Moreno Vega who have written
about Afro-Caribbean religion to assist the formation
of novice priests and initiates in general. In Vodou,
widely published personal accounts of one’s relation to
divine order or actual prayers, rituals, and discourse
written from within the Ayitian (Haitian) community is
still rare. It is from that perspective I make my remarks.
For myself, my studies as a priest and scholar led me
to conclude: While Africans of various origins would
borrow traditions from one another either as a result of
buttressing geographies (i.e., living within close prox-
imity to one another or through acts of war), European
enslavement fully set the wheels in motion towards plu-
rality, accelerating and further instantiating a practice
already in place. However, enforcing these ideas through
church doctrine and state policy bred resistance in the
Americas. What might have evolved into complemen-
tary streams of religious thought and philosophy ebbing
fluidly away and towards each other instead were juris-
dictional and ecclesial impositions without parity, inor-
ganic and often involuntary, bearing severe material,
social, and corporal consequences for enslaved Africans.
The ontological confrontation between Africans and
92
Europeans created, as African philosopher Paulin
Hountondji (1997) has noted, a “battle for the senses.”
I take this one step further by arguing notions of Black
Supremacy clashed with White Supremacy. The argu-
ment posited is not based on the more pedestrian,
racialized construct of the word “supremacist” but
in the notion of Supremacy defined by the existence
of a Supreme Being – God. Ultimately, whose vision
of a Supreme Being would reign, the African or the
European?
The Significance of a Word
As a Manbo Asogwe (female high priest) in Ayitian
Vodou (Haitian Vodou) who was prepared for priest-
hood not in Ayiti (Haiti) but here in the United States,
the matter of konesans or ontology is complicated by
immigration. As part of a very small community of Ayi-
tians raised and educated in the Diaspora who make up
the first generation of priests initiated without the full
complement of traditional cultural competencies nor-
mally at our disposal, there are a number of challenges
faced. They begin with living and worshiping in a
society that has historically vilified African-based reli-
gious traditions. Is there anyone among us who is
unfamiliar with the images, sensations of fear, and
associations with superstition that “Voodoo” evokes,
thanks to racism, the Hollywood film industry, and
sheer ignorance in American and other societies?
Alternatively, how many of us are familiar with the
complex epistemological, social, and spiritual matrix
that is in part of the very definition of Vodou? How
many are familiar with the challenges of creating a reli-
gious system that embraces the vision of a world already
made pluralistic, later becoming instantaneously Pan
African with the wide net cast by the slave trade on the
African continent? Over seventy ethnic groups were
identified on the Caribbean island in the eighteenth
Century. The men and women of African descent who
arrived in Ayiti hailed from Dahomey, Yorubaland,
Igboland, the Bamana, and Mande territories, Kongo
and Angola (Thompson 1983, 164).
The oldest of the Diasporic religions in the Ameri-
cas, Vodou has historically been defined as a dance to
the sacred spirit. Closer analysis however demonstrates
Vodou [or Vodun,] is a word whose etymological
branches reflect its pluralistic nature as they are found
in the West and New World African cultures of the
Fon, Evhe, Yoruba, and later Ayisyan [Haitian Kreyol]
languages (see Cosentino 1995, Freeman and Laguerre
2002). Vodou’s radicals “vo” and “dou/dun” have the
following meanings: In Fon, to rest and draw water, or
to be an invisible spirit. In Evhe, vodou signifies the cre-
ation of a hole or an opening. While in Yoruba (Nago)
the word means to be borne of Divine Oracle; in the
new African language Ayisyan, it means to value peace.
Désir
The multiple interpretations of this word in its various
linguistic groups – meaning rest, hole or opening, the
message or sign, peaceful, to draw water or spirit – lead
one to understand the profound philosophic and reli-
gious role Vodou plays in the lives of practitioners. It
instructs us to consider our place or situation in the uni-
verse and requests a specific disposition upon achieving
konesans (awareness). We are at a site: an aperture
containing unknown variables, poised with purposeful
action, to draw water from Ginen (the realm beneath
the waters).
As priests we come to understand we are in the world
to be thoughtfully tutored by Spirit and to uphold our
sacraments through a predetermined relationship to the
ancestors, God, and the world. With our aspirations
etched in amenity and equity our educational philoso-
phy leads us to move about this plane of existence with
the intent of having our tet or ori (crown) become
worthy of residence within the circle of divine order. We
understand the sacred waters are filled with life nurtur-
ing properties, which existed before our arrival. We
must be calm to take in these waters.
The Priye Djw, Priye Ginen, the most complicated
prayer sung by Manbo and Hougan (the respective titles
of female and male priests) serves as the fundamental
reference point. A simple but multilayered phrase will
be used to illustrate this concept:
Nou tout se zanj-o.
Zanj anba se mwen.
Nou tout se zanj-o.
Zanj anba se mwen.
The phrase notes: “We are all angels. Angel beneath the
waters acknowledge me. We are all the ember of spirit.
Angel below the waters I am thee. The Angel of the
waters is me.”
We assume our place beside the waters while we live,
for we go beneath the waters when we join the realm
of the ancestors. As the ancestors make place for us so
must we be equally gracious, and docile when our fellow
brothers and sisters arrive at the source. For their place
of calling is equal to ours. Empathy and compassion is
required by the sacred waterhole because we will inhabit
this space with many others whose identities, sen-
sibilities, nationalities, and affiliations are unknown,
unmarked and invisible for generations before us, as
ours will be unknown upon entry. It is the benevolence
of these angels that will accommodate our presence.
Thus we too must accommodate those many other
spirits who will join us later.
This open multidimensional state of earth, water, and
spirit must be respected for it is how we found things. In
the world below the waters, we have permission to add
our voice to the chorus but we are forbidden from taking
anything away. We must accept the conditions of plural-
ity (of being Minokan an assembly of many nations) for
© 2006 The Author
Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
 Voudou
we are the summation of the many individuals and expe-
riences that precede us. Included in the matrix are African
nations, Europeans, and Amerindians. Their histories
shaped our history and thus who we are. What exists
above exists below in an ecological relationship, a paral-
lel universe, a mirror where the zanj (angels) inhabit both
realms. Above and below the waters; with what is tangi-
ble and unable to be seized; celestial and terrestrial; ances-
tral and cosmological, we must find balance. We must
struggle to create balance spiritually and, if necessary,
revolt to create balance socially or politically. Grafting a
state of harmony earns and sustains our place of gover-
nance no matter where we stand. This holds true in the
material world as well as the cosmological.
Thus Vodou is the system of beliefs many West and
Central Africans developed to create a place of orienta-
tion through ritual, song, dance, trance, and a knowl-
edge of the natural world that bridges communities of
Africans in the living world with communities of
Africans in the netherworld. The latter suites ancestors,
spiritual forces known as lwa and orisa, myste (myster-
ies) and other invisible powers. Although the Africans
of Ayiti had their sacred rites synthesized with Roman
Catholicism, for reasons as varied as parallel “exegesis”
in ritual and iconographic sensibility; Vodou’s tradi-
tional inter-ethnic, cross-cultural nature; and the ves-
tiges of colonialism [various legal codes under the
Spanish and later French former colonizers of the island
forced enslaved Africans to convert to Catholicism.]
And yet, the exercise of seeking balance and valuing
peace in our reformulated states of Grace continues.
Axioms of Choice
In studying Vodou we come to consider how Imperial-
ism’s quest in driving colonization was both focused on
economic propagation in empire building, and on estab-
lishing and expanding perceptions of Divine Prove-
nance. The orders of things – sacred and profane,
historic, economic, political, and spiritual – are inter-
connected. The re-interpretation of time and space are
part of the critical thinking process priests practice when
they are part of traditional settings like those of Western
comparative religious studies and especially seminary.
Following the struggle for independence in Ayiti in
1791 through her declared independence in 1804,
Catholicism’s influence waned. During decades of diplo-
matic, political, and economic isolation, European spir-
itual practice bore a thin coat in the lakou (compounds)
and hounfors (Vodou temples) that populated the
Ayitian countryside. Vodou thrived. It was not until
1860 when a Concordat between the Vatican and the
Ayitian government of General Geffrard did we find a
renewal of orthodox Catholicism (Desmangles 1994,
Murphy 1994). The schism was never fully closed in
spite of repeated campaigns by the Church to eliminate
© 2006 The Author
Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
93
Vodou by destroying temples, burning drums, and
arresting practitioners.
Instead, we find examples of religious and ritual
accretions that underscore the need for tolerance
implicit in another passage of the Priye Djw, Priye
Ginen’s text.
Sainte Marie mere de Díeu priez,
Wa pryé pou sanyan.
Danballah Wedo soulagé san zefan-yo;
Mait dossou, dossa, dogwe Manman.
Men nou.
Mesier Danballah Wedo Tokan ou mim ou wé
Danballan Wedo nou soufri asez.
A literal translation of this stanza addressing a pivotal
Roman Catholic saint and the most senior indigenous
Dahomean lwa is: “Saint Mary, Mother of God, we
pray. You will pray for the saints. Most Reverend Dan-
ballah Wedo who comforts and consoles the children.
Master of the Marassa (twins – dossou, dossa). Mother
(Mary) supplicate before Him. We are here, Mr. Dan-
ballah Wedo Tokan, you are the one who sees and is All
Knowing. Danballah Wedo, we have suffered enough.”
The passage opens in French but quickly winds its
way into Ayisyan and incorporates the sacred language
of the ancestors (in this instance, Fon), displaying a
susurrus, polysemic nature that is oral and stealthily
aural. While the Holy Mother Mary is praised and an
effort is made to recognize her place in African/Ayitian
ontological arguments, it is she who ultimately submits
to the Supreme Guardian Danballah. We find a clear
example of how European constructs of Supremacy
yield to the African. Even in our multifaceted, multi-
cultural space, the specific suffering of Africans can be
best understood by an African God. The image of the
Marassa also evoke the duality of time and space, and
the multidimensional aspects of our ethereal and quo-
tidian domains.
Vodou possesses an immense capacity for creating
allegiances among seemingly disparate elements, as
illustrated in the earlier passage. In effect, it has the
ability to mare or tie spiritual, ethical, and ecumenical
ideologies such as European Free Masonry, Roman
Catholicism, Indigenous American, and African forms
of worship into a seamless sacred space that is like the
corseted rays of the sun, luminous and animated.
Esoteric Masonic principles and imagery such as the
pyramid, the omnipresent eye, pantograph, and elabo-
rate costumes are generously sprinkled throughout the
iconography of Vodou. Amerindian spirits or zemes,
especially those associated with the maroons (escaped
Indians and Africans who were considered underground
leaders) like Gran Bwa and Simbi Makaya had their
spiritual counterparts in Africa, most notably the Kongo
(see Consentino 1995, Thompson 1983), and are a part
of Vodou’s pedigree.
94
Vodou’s operating dynamics are like the concentrated
energies of the morning star, forming a pwen, a layered
pulsating nucleus with neither beginning nor end. It is
a synthesized site of ritualistic and divine over-standing.
Pwen are used to summon prayer, to mark the space of
our existence so that the lwa might find us. When in
states of Grace, trance, or possession we are pwen col-
lecting the power and wisdom of the lwa, those invisi-
ble forces of Bondje, into the vessel that is our heart. As
priests we become units of eyes and ears and minds
for each other and our larger community no matter how
configured.
Becoming Sacred Vessels
As Vodouysan (servers of the lwa, God’s divine emis-
saries), we enter into the priesthood informed that Black
religiosity is a form of resistance. Those of who are for-
mally educated learn historically that two primary
methodologies have been used to analyze our tradi-
tions: (1) anthropological or ethnographic, and (2)
social/political history. Afro-Atlantic traditions are
often lumped together in theological seminaries, with
divinity students expecting “touchy-feely” stories of our
passage into priesthood instead of critical, theoretical,
and/or comparative analysis of our response to our
respective practices.
Resting by the sacred waters permits meditative or
contemplative action. The first step we take towards the
coolness of being, the Fon “vo,” is to reinvent the world
in which we are reborn. Initiation is a symbolic end and
beginning; it signifies our death and a new life.
As priests, the foundation for training is set in suc-
cessive steps that teach us to observe and gradually
comprehend what happens in the precincts of collusion
among those things European, Indigenous, and African.
We realize creation and celebration of our African-based
traditions is a struggle for liberation staged by the
polemics of Western industrialization and African pre-
capitalist, agrarian-based sensibilities. The conceptual
relations that inform the most sacred elements of a
priest’s life are preserved in logics that recognize no pure
tropes of thought. Economic systems and political ide-
ology are not separated from history, religious sensibil-
ity, or our personal relationship to those forces
all-knowing, all powerful – to the myste or envisb, let
alone God her/himself.
This is not to say no distinction is made between
these fields of thought, but the sacred and profane are
nestled in a place that we learn, from our first days as
initiates, to balance in our day-to-day lives. Our sacred
art forms – altars, dwapos (sequined flags), beaded
objects of power, white clothing and red moswas
(scarves) – are as much manifestations of our elaborate
spiritual pantheon as the latter is reflective of the
Désir
complex social engineering that is Ayitian Vodou
culture.
Priests of Vodou must learn langaj, the language of
Alada, the holy city of ancient Dahomey – literally the
language of our ancestors so that we recognize the
members of our covenant and have the capacity to call
on Spirit. Like infants, we learn to speak. Even priests
living in Ayiti and/or those who speak Ayisyan everyday
– we must still learn langaj. The weight of language,
while prosaic on one hand, is essential practical knowl-
edge for the Manbo and Hougan. While its rhythm and
flavor are shifted, more staccato, heavy, and uneven in
the Diaspora, to call on the lwa – to sing the songs of
our ancestors, to recite our prayers we need to be
grounded in our native Ayisyan and the sacred language
of Spirit. By learning the language of Vodou we unlace
the folds of history and reform identity.
During initiation or koushe, we spend days and
nights closed off from the world, making a transition
like the Middle Passage our foremothers and fathers
made centuries before. We are trained to labor and sur-
render the fruits of our efforts for the greater good of
the community. As we prepare for priesthood, we not
only cleanse our spirit and learn ritual but we craft or
manufacture the tools of our trade – all the sacred
objects that identify one as a priest – for ourselves and
the priests whose crowns are consecrated with us. When
a Manbo or Hougan prepares the girdle of glass beads
for her/his asson, a special gourd and bell that is the
most potent symbol of the priest’s status, one strings
these and other objects as beautifully, effectively, and
faithfully as possible not simply for oneself but for one’s
soon to be brothers and sisters in the grand family that
is Vodou. Each one of us is like a queued bead on the
asson, of variant shape, hue, and color, representing an
individual, or group. It is a distinct unit carefully
accounted for that takes on resonance only when in
concert with each other. When joined together, we
become part of a larger community. As non-sectarian
communities we form a nation. Assembled in our diver-
sity is how we become an instrument of Spirit. It is how
we articulate the voice of God and how we are able to
sit peacefully by the sacred waters of Ginen.
An apprenticeship of several years under the tutelage
of an Asogwe (a high priest) has us working in the fields
and forests apprehending the healing elements of leaves
for medicinal baths and teas; working in the temples,
cleaning and learning the properties of sacred objects;
and in the djevos or shrine rooms learning the charac-
teristics, principles and tales of the lwa as one would
learn the names and experiences of saints or prophets.
Priests must memorize an enormous body of unwritten
texts: prayers, songs, drum rhythms, and dance to serve
the lwa with reverence and love.
We learn divination and work to keep our minds
open. We offer our heads to Spirit. The crown of a
© 2006 The Author
Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
 Voudou
novice priest is ritualistically and literally prepared to
create a sacred space in our head like that holy body of
water. That space of hallowed knowledge serves as the
Iroko tree whose canopy shades us and gives rest to the
feet of Bondje. It enables Divine Presence to take resi-
dence within us. Our heads are shaved and washed with
special medicinal leaves, herbs, blood, and special foods
so that it becomes a receptacle for the community of
mystical forces that mount our psyche. These same
spirits harness our potential and we learn to use their
energies as tools for navigating through the worlds of
the seen and the unknown.
Vodou is practiced as a healing art which sutures the
ongoing social, political, economic, and epistemological
ruptures made by the Middle Passage, but Vodou priests
also assist in the rehabilitation of the spirit and physi-
cal body. It is a healing tradition reliant on profound
knowledge of the natural world. Manbo and Houngan
are trained to recognize those things in the natural
world that serve as the umbilical cord between the
heavens and earth. We traverse the secular world as
renewed spiritual beings, learning the rhythms of the
universe and becoming conversant with the plants,
roots, and other homeopathic remedies for healing in
our adopted homelands. We are taught that the same
plant that has the capacity to heal us has the capacity
to kill us. It took generations to acquire this knowledge.
Inevitably we learn and relearn the fauna and medical
properties of plants found in the Americas in our
primary and then secondary Diasporas. In each new
environment we sometimes encounter the familiar but
often not. Thus the priest becomes challenged to alter
traditional recipes or innovate to practice his or her craft
effectively. Once again the topographic, biological,
physical, and tangible reality forces Vodouysan to rein-
vent their world.
Conclusion
The “combat for the senses” is manifest in the Ameri-
cas through the narratives of oppression embedded in
the past of European, Arab, and African enslavers and
between the narratives of resistance found within Native
and African worldviews. In the simplest terms,
European-oriented laws, mores, and codes of ethics
reflect the need for dominion. This stood in contrast to
an alternative African construct for accommodation:
temporal, cosmic, and material.
Our religious institutions, the sosyétes (congrega-
tions) that make-up our kai’s (houses) and hounfours
(temples), became underground spaces of maroonage, of
liberation or resistance that serve as spaces of worship.
But they also existed to maintain the space of segrega-
tion that whites or European descendants persisted in
emphasizing in their social, legal, architectural, and rit-
ualistic existences. Africans responded with subaltern
© 2006 The Author
Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
95
spaces of the lakou, cofradia, cabillo, and other volun-
teer associations, providing social and economic
support to Africans throughout the Diaspora. Our
hounfours, terrieros, temples and other sites of initia-
tion and spiritual worship allow for the mounting,
creation, and sustenance of an African corpus of
knowledge. A body of ethics, mores, traditions, social,
political, and intellectual discourse and, of course,
spiritual ideas could be protected, revisited, reshaped
if necessary to allow African conviviality, African
congeniality, African visions of the Self, the “Family,”
the “Religion” to persist. These organizations, while
having historical roots with ebges and other similarly
modeled peer groups in Africa, were moored by the fra-
ternal organizations supported by Christians, especially
Catholics, in the Americas.
In the Diaspora we find more and more non-African
and non-Ayitian descendants initiated in the religion,
including the priesthood. The question of practicing
Vodou in a global or pluralized world is elementary. We
have operated in this mode for over five hundred years.
Well practiced, perhaps it is a lesson we can teach to
those posing the question. For we may be Buddhists
and be Vodouysan. We maybe Zoroastrians and still be
Vodouysan, for many are already Christian, specifically
Catholic, catching Sunday morning mass after several
hours of ceremonial worship on Saturday night. There
are no contradictions in paralleling Ayitian spiritual
knowledge with other adopted religious traditions.
There are no conflicts, for Bondje’s many shimen (roads)
are filled with wisdom and vary with each consecrated
head. Priests are trained to be tolerant, to be adherents
of the legitimating notion that is the bedrock of our dis-
cipline, the Minokan principle.
Enslavement and multiple Diasporic experiences
make us like the most senior of the lwa, Danballah
Wédo, the Rainbow Serpent, who at the request of
Bondje holds the world in a sacred circle with his female
counterpart Ayda Wédo. Whispering together, they rep-
resent coolness and continuity, objectivity and receptiv-
ity to working with the forces of the world around us,
be they earth, air, water, mineral, fire, or each other. Like
Danballah, as priests our training creates a foundation
for humility and strength. Like the pythons of Dahomey,
the maternal source of Ayitian Vodou, Manbo and
Hougan shed skin. With the Middle Passage we shed
our past identities. In our fight for liberation we shed
oppressive relations. In our work as healers we shed the
false sense of certainty our mundane lives provide as we
learn the endless scope of travails, heartache, and suf-
fering that is a part of our world, even as we extend
hope to those confiding their burdens to us.
Shedding is not loss; instead it is how Divine Pres-
ence of the lwa offers the opportunity to continuously
reinvent the Self. We shed so we will be opalescent in
the clear waters of Ginen. We are renascent in our state
96
of religiosity. We construct a world for each other and
ourselves during rites of passage and initiation. And it
is this notion of community in rebirthing the collective
Self that must inform the actions of the Vodou priest.
The rainbow’s spectrum of color like the asson is the
natural manifestation of the Minokan principle. As
priests, we must be as a prism, which is consistent in its
variegated state. Each color is a metaphor for the flags
of the nations of the world, flowing under the open arch
of unity encircling the earth. As we reconstruct the
world we recycle our body of knowledge to incorporate
the lessons of the past and induct the new options that
inform that dynamic. Part of that dynamic is the
inevitable process of acculturation, accommodation,
and later Kreyolization (Creolization) that occurs with
the sustained and accelerated interaction of disparate
sensibilities that is our culture. Africans, Europeans,
Asians, Americans, and African Americans may be cul-
turally different, but the spiritual sensibilities of these
groups gets folded under the wings of Vodou, serving as
the winds of Bondje.
Désir
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© 2006 The Author
Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd