Wade Davis: a Harvard scientist, witnesses first-hand a Haitian voodoo ritual:
The person leading the ritual is known as a mambo. There is a long ritual of drawing symbols on the ground and offering libations to the gods. Once the ceremony begins, drums are played and the libations are consumed by women referred to as “initiates.”
“The mambo next poured a container of water to the cardinal points, and then poured libations to the center post of the peristyle, the axis along with the spirits were to enter.” (Davis 47)
The drums and dancing are used to summon the voodoo gods into the ritual. The dancing lasts about forty minutes, according to Davis, until “the woman’s violence ceased; slowly she lifted her face to the sky. She had been mounted by the divine horseman; she has become the spirit. The Loa, the spirit that the ceremony had been invoking, had arrived.” (Davis 49)
The young woman was now possessed by the Loa. Davis was awe struck by what he witnessed next. The girls expressed their new god-like abilities by engaging in inhuman acts.
“The initiate, a diminutive woman, tor about the peristyle, lifting large men off the ground to swing them about like children. She grabbed a glass and tore into it with her teeth, swallowing small bits and spitting the rest onto the ground. At one point the mambo brought her a live dove; this the hounsis sacrificed by breaking its wings, then tearing the neck apart with her teeth.” (Davis 49)
The room was sheer chaos; the women were deep in a trance tearing apart the room.
“Then as suddenly as the spirits had arrived, they left…as the others carried their exhausted bodies back into the temple I glanced…back across the table of guests. Some began nervously to applaud, others looked confused and uncertain.” (Davis 49) The experience was like nothing Wade Davis had ever witnessed in all of his travels in South America. The Haitian culture and view of religion is much different then our own. Haitian practices are a strange mixture of Christian rituals infused with African spirituality and magic. “As the Haitians say, ‘the Catholic goes to church to speak about god, the voudounist dances in the hounfour to become God.” (Davis 73)
Davis, Wade. The Serpent And The Rainbow. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. Print.
The person leading the ritual is known as a mambo. There is a long ritual of drawing symbols on the ground and offering libations to the gods. Once the ceremony begins, drums are played and the libations are consumed by women referred to as “initiates.”
“The mambo next poured a container of water to the cardinal points, and then poured libations to the center post of the peristyle, the axis along with the spirits were to enter.” (Davis 47)
The drums and dancing are used to summon the voodoo gods into the ritual. The dancing lasts about forty minutes, according to Davis, until “the woman’s violence ceased; slowly she lifted her face to the sky. She had been mounted by the divine horseman; she has become the spirit. The Loa, the spirit that the ceremony had been invoking, had arrived.” (Davis 49)
The young woman was now possessed by the Loa. Davis was awe struck by what he witnessed next. The girls expressed their new god-like abilities by engaging in inhuman acts.
“The initiate, a diminutive woman, tor about the peristyle, lifting large men off the ground to swing them about like children. She grabbed a glass and tore into it with her teeth, swallowing small bits and spitting the rest onto the ground. At one point the mambo brought her a live dove; this the hounsis sacrificed by breaking its wings, then tearing the neck apart with her teeth.” (Davis 49)
The room was sheer chaos; the women were deep in a trance tearing apart the room.
“Then as suddenly as the spirits had arrived, they left…as the others carried their exhausted bodies back into the temple I glanced…back across the table of guests. Some began nervously to applaud, others looked confused and uncertain.” (Davis 49) The experience was like nothing Wade Davis had ever witnessed in all of his travels in South America. The Haitian culture and view of religion is much different then our own. Haitian practices are a strange mixture of Christian rituals infused with African spirituality and magic. “As the Haitians say, ‘the Catholic goes to church to speak about god, the voudounist dances in the hounfour to become God.” (Davis 73)
Davis, Wade. The Serpent And The Rainbow. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. Print.
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