Most Vodou practitioners in Haiti also consider themselves Catholic
Haitian Vodou is often called one of the most misunderstood religions on Earth. It has one remote creator god and more than a thousand spirits, no pope, no creed and no fixed liturgy, and most of its followers see no contradiction in attending Mass as well. Even its name was mostly applied by outsiders.
The religion took shape in Haiti between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, as enslaved people from West and Central Africa, among them Fon, Kongo and Yoruba, were brought to the French colony of Saint-Domingue. Their traditions fused with Catholic imagery and even Freemasonry, crystallising around the middle of the eighteenth century. Many Vodouists took part in the revolution of 1791 to 1801 that ended slavery and created the Haitian republic. When the Catholic Church withdrew for several decades afterward, Vodou became the country's dominant faith, and twentieth-century emigration carried it to the United States, Cuba and beyond.
Its theology resists labels. At the top is Bondye, from the French for Good God, the creator and keeper of cosmic order, but so distant from human affairs that few bother addressing him directly. Haitians often say si Bondye vle, if God wills it. There is no Satan-like adversary. The daily action lies with the lwa, spirits whose names mostly come from Fon and Yoruba deities and who are paired with Catholic saints. Each has its own personality, colours, days and objects, and everyone is believed to have a guardian lwa, the master of the head, shaping their character. The spirits help in return for service, but they take offence easily and are not moral role models.
The lwa are sorted into nanchon, or nations, a system echoing how enslaved Africans were grouped by port of departure. The two biggest are the cool, sweet-tempered Rada, rooted in Dahomey and named probably after the city of Arada, and the hot, forceful Petwo, drawn mainly from Kongo religion and linked to fire and money.
Worship happens in temples led by an oungan or manbo, within families, or in secret societies. Devotees offer food and drink, practise divination, prepare herbal remedies, and drum, sing and dance so that a lwa may briefly possess a dancer. The word Vodou comes from a Fon term for spirit, recorded in 1658; scholars avoid the spelling Voodoo because of its negative popular baggage and to distinguish it from Louisiana Voodoo.
Source: Haitian Vodou
