Voudoun (Voodoo) and Santeria: African Religions in America

The orishas and loas generally possess their “mounts” during group rituals that psychically prepare worshipers through chants, drumming, complex prayers in sacred language, altars and ritual objects, and above all dance. Those “mounted” lose consciousness and display extreme body language unique to the particular orisha or loa (disruptive behavior for Ghede the trickster, for example, or miming drawing a bow for Oshoshi the hunter). Clothing and accessories such as dark glasses or a red sash are kept on hand for the spirits to wear; hounfors and iles [priests] keep a well-stocked wardrobe! In Voudoun, the loas are also evoked through flags and vevers, complex designs in chalk; Santería employs systems of beads, color, herbs and stones. Both traditions associate certain spirits with particular Catholic saints and icons (a clever way for slaves to preserve their native religion). In short, the spirits manifest in both the most anthropomorphic of vessels, the worshiper, and in impersonal signs and objects such as vevers and stones.

What are we to make of all this? One can collect an encyclopedia of the orishas and loas, cataloguing their colors, herbs, stones, costumes, mannerisms, dances, drumming rhythms, Catholic saints, holidays, vevers, flags, prayers, and order of invocation, or distill these systems down into charts (Deren 82, Murphy 42). Or one can view these symbol-systems as a context, a web in which the orishas and loas are embedded, and then ask what these spirits are around which so many symbols (visual, kinetic, aural, even aromatic) have constellated. The psychological approach would be to assume that the sensory-overloading rituals help the participants go into a trance and access their deep unconscious, losing their sense of self and the particular, embodying the unconscious archetypes and complexes. Other etic [outside-looking-in] approaches could be devised, but seem very superficial. These spirits possess the worshiper bodily and psychically and wholly: one cannot think of a more emic [immersive] approach. Either the observer must acknowledge the Voudoun/Santería explanation for possession, that ancestor spirits eventually become divested of the personal and particular to the extent that they become divine spirits, or one writes them off as waking dreams. If the loas and orishas are accepted as independent entities, then their nature is straightforward: not gods, for the African Creator-God is aloof and above them, but rather, powerful beings who once had bodies and now are replenished by and affect the world through physical objects (stones, herbs, spheres of the natural world), and through possession of and interaction with worshipers.

Whatever one may think of the orishas and loas, one thing is clear: they were a powerful anchor and source of inner strength for peoples violently wrenched from their native lands and stripped of possessions, freedom, and everything they held dear. In these religions, anyone may take on the role of a divine and powerful person for the duration of the ritual, and other worshipers treat them with respect, affection, and attention, listening to what they have to say. Orishas and loas do not discriminate by gender: a man can take on the role of the Aphrodite-like Erzuli, and a tiny old lady may become a powerful weapon-wielding hero for a night. This must have helped sustain slaves through heartbreaking decades of unthinkable terror, hard labor and inhuman abuse: slaveowners claimed possession of their bodies, but could never possess their souls.

Works Cited:

Deren, Maya. Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. New Paltz, New York: McPhearson & Co., 1970.

Murphy, Joseph. Santería. Boston: Beacon, 1993.