Haiti Voodoo

PLAINE DU NORD, July 26 (AP)—Carrying candles and a heavy spiritual debt, Josephine Derulien walked for 17 hours to reach this small farming town, swollen by thousands of people during an annual four-day pilgrimage.

The pilgrimage, one of the most important in the Voodoo religion, began Wednesday with rituals to Ogou, the god of war, and ended Saturday with rites to the goddess of love, Erzuli. This year’s crowd of more than 10,000 was half the turnout of last year.

"I swore I would make this pilgrimage," said Derulien, 30, wearing a blue dress with a red kerchief, the traditional colors of Ogou. "I had a problem and it was solved. Now I’m here to pay my debt."

Although millions still practice Voodoo—now a state-sanctioned religion in Haiti—some are turning their backs on the religion brought from Africa, testing other faiths as their Caribbean nation grapples with growing instability and poverty.

An estimated 70 percent of Haiti’s 8.8 million people practice Voodoo to some extent, including many who claim to be Catholic or another religion.

But a growing number, estimated at 30 percent, identify themselves as Protestant, said Andre Corten, a Canadian sociologist. This smaller group adamantly oppose Voodoo, which is spelled Vodou in the French and Creole spoken in Haiti.’

Voodoo requires sometimes pricey offerings to a pantheon of gods. In a country where most people survive on less than $1 a day and where the government hasn’t managed to improve conditions, the draw of a cheaper religion is powerful.

Thousands of missionaries—many American—can be seen everyday in Haiti proselytizing and trying to draw people away from Voodoo. Many flock to evangelical Christian churches instead of Voodoo temples.

"The economic stagnation has cast a shadow over Voodoo," said musician and Voodoo priest Ronald "Aboudja" Derenencourt, 48.

One young girl selling bananas along the pilgrimage route, about 6 miles south Cap-Haitien on the north coast, pleaded with pilgrims to reject Voodoo.

"Voodoo is no good," said Rose Jean, 12, whose family of six are evangelical Christians. "They don’t recognize Jesus."

The Catholic Church in the 1940’s waged a campaign to eradicate Voodoo. Although unsuccessful, the religion was driven underground for years and disparaged by foreigners as a hodge-podge of beliefs.

In April, however, the Haitian government officially sanctioned it, allowing priests for the first time to legally perform marriages.

Many Voodoo practitioners have been wary of the step, fearful it was taken to woo them to the government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whose popularity is waning with hard times.

"Here we pray to everybody. Some pray to St. James, others to Ogou," said Jean Joseph, 45, a farmer who made the pilgrimage but prayed at the town’s Catholic church. "You serve God or the Devil as you like."

Not far from the church where Joseph and other others prayed, men and women stripped down to their shorts, and plunged into a shallow mud basin. They emerged in a trance and said they were transformed.

"When I come out of the basin, I tremble. I feel the might of Ogou, who empowers me all year long," said Voodoo priest Harvey Dorvil, 31.

Around the basin, Voodoo priests, priestesses, and witchdoctors congregate, on the lookout for patients, whose ills they claim they can cure with spells and herbal remedies.

Merchants sold everything from radios and clothing to straw hats and religious items like candles, perfumes, amulets, and images of the saints.

Most seek help for money or love troubles. Derulien, like many, wouldn’t say what she had asked Ogou for.

"Voodoo is our family faith," said Roseline Pierre, a 25-year-old student nurse from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who was born in Haiti. "Its spirituality is powerful. You just have to dig deep enough."

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Haiti Spirit Politics

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Oct 30 (AP)—Shaking bundles of pungent leaves and swaying to a frenzied drum beat, hundreds of Haitians flock to a temple to beg the spirits for U.S. visas and lucky lottery numbers.

At a time of deepening poverty and despair, many people in this Caribbean country see only one way out.

"Voodoo is Haiti’s only hope," says Solange Patrice, a 19-year-old street vendor who took Wednesday off to make meager offerings of coins and candles at a voodoo temple. "We have nothing else—unless you’re willing to risk your life to make it to the United States."

On Tuesday, more than 200 Haitians did just that, jumping from a ship that ran aground in Miami with the Coast Guard in pursuit.

The journey was one of hundreds each year by Haitians who brave the sea in rickety, overcrowded boats. Dozens have died in such attempts this year. And unlike Cubans who reach dry land, Haitian migrants usually are returned home.

"We are all desperate," said Marie Pierre, a 35-year-old vendor in Port-au-Prince’s chaotic marketplace who sells leaves, candles and moonshine as offerings to the spirits.

The government blames the situation on the lack of international aid, suspended after the Lavalas Family party of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide swept flawed elections in 2000. Two years later, the country is locked in a political stalemate. Two-thirds of workers are unemployed and crime is on the rise.

Until foreign aid is restored, people will continue to flee to U.S. shores, said government spokesman Mario Dupuy.

But even in the best of times, Haiti is a country of scant resources, with much of its arable land ravaged by decades of deforestation.

For people who make do on less than a dollar a day, voodoo understandably has strong appeal.

"Voodoo has always been about survival when hope seems lost," said Laennec Hurbon, an anthropologist and author of several books on the religion that evolved in the 17th century when the French brought slaves to Haiti. "When people feel abandoned, that desperation manifests itself in voodoo."

On Tuesday at the Desermite temple, songs asking the gods for U.S. visas and lucky lottery numbers reverberated against the concrete blocks as believers stomped their feet. Some fell to the ground, believing they were possessed.

"Open the door for us if it is closed!" worshippers wearing brightly colored satin scarves sang in Creole as they waved white candles.

Practitioners believe in a supreme God and spirits who link the human with the divine, and who are petitioned by offerings that include everything from rum to roosters.

"Every day we make offerings and people come to see me," said Exilien Francois, 75, a voodoo priest or houngan. "Even though they don’t have much to give me or the spirits, we will keep praying. We have to."

Voodoo, or Voudou, as preferrd by Haitians, only became recognized as a formal religion in 1987, under a new constitution that recognizes the rights of all religions. But this fusion of West African beliefs has long been seen as a path toward emancipation.

In 1791, an escaped slave named Boukman gathered thousands of followers in the forests of northern Haiti and sacrificed a wild boar. He pledged that with the spirits’ help, he would liberate his people and free Haiti.

After 10 years of bloodshed, slavery ended and Haiti became the world’s first black republic, making Boukman a hero and giving special prominence to the religion.

Slaves forced to practice Catholicism remained loyal to their African religions in secret by adopting Catholic saints to coincide with African spirits. The Virgin Mary became Erzulie, St. John became Ogun, a warrior spirit.

Still, voodoo worshippers were persecuted, with a church-led campaign in the 1940s leading to the destruction of temples and sacred objects. Voodoo only became recognized as a formal religion in 1987, under a new constitution that recognizes the rights of all religions.

Today, voodoo is an inseparable part of Haiti’s rich culture of art, literature, music and film. Hymns are heard on the radio, and voodoo ceremonies are broadcast on television along with Christian services.

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Haiti Possessed By Voodoo

The ceremony begins with a Roman Catholic prayer. Then three drummers begin to play syncopated rhythms. The attendees begin to dance around a tree in the center of the yard, moving faster and harder with the rising pulse of the beat. The priest draws sacred symbols in the dust with cornmeal, and rum is poured on the ground to honor the spirits.

One woman falls to the ground, convulsing for a moment before she is helped back to her feet. She resumes the dance, moving differently now, and continues dancing for hours. It is perhaps no longer she who is dancing: She is in a trance, apparently possessed by Erzuli, the great mother spirit.

It is an honor to be entered and "ridden" by a Loa, or spirit. In Haiti these rituals are commonplace: Voodoo is the dominant religion.

"One common saying is that Haitians are 70 percent Catholic, 30 percent Protestant, and 100 percent voodoo," said Lynne Warberg, a photographer who has documented Haitian voodoo for over a decade.

In April 2003 an executive decree by then president Jean-Bertrand Aristide sanctioned voodoo as an officially recognized religion.

"It is a religion in the same way Judaism or Christianity is," said Bob Corbett, professor emeritus of philosophy at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri. "Voodoo doesn't have a sacred text, a church, or a hierarchical structure of leaders, but it is very similar culturally."

Ancient Traditions

Voodoo, meaning "spirit," may be one of the world's oldest ancestral, nature-honoring traditions, according to Mamaissii Vivian Dansi Hounon, a member of OATH, the Organization of African Traditional Healers in Martinez, Georgia.

Some anthropologists estimate that voodoo's roots in Benin—formerly Dahomey—West Africa may go back 6,000 years. Today an estimated 60 million people practice voodoo worldwide.

At a voodoo ceremony, believers gather outdoors to make contact with the Loa, any of a pantheon of spirits who have various functions running the universe, much like Greek gods. There is also a responsibility to care for beloved and deified family spirits and to honor a chief god, Bondieu.

During the ceremony, the houngan or mambo—priest or priestess—sacrifices a sanctified chicken or other animal to the Loa. Participants then ask the spirits for advice or help with problems. More than half the requests are for health.

It is said that the Loa sometimes communicate prophecies, advice, or warnings while the believer is possessed. Other messages are sent through the priest or priestess, or sometimes come later in dreams.

These disembodied spirits are believed to become tired and worn down—and rely on humans to "feed" them in periodic rituals, including sacrifices. "It's not the killing of the animals that matters," Corbett said. "It's the transfer of life energy back to the Loa."

Each of the spirits has a distinct identity. Some are loving and good, while others are capricious or demanding. Haitians believe that the Loa most often express their displeasure by making people sick.

Black Magic?

In the West voodoo has been portrayed in zombie movies and popular books as dark and evil, a cult of devil worship dominated by black magic, human sacrifice, and pin-stuck voodoo dolls—none of which exist in the voodoo practices that originated in Benin.

In Haiti voodoo began as an underground activity. During the 1700s thousands of West African slaves were shipped to Haiti to work on French plantations.

The slaves were baptized as Roman Catholics upon their arrival in the West Indies. Their traditional African religious practices were viewed as a threat to the colonial system and were forbidden. Practitioners were imprisoned, whipped, or hung.

But the slaves continued to practice in secret while attending masses. What emerged was a religion that the colonialists thought was Catholicism—but they were outfoxed.

Hybrid Rituals

It was easy to meld the two faiths, because there are many similarities between Roman Catholicism and voodoo, Corbett said. Both venerate a supreme being and believe in the existence of invisible evil spirits or demons and in an afterlife.

Each religion also focuses its ceremonies around a center point—an altar in Catholicism, a pole or tree in voodoo. Their services include symbolic or actual rituals of sacrifice and consumption of flesh and blood, Corbett noted.

Many of the Loa resemble Christian saints, endowed with similar responsibilities or attributes. For example, Legba, an old man, is said to open the gates between Earth and the world of the Loa, much like St. Peter traditionally throws wide the gates to heaven.

But there are differences. Westerners tend to believe in free will and personal choice. Not so in voodoo.

"The Haitian people have a view of the world that is unimaginably different from ours," Corbett said. The Loa are believed to determine our lives to an astonishing degree, he explains, and they are always present in great numbers: There might be two people in a room, but there are also 20 Loa.

"Our view is dominated by physical, touchable reality. In Haiti the spirits are as real as your wife or your dog," Corbett said.

Like any other religious practice, voodoo brings great benefits, explains Warberg, the photographer. "Participation in voodoo ritual reaffirms one's relationships with ancestors, personal history, community relationships—and the cosmos. Voodoo is a way of life," she said.

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Hoodoo Gurus And Hoodoo Spells

As can be expected, most practitioners of hoodoo are African American, but Whites and Native Americans also use hoodoo, although their practices share commonalities more with Pennsylvania Dutch pow-wow magic, rather than with its more potent practices in West Africa. In its home of Africa, Hoodoo (Hudu) is a well respected tradition, which is typically passed through old family priestly lines. Today, in America, traditional folk knowledge is passed from person to person; and there is no evidence of a structured hierarchy.

The goal of hoodoo is to allow people access to supernatural forces to improve their daily lives by gaining power in many areas of life, including gambling, love, divination, cursing one's enemies, treatment of disease, employment, and necromancy. As in many other folk religious, magical, and medical practices, extensive use is made of herbs, minerals, parts of animals' bodies, an individual's possessions, and bodily fluids, especially menstrual blood, urine and semen. Contact with ancestors or other spirits of the dead is an important practice within the conjure tradition, and the recitation of Psalms from the Bible is also considered magically effective in hoodoo. Due to hoodoo's great emphasis on an individual's magical power, its basic principles of working are easily adapted for use based on one's desires, inclination and habits.

Home-made potions and charms form the basis of much old-time rural hoodoo, but there are also many successful commercial companies selling various hoodoo components to urban and rural practitioners. These are generally called spiritual supplies, and they include herbs, roots, minerals, candles, incense, oils, floor washes, sachet powders, bath crystals, and colognes. Many patent medicines, cosmetics, and household cleaning supplies have been also aimed at hoodoo practitioners and have found dual usage as conventional and spiritual remedies.

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Free Voodoo Spell

The free voodoo spell I will give you is centered in Obeah so there are built in safety mechanisms but also has the viral potency of seeking out evil spirits and destroying them derived from the Hatain and to a lesser extent the New Orleans form of voodou,so you will have the best of both forms of Voodoo Magic in one incantation.Now grab a pen and write these magical words down.They will give you power over lower ranked "duppies".The words are gematria and notarikon.Say these two words twice while alone in your room.They will reveal to you in your mind's eye the real name of a duppie(spirit).Now that you know your personal duppies real name the duppie has been binded to your will and will stay with you and protect or attack any evil spirit of equal strength or greater in the immediate vicinity ,be mindful duppies are mischevious and will read your thoughts so if you do not think it the duppie will not know it.This voodoo spell of binding will only last one day.To bind the duppie to your will for longer ,even though I would not mind sharing but that would be time consuming ,you will need this Black magic voodoo spells Guide that four of the top sorcerers in the world today helped James Arden create .It is a special enchantment course Idesigned with enchantment lessons to keep the duppie at your side watching over your soul spirit for years to come..

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California Man Convicted After Voodoo Curse Inexplicably Fails In Fraud Case

Ruben Hernandez, 34, was convicted this week of fraud in a house buying scheme but not before he tried some extra-judicial remedies of his own. Hernandez was found to have performed a voodoo ritual to place a hex on the prosecutors. They survived and Hernandez was convicted.

A search of his home revealed a shrine with voodoo dolls dunked headfirst in cups of water with pins in their eyes. The case number and names of the prosecutor and investigators were reportedly written on the dolls. It is a ritual performed by followers of Palo Mayombe, a religion that is popular among drug dealers and is known for its animal sacrifices.

Hernandez was convicted of four counts of filing a false application and three counts of grand theft. Judge Lance Ito (yes of OJ Simpson fame) sentenced Hernandez to 12 years in prison but he still faces an additional 28 counts, including charges of grand theft and filing a false application, for allegedly engaging in fraud at his used-car dealership.

That is a lot of wax for the next round and prosecutors may want to brush up on their Cole Porter:

Why, when you appear,
something happens to me
and the strangest feeling
goes through me?
You do something to me,
something that simply mystifies me.
Tell me, why should it be
you have the power to hypnotize me?
Let me live ‘neath your spell,
Do do that voodoo
that you do so well.

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Another Day And Another Democratic Voodoo Outrage

As the epidemic of voodoo and witchcraft threatens to engulf our nation the Obama campaign has yet to to respond. Why is the Obama campaign remaining silent on the issue of witchcraft in America? What are we to infer from his guilty silence?

Obama has no strategy to deal with witchcraft, indeed if Obama does get elected anybody could become the victim of a voodoo attack – what will Obama do to curb rampant witchcraft and voodoo on the streets of America? In an Obama presidency, almost anybody could fall victim to a voodoo curse – people like Woody Thompson, a patriotic Republican whose only crime was to run for public office:

Cobb County GA, Democratic Commissioner Annette Kesting today repeatedly denied accusations from a South Carolina “voodoo priestess” that Kesting wrote $3,000 in bad checks for the woman’s services.

George Ann Mills said Kesting approached her at home in Blythewood, S.C., in late August seeking otherworldly help against Republican Woody Thompson, who beat Kesting in the primary runoff vote for the District 4 seat representing southwest Cobb.

Unlike Obama, John McCain and Sarah Palin, by contrast have promised to make witch-hunting a priority – it’s the number three issue after fighting the war on terror and ending abortion. If elected Senator McCain will appoint Governor Palin to be chief witch-finder. She will organize the biggest ever witch-hunt in Washington to purge our Capitol of voodo-priests and fake Christians such as Barrack Hussein Obama.

Fact File: It’s not racist to point out that Negros may be practicing voodoo and witchcraft in your community today. If you see an African American speaking quietly to himself he could be casting a voodoo curse on you or you or your kids. What have the Democrats in Congress done to protect us from this threat: Absolutely nothing.

America once had a proud tradition of witch-hunting – but the liberal elite have conspired to end this traditional practice. As a result our witch-hunting expertise has been lost. The liberals want us to think that it’s OK to be a witch and cast curses. To them witchcraft is just another “lifestyle” to be celebrated in their orgy of multiculturalism.

This is probably what Barrack Hussein Obama looks like when he wears the ceremonial costume of a voodoo priest.

We at STR feel that it is a national embarrassment that in order to control the epidemic of witchcraft we may have to import experts from other nations, particularly Africa where Sarah Palin’s Pastor Muthee has been waging a one-man war against the godlessness of his fellow Negroes. While we dislike the idea of even more immigration, it is plan to see that the Demoncrats have left an entire nation vulnerable to the curses of witches.

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