Mysteries and Secrets of Voodoo, Santeria, and Obeah

by Lionel

  Another female deity in some Christian thinking is Hagia Sophia — the personification of holy wisdom.

  Mother and child.

  The mysterious and controversial Black Madonna statues have been interpreted by some researchers as evidence that syncretism is not a recent phenomenon. Are the origins of the Black Madonna to be found in a strange mixture of Christianity and ancient Egyptian religion, so that while the traditional Madonna statue represents the infant Jesus in the arms of the Virgin Mary, the Black Madonna is the Egyptian goddess Isis cradling the infant Horus?

  Whatever strange powers may, or may not, have been present in the ancient earth mother goddesses and their priestesses, there was certainly a great deal of inexplicable power in the priestess known as Marie Laveau, who worked in New Orleans in the turbulent nineteenth century. There are no definitive historical records of her parents or earlier antecedents, but she is thought to have been born in 1794 in a place called Vieux Carré, the daughter of Charles Laveau, a prosperous white planter, and one of his consorts, a beautiful mulatto girl named Darcantel Marguerite. Darcantel was also believed to have had some indigenous American ancestry. When Marie grew up, she was described by those who knew her as outstandingly beautiful like her mother, with masses of naturally curling black hair and very powerful, dark, flashing eyes.

  She arrived in New Orleans as a youngster and was raised in the city. She was brought up in the Catholic faith at the Cathedral of St. Louis, where Father Antoine, the chaplain, was kind and supportive to her.

  It was Father Antoine who conducted the wedding service for Marie when, at the age of twenty-five, she married Jacques Paris. Both were enthusiastic Catholics and worshipped regularly in the cathedral.

  By all accounts, it was a happy marriage until tragedy struck a few years later: Jacques vanished mysteriously and was presumed dead. This allowed Marie, then known as Widow Paris, to marry her second husband, Christophe Glapion.

  One of Marie’s fifteen children, a daughter who was also named Marie, bore such a remarkable resemblance to her mother that once Marie junior was an adult, it was almost impossible to tell them apart. Both women were Voodoo priestesses. This uncanny resemblance between mother and daughter may have been responsible for several of the stories circulating in New Orleans during her heyday that she had miraculously recovered her youthful looks and had the power to appear in two places at once.

  Marie Laveau came to fame when she was approached by the wealthy father of the accused immediately prior to the trial of a young suspect. Things were looking ominous for the boy before Marie’s intervention. His father offered Marie anything if she could save his son, and she asked for his luxurious house in the best neighbourhood of New Orleans as her fee if she succeeded. She then concealed a number of mysterious Voodoo talismans and other magical objects in the building where the trial was being held. The verdict came in as not guilty, and true to his word, the boy’s father gave Marie the house as promised. (After such a demonstration of her powers, he was unlikely to have tried to cheat her.)

  Marie helped to nurse the wounded after the famous battle of New Orleans, and her high status and benevolent work were later acknowledged when she was a distinguished guest at the state funeral of General Jean Humbert.

  Marie was an extraordinarily complex character, combining genuine care and compassion with her mixed Voodoo and Catholic beliefs. In addition to her work with the wounded after the Battle of New Orleans, she became a regular prison visitor and did her best for the prisoners awaiting execution on death row. She made gumbo (a traditional African stew with seafood ingredients that was a very popular dish in New Orleans) and brought it with her when she visited the convicts. It was alleged that she included Voodoo herbs and other secret ingredients that acted like modern antidepressants and reduced the mental anguish of those who were waiting to be executed. There were even stories that on some occasions she would deliberately overdose the gumbo so that the condemned man died “naturally” in his sleep before the executioner came for him. This attitude of hers sheds interesting light on the ideas inherent in Santeria and Voodoo concerning the ethics of euthanasia. If the accounts of the lethal drugs in the gumbo that Marie gave to the condemned on some occasions are correct, it suggests that the Voodoo ethic in her day was that death is preferable to suffering. This would be particularly the case in view of the Voodoo belief in an afterlife that was vastly preferable to life on earth. Supposing that this was known and understood by those who worshipped regularly with Marie, then part of her priestess powers may have been the solemn recognition that as far as the death row convicts were concerned, she was their priestess of life and death.

  Although Marie used various Voodoo drugs, herbal preparations, talismans, dolls, and charms, much of her power seems to have come from her secret spy network. She herself was also a skilled hairdresser, and many of the rich and famous employed her in their own homes in that capacity. It seems that visiting hairdressers in nineteenth-century New Orleans were practically invisible, and their rich and powerful clients would discuss important, confidential matters in front of them as if they simply weren’t there. Marie made mental notes of all that she heard and used the information later to great advantage. She persuaded many other slaves and servants to contribute to her ever-growing network of confidential information.

  Her success in obtaining a verdict of not guilty for the son of her wealthy client may have resulted more from her secret knowledge than from whatever Voodoo talismans she secreted in the courthouse. With the intimate, confidential information that her network had gleaned for her, Marie might well have been in a position to hint to various jurors that if they decided to acquit the accused, certain things in their private lives would not be made public.

  In addition to the information that her domestic spy network brought in from the homes of the rich and powerful, Marie owned the Maison Blanche brothel on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Just as the Nazis used the Salon Kitty Brothel in Berlin to obtain information from high-ranking clients, so confidential information obtained by the girls working in Maison Blanche reached Marie Laveau.

  It was a remarkable combination of this secret information reservoir, her fervent and genuine belief in Voodoo magic, and her remarkable knowledge of potent herbs and drugs that made Marie such a powerful and influential person.

  One of the most important Voodoo ceremonies in New Orleans during Marie’s ascendancy was the Sunday dancing in Congo Square. She would arrive early before the main ceremony was scheduled to begin and would entertain the onlookers by dancing with her huge pet snake, Zombi, coiled around her. Here again the link with serpents and serpent symbolism is a prominent one.

  Marie Laveau’s pet snake, Zombi.

  Once a year on St. John’s Eve, June 23, she would preside over the all-night Voodoo ceremony on the banks of the St. John Bayou. Like the Sunday services, the proceedings began with Marie dancing with Zombi coiled around her, and the evening became wilder and wilder as alcohol and Voodoo fervour took hold of the worshippers. Drumming and singing accompanied the nude dancing, while sacrifices were offered to the various Loas. The more enthusiastic participants were soon overcome and became ecstatic and entranced, believing that they were possessed by their Loas. They would then utter prophecies, give psychic advice, answer questions about the best courses of future action, and perform healings. Unsurprisingly, it was part of Marie Laveau’s financial acumen to charge admission to the spectacular St. John’s Eve festival.

  Perhaps the most surprising thing about her, and one that emphasizes the power of syncretism in Santeria and Voodoo, was her continued devotion to Catholicism. She included numerous aspects of Catholicism in her own Voodoo services. There were many statues of the saints on display, and bells and candles were much in evidence at her ceremonies. Crosses, holy water, and incense were also used. The priests at the St. Louis Cathedral were favourably disposed towards Marie because she encouraged her followers to attend Mass there.

 
There was almost a Robin Hood element in her character, however, because although she charged the wealthy high prices for her services, she was very generous to the poor, the hungry, the sick, and the homeless.

  Her grave in New Orleans is still visited regularly — the faithful believe that her powers as a Voodoo priestess have continued after death — and offerings are left there along with requests for her help. The routine is to make three chalk crosses on the side of her tomb and to knock three times on the stone when asking for her magical assistance. It is also believed that her spirit rises on June 23 each year and once more takes charge of a vast Voodoo ceremony.

  In order to understand the relative powers and the paradoxical similarities and differences of the priests and priestesses of Santeria, Voodoo, and other syncretistic mystery religions, it is helpful to analyze the ancient Chinese concept of yin and yang.

  Most dictionaries define them as a generalization of the antithesis or mutual correlation between certain objects, and that is fine as far as it goes. The French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss described a similar principle. He maintained that we understand life in terms of binary opposites and binary similarities. We understand size by looking at the opposites large and small. We understand temperature by considering hot and cold. In the realm of similarities, we understand wealthy in terms of rich and we understand affection in terms of friendship. Another way of looking at yin and yang is to suggest that they combine to form a unity of opposites. The similar Chinese idea of Liang Yi encapsulates the concept of heaven and earth — not so very distant from Socrates’ ideas about the realm of eternal ideals and true realities contrasted with the world of imperfect forms that we perceive here on earth.

  Yin and yang describe two primal forces that oppose each other and yet are complementary, and this paradoxical idea of being united in opposition has influenced Chinese religion, medicine, and philosophy for millennia. How much of it percolated through into other ancient civilizations is a matter of conjecture, but it can certainly be applied relevantly and effectively to the respective roles of the priest and priestess in Santeria, Voodoo, and the other mysterious syncretistic religions.

  The yin element, as expressed in its original Far Eastern form, can be translated as somewhere that is shaded, overcast, and cloudy. It is pictured as a sheltered nook, or the south bank of a great Chinese river. It originally symbolized all that is feminine: darkness, the night, passivity, and something that is striving like gravity to move downwards. In a system that recognizes the four-element theory, yin is air and water.

  River goddess from Africa.

  Yang, by contrast, is a bright, sunlit place. It is the north bank of the river. It is dynamically active and energetic, tending to rise like a Chinese kite. It seeks to move upwards and represents the light of day, as opposed to the darkness of night. It is masculine, and in the four-element theory it is earth and fire.

  Another important aspect of the yin and yang concepts is that the opposites are by no means absolutes: they move relative to each other. Chinese philosophers would say that everything in nature has interchangeable yin and yang states. There is an element of femininity in the most masculine males; and there is an element of masculinity in the most feminine females. Yin and yang do not epitomize stasis: there is constant movement between them. There is a very real sense in which yin and yang contain the seeds of each other — so neither can exist without the other.

  Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the autism research unit at the University of Cambridge in England, has undertaken very interesting and important research into the differences between male and female brains. In essence, he has concluded that female brains are designed to be empathetic, while male brains are designed to understand the environment and to design and build systems relevant to it. His fascinating hypothesis is referred to as the E-S, or empathizing-systematizing, theory. It is interesting to observe that a psycho-neuronal theory at the cutting edge of twenty-first-century science is uncannily similar to Chinese thought from millennia ago. Both empathizing and systematizing are essential for human survival in the ultra-complex societies of today’s sophisticated world.

  Empathy can be defined as the ability to understand another individual’s feelings and emotions, and then to respond to that person in an appropriate manner. Empathizers instinctively get inside another person’s mindset and then do all they can to treat that person carefully and sensitively. Systematizers are driven to analyze what’s going on around them in the environment, to observe any existing systems and functional institutions within it, to find out how they work, and then to construct new and improved systems.

  The main similarity of yin and yang to Baron-Cohen’s E-S theory is that both the male and female types of mind are essential to each other and interdependent. They need to work together in order to optimize their function.

  A significant part of the power of the Santerian or Voodoo priest is his ability to analyze the Christian aspects of his syncretized religion, as well as the ancient African aspects of it. Having seen and understood both systems, he is in a position to devise a syncretized system that will work effectively for him and his people.

  A significant part of the power of the Voodoo or Santerian priestess consists of her ability to enter empathetically into the hopes, fears, doubts, and aspirations of her people, to find out what they need and want and then to do her best to supply them.

  A vital and particularly feminine power of the Voodoo or Santerian priestess is this ability to empathize with her worshippers — perhaps to an abnormally sensitive degree. In a way, this empathy can be seen as giving her something akin to Marie Laveau’s spy network. The priestess’s ability to feel what worshippers are feeling, to think what they’re thinking, to get alongside them emotionally, to tiptoe through their minds and sense everything that’s there: all this is an immense source of power — simply because knowledge is power.

  A pregnant female image connected to the fertility rites of the Olokun people.

  Where the male Santerian priest can, perhaps, be seen to derive some of his power from his charisma — his aggressive, assertive, dynamic, commanding masculinity — the priestess may well derive some of her power from her physical attractiveness and feminine allure. It is one of the oldest and most basic of all male instincts to be drawn to, and to seek the company of, an attractive woman. Just as the priest will attract the attention of most of the female worshippers, so the priestess will attract the males.

  This male-female attraction-chemistry is undoubtedly a factor in the success of Santeria, Voodoo, and other syncretistic mystery religions where both priests and priestesses lead the ceremonies and serve the needs of both genders in their local communities. It is particularly important in a religion and in a cultural system where sexuality is a straightforward and readily accepted part of life. Cromwellian Puritanism and Victorian prudery would be hopelessly at odds with the idea that attending worship was enriched and enhanced by having that worship led by an attractive member of the opposite sex. The semi-orgiastic rituals of some of the syncretistic mystery religions make it abundantly clear that — as far as they are concerned — sexual activity is something to be accepted, encouraged, and cultivated as part of natural human life.

  The male systematizing tendency and the female empathizing tendency are as different and diverse as the principles of yin and yang: both, complementing each other, are vital to the success of the Santerian enterprise.

  There is an important sense in which the powers of the priest and priestess in Santeria, Voodoo, Lucumi, and the other syncretistic mystery religions are gender free. The man or woman in charge of the ceremony, and of the worshipping community outside of their attendance at the ceremony, is granted his or her power by the consent and acceptance of the community.

  There is an equally important sense in which there are clearly different and distinctive powers allocated to a priest or priestess, which are very much associated with that leader’s gender. Using the analog
y of parenthood, there are aspects of loving and caring parents that are gender specific. This gender specificity will vary from one historical period to another and from one culture to another, but it is recognizable. In every society and in all the ages of history, mothers have performed one set of functions while fathers have performed another. So it is with the priests and priestesses of Voodoo, Santeria, and similar faiths. One may be more likely to believe himself or herself to be possessed by a particular gender-associated Orisha or Loa than another.

  The powers of the priest and priestess in these syncretistic mystery religions have clear similarities and equally clear differences. There are shared functions that are independent of gender, and there are shared power sources, but there are also gender-specific functions that are exclusive to a priest or a priestess.

  Chapter 12

  VOODOO DOLLS AND TALISMANS

  Dolls, amulets, and talismans are an integral part of Voodoo, Santeria, and similar religions. They can be traced back to very ancient times and can take many forms.

  Akua’ba doll carried to ensure beautiful children.

  The word talisman probably comes from the Greek words τελεσμά (telesma) or τάλήν (talein), which carry the idea of being initiated into mysteries. In its original form it signifies anything that protects the wearer and brings good luck. A talisman does not have to be a solid, physical object, although this is how they are usually envisaged. It can be a word or phrase such as vade retro satana, meaning Satan, go back.

  European witch.

  The witches’ familiars — which could at a stretch be interpreted as talismans in the widest sense — were often living animals such as goats, snakes, toads, or cats. A talisman might be a protective plant, especially a magical herb such as wolfsbane (aconitum vulparia), also known as monkshood or aconite, which belongs to the buttercup family, ranunculaceae.