Ridge Art
A BRIEF STORY OF VODOU
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Vodou is a political religion that combines West African religions with many visual elements from Catholicism as well as traditions from the Taino (the people who inhabited Haiti when Columbus first landed). The Taino were enslaved by the Spanish and essentially exterminated in a short period of time to be replaced by Africans. Some Taino managed to survive in the mountains and intermarried with escaped African slaves. Vodou emerged as a response to slavery.
One of the most important practices in Vodou is the use of the veve. A veve is a very condensed abstract representation of a particular spirit. Basically, a veve is a gateway that enables the spirit to enter the human world. Some anthropologists believe the practice of drawing veves to represent the different Vodou spirits is a remnant of the Taino religion. One can see examples of veves on sequin flags and metal
sculptures. Veves are usually drawn in cornmeal, flour or
coffee grounds on the floor of a Vodou temple before a
ceremony begins. As the ceremony progresses, the
dancing of the congregation obliterates the veves. However,
the spirits that have entered the human world via these
gateways will possess some members of the congregation.
In effect, the chosen congregants become the spirits
themselves, the spirits acting and speaking through them.
Tradition has it that the 1791 slave uprisings began
after a powerful Vodou ceremony in Bois Caïman invoked Ogou, the warrior spirit. At that ceremony, an unnamed African-born mambo (a priestess) and an escaped slave named

Boukman Dutty sacrificed a black pig to feed the spirit of Ogou who, in turn, inspired the slaves to rebel against the French plantation owners. Whether the ceremony actually took place or not is irrelevant. The fact is that African cultural and religious traditions, transformed by the harsh conditions of slavery, helped inspire and unite a people to rise up and assert themselves in a showdown with European cultural and religious traditions. Eventually, these people defeated the military
might of Napoleon Bonaparte in the Caribbean, thus preventing him from securing a safe haven to launch an invasion of the North American continent. Yale University's Robert Ferris Thompson once pointed out, in a talk on the Vodou tradition at the Field Museum in Chicago, that we might very well be speaking French in the United States had not the Haitian slaves been successful.