Dr. Stanley Grove
Biology Senior Seminar
November 1996
I. Introduction: My Exposure to Voodooism
II. Science as a Worldview
III. Religion and Science: Can They Coexist?
IV. Haiti Cherie: Background
V. Voodoo Spirits: Bon Die, Loa, Twins, the dead
VI. Voodoo: A Comprehensive Belief System
VII. Religion in the United States
IIX. Healing in the United States and Haiti
IX. More Questions Need to Be Asked: ...zombies
X. Conclusions/Beginnings
XI. Bibliography
Introduction: My Exposure to Voodooism
Voodooism is a fascinating way of life. Ever since living in Haiti in the
early 1980's, the constant thumping of drums in the twilight has intrigued
me. Their melody and rhythm seemed to consume the moist evening air like
a pungent odor that will not dissipate. Life is very different in Haiti
than it is in the United States, and however odd it seems to Western mentality,
I could feel the presence of spirits in and around almost every aspect of
life in Haiti.
Since living in Haiti as a child, this is the first time I have researched
the impact of Voodooism on the lives of Haitians. As a scientist, I want
to document how the religion of Haiti quantitatively affects the worldview
and lives of the people. I want to know if the science that I have learned
and been taught would make sense in the Haitian culture; and as I have been
trying to relate my faith to my scientific understanding, I wonder if Voodooism
and theoretical science can coexist? Are US American methods of science
appropriate and applicable to the Haitian context? I am on a journey to
discover what Voodooism is and means and then how that relates to science.
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Science as a Worldview
Science is a way of approaching the world, knowing why and how things around
us are occurring. The scientific method allows scientists to be precise
and focused. Through that medium, they can determine which hypotheses are
consistently supported such that they become theories and which need more
modification or rejection. This type of knowing can be tested and quantified.
Scientists strive to make their observations as objective as possible, to
be devoid of human interest. Scientists try to control all the variables
of their experiments.
In order to be a part of this discipline, one has to believe that information
and solutions to how and why questions can be discovered given enough time
and testing. Part of being a scientist consists of the desire to uncover
these answers and sort out the questions. It requires a specific worldview
that relies almost wholly on the senses and repetition for truth and certainty.
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Religion and Science: Can They Coexist?
The overlap and divisions between religion and science tend to a great extent
to be avoided topics, shunned because of their supposed irrelevance to each
other in the everyday workings of life. In the United States, the segregation
of the spiritual and mystic from what could be considered the mechanics
of making it through a day of work and then rest seems commonplace. There
are designated times and areas where the spiritual part of our lives comes
to the forefront of our attention, but these tend to be times that are planned
out and organized.
Religion, spiritual life, is different in other countries like Haiti. The
difference between the predominant worldview of Haitians and US Americans
alters how the individuals from those countries perceive the world around
them. It creates a broad range of how people approach the world and, therefore
how they relate to science. Since there is a fine line between religious
beliefs and scientific understanding, the predominant religion of the people
in Haiti may prevent them from embracing scientific knowledge as we know
it in the United States.
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Haiti Cherie: Background
Haiti is a small country in the West Indies. It was the first nation in
the new world to topple the colonial ties that bound it and the first black
nation to be independent. It shares the island Hispanola with the Dominican
Republic. Most of the nation's inhabitants are ancestor of the slaves the
Europeans brought with them from Africa in the 1700's. With the slaves came
African religious traditions and beliefs.
Starting with the Yoruba people from Dahomey in West Africa in the 18th
and 19th centuries, the religion of Vodun (Voodoo) migrated west with the
slaves into many parts of the new world. The word Voodoo comes from an African
word meaning spirit. And since its migration west, it has changed form and
evolved a bit differently in each nation the slaves were brought to. In
Haiti, all the native people were killed and only the colonists and the
slaves remained. The colonists were primarily Roman Catholic, and they wanted
to make converts of the slaves.
The catholic priests and slave owners of the 1800's forbade the people from
practicing their religion, but did allow some occasional dances. These became
the Voodoo services. One group of slaves could contact another through the
message in the drums. These drums connected the country in 1804 when a violent
revolution liberated the people from slavery. The majority population of
slaves rose up and killed or kicked all the whites out of the country. The
Vatican broke ties with Haiti, and the Voodoo priests, the houngans (male)
and the mambos (female), made Voodoo the public religion of the Haitian
people.
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Voodoo Spirits: Bon Die, Loa, Twins, the dead
Voodoo formed from a syncretism of Catholic and African animatism. The Loa,
or mysterious spirits closely resemble the Catholic saints; people who lives
were so exemplary on earth that after death, they watch over specific areas
of our life. Both religions believe in one all powerful being, God or Bon
Die, and the afterlife. They have rituals focused around "sacrifice
and the consumption of flesh and blood.Followers of Voodoo believe that
each person has a met tet (master of the head) which corresponds to a Christian's
patron saint" (http://web.canlink.com/ocrt/voodoo.htm). One Haitian
saying is that 80% of the people in Haiti are Catholic and 100% of them
are Voodoo followers. It is widely accepted that a person can go to mass
and take the holy Catholic Eucharist and participate in a Voodoo ceremony
that evening. By the 1950's the Catholic church gave up fighting against
Voodooism; some of the Voodoo ritual music was even integrated into Sunday
morning services.
Besides the Bon Die, there are three categories of spiritual beings not
part of what is comparable to the earthly realm; Loa, the Twins, and the
dead. The Twins and the dead are spirits of the contradicting good and evil
and of dead family members who were not accepted by the family respectively.
If honored, these spirits are believed to bring about good fortune. In the
event that calamities occur, they can be explained, a dead relative must
have been neglected in the last religious service. These spirits of the
Twins and the dead seem to take a minor role in Voodooism when compared
to the Loa.
In Voodooism, the Loa are in charge of everything that happens. Loa are
the spirits of all the major forces of the universe, encompassing reproduction,
evil, good, harvest and a plethora of others. They are in control of the
people's fate and need to be appeased. As a part of Voodoo dance ceremonies,
one or more people dance themselves into either a frenzy or an abnormal
calm. The purpose of the dancing is to call the spirits to make them happy
with sacrifices so that they will provide their callers with a good future.
In order to make this contact, a person needs to become mounted by a Loa.
At this point, the person is believed to be no longer there; the spirit
has taken over their body. Through mounting people, the spirits eat and
speak to the people. The blood of a freshly sacrificed animal is a common
food fed to the Loa. They are believed to need the food for taking care
of and running the world.
The spirits that the Haitians worship are seen as neither completely good
nor wholly bad. It is believed that they will be kind if they are treated
well, with gifts and animal sacrifices. There are two parts of Voodooism,
the Rada and the Petro. Rada makes up the most frequently practiced . "This
is a family spirit Voodoo and the Voodoo of the relatively peaceful and
happy Loa. [As opposed to Petro which] is a black magic Voodoo and the Voodoo
of angry, mean and nasty Loa". Such Loa are involved in curses and
the making of zombies (http://www.primenet.com/~rafreid/voodoo.html).
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Voodoo: A Comprehensive Belief System
A large number of Haitians believe that the human being consists of two
parts, analogous to the conscious and the soul, called the ti-bon-ange (little
good angel) and the gro-bon-ange (big good angel). Both parts have some
life after death, but the latter aspect of a human has the possibility of
becoming a Loa if that human is revered and connected with a particular
ethical value after death. The ti-bon-ange enters a realm where it can be
reused. "Vodun [Voodoo] is a coherent and comprehensive belief system
and world view in which every person and every thing is sacred and plant,
animal, or mineral--shares basically similar chemical, physical, and/or
genetic properties" (Bellegarde-Smith, 1990: 12). It is a central theme
in Voodooism that all of life is connected. People believe that even matter
has a spiritual form, humans are believed to be able to switch back and
forth between their physical and spiritual form. Truth or absolute knowledge
as may be seen in a scientific context, is altered in the Haitian context
where the senses are not seen to be ultimately reliable; "all appearances
can be deceiving" for the Hiatian villager (Bellegarde-Smith, 1990:
15).
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Religion in the United States
In the United States, the predominant post Judeo-Christian outlook affords
to us a worldview that is heavily linked to the division of the spiritual
from daily living. The focus of our living revolves around hard work and
abstract moral principles. Religion in the United States allows for altruism
and compassion, but for the most part is void of a sense of the spiritual
in all matter. From that stand point enough distance evolves between humans
and their environment for people to see themselves as controllers and manipulators
of their environment, strengthening the ease with which US Americans can
compartmentalize and deal individually with spiritual forces.
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Healing in the United States and Haiti
The predominant worldview in the United States impacts health care and people's
philosophy of healing. Technological advancements have created a space for
doctors to be well-educated machine managers rather than master miracle
workers who have at their disposal a vast array of healing information.
In Haiti, religion and medicine are nearly indistinguishable at the village
level. The process of healing people from illnesses makes up about "60%
of all Voodoo activity" (http://www.primenet.com/~rafreid/voodoo.html).
The divisions between where the spiritual life of a person ends and the
physical begins is relatively non-existent.
"The way in which Haitians understand their world has significant ramifications for all aspects of Haitian life, including medicine, pharmacology, and psychiatry. In a fairly closed cultural system, which is rendered even more effective because it is closed, the traditional healing arts take into account the total sociocultural system. In a country that has perhaps 600 physicians for more than 6 million inhabitants, the Haitian people's knowledge of the medical properties of the local flora and fauna is awesome. In this sense, Vodun [Voodoo] is both metaphysics and philosophy of science" (Bellegarde-Smith, 1990: 17).
The religion of Haiti is expected to logically explain how and why things
are the way they are, simply because people's spiritual reality is completely
intertwined with the people's mental, emotional, social, and political realities.
Concerning the well-roundedness of health care provided by Voodooism, Western
science has a great deal more to learn. The homogeny of Haiti's population
and the smallness of the nation are characteristics that medical professionals
in the United States have not been able to benefit from. Haiti is not under
the same constraints to make the traditional healing practices and ways
of life accessible to very diverse groups of people. It seems that science
can be less objective if the people viewing it all share similar understandings
about what is possible and expected.
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More Questions Need to Be Asked: ...zombies
However, can the inclusion of many realms of life into one reality be a
negative influence in Haiti? Voodooism involves an approach of mixing scientific
reality and mystical tradition that has lead to the beliefs such as that
there are little people in the sea and Voodoo priests have the power to
take away people's soul. The actual medicine used to create zombies is a
powerful drug used within a culture that believes that such a state is possible.
There are stories of people who where picked up by the mortuary, proclaimed
dead using the normal techniques of testing for a heartbeat and breathing,
buried, and seen walking the streets again. The reality of zombies is something
that most people will be skeptical of until science explains and reproduces
the phenomenon in a controlled environment.
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Conclusions/Beginnings
Voodooism as a religion is so vast and complexly linked to all that a person
is and does. Given more time, direct conversations and observations of Haitians
in scientific research situations, Voodoo ceremonies, family interactions,
and other areas of life would give a broader framework for research regarding
how the religion of Haiti impacts how US American ideas of science are and
can be integrated into the Haitian context. It is clear that the accepted
givens and understandings in the United States differ greatly from those
in Haiti.
Inspite of viewing a supposed authentic Voodoo service and someone being
mounted by a Loa, my world view keeps me from accepting what I saw as reality.
I saw a woman thrash about and scream a blood curdling scream. She shook
violently, more violently than what seemed humanly possible, and I was too
scared to watch any longer. My fear prevented me from staying, but not from
dismissing what I saw as a hoax or a strange form of acting. Maybe my world
view prevents me from embracing the religion of the people in Haiti and
they have a fluid tradition that is willing to accept scientific proofs
into it's reality. I want to test more circumstances and explore more variables
before I will be able to conclude with a probable theory.
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