Religious Culture

Vodou is a Haitian way of life that encompasses religion, philosophy, social relations, healing, psychology, justice, ethics and the arts. The word vodun is originally an African word, meaning “spirit” or “deity” (thus, when placed in lower-case, vodou denotes "spirit," whereas in the upper case it refers to the actual religion).

Historically, Vodou arose out of the brutality of plantation slavery; Vodou was a conflation of West-African deities and Roman Catholic Christianity. African people from all walks of life—royalty, priests, artists, teachers, healers, farmers—were forcibly brought to the Americas by Europeans, and upon arrival in Haiti were christianized by Catholic missionary-priests. Haitian slaves both saw and constructed correlations between Catholic saints and African deities, which in Haitian Vodou are called Loas. For instance, images of St. Patrick casting serpents out of Ireland and were read as signs of Danbala, the serpentine spirit of life force. In the Virgin Mary they saw different faces of Ezili, the powerful female divinity. Adherents of Vodou do not see themselves as members of a separate religion; they consider themselves Roman Catholic.

“Vodou provides, like all world religions, a profound spirituality. It is a very stong, cohesive social force within the community, and the community extends beyond the visual community to include the spiritual world.” Leslie Desmanges, Professor, Trinity College