For quite a long time there is no sound but the regular and monotonous clicking of Lorgina’s rattle. Then she repeats a few Catholic prayers only to switch abruptly to a Voodoo invocation, mostly in langage, of the loa. ‘Yâvalu gitô ladé môsago bôjago Yâvalu wèto, nu tayòvi, gwèru, gwèru ladè...’ But suddenly her voice changes; it becomes deep and muffled as though it were resounding in some empty tank. Someone whispers to me that it is Ogu. All the people present intoned: ‘Good morning Papa Ogu’. The god addresses Tullius with a breezy: ‘Yâvalu Tullius’ and adds: ‘Don’t be afraid of what you’ve got in your head’—an obvious allusion to Tullius’s fear that he was under a spell, and to his endless complaints during the last few days. Papa Ogu who is one of Lorgina’s humfo ‘masters’, gives a violent dressing down to the hunsi, reproaching them for their ingratitude and idleness and several times refers to them as ‘sluts’. After delivering this reprimand Ogu, saluted by the congregation, takes his leave.
Lorgina resumes her invocations and in turn I hear her call upon Maître-Carrefour, Baron-Samedi and the Guédé (gods of death). She has to get their permission for Choisi’s mother to appear in the sanctuary. The noise from the next room is now a sort of whistling which is seemingly produced by blowing over the mouth of a bottle. It soon becomes a mournful moan: it is the dead mother who has just arrived. Lorgina puts the utterances of this ghost into human language: the deceased recommends resignation: there is no help, she says, for this embarrassing affair and above all the poor girl must not be beaten. Lorgina, still interpreting for the ghost, says to Choisi: ‘Your mother is cold, she is in the water; you must sing a Libera to release her good angel. You have also four brothers whose soul is in the water.’ She interrupts herself to ask Choisi if her father is still alive. Choisi says that he died a long time ago. Lorgina replies that his soul also is in water. The ghost once more asks for the girl to be forgiven, pointing out that if she has done wrong she is nevertheless not entirely to blame having been brought up so extremely badly. The father of the child should be sent for as soon as possible and seriously spoken to. A noise is heard in the pitcher—the ghost has departed.
Lorgina begins to shake her rattle and recite prayers. A new loa enters the sanctuary. First comes a grunting which turns into a sad quavering voice. The congregation whispers that the new inhabitant of the govi is Maîtresse-Mambo, protector of Tullius. She calls Tullius who replies, ‘I am in thy hand.’ Everyone present repeats the same respectful formula. The loa has a grudge against a certain Valérius. He reproaches him for getting into bad ways and abandoning himself to shameful practices. The accused defends himself with vigour and makes a show of laughing at some of the charges. He asks the loa to show him just what ways he ought to follow. Maîtresse-Mambo exhorts him to stop wasting his money and change his way of life which is not good. Immediately after this the spirit departs amid the sound of plates clashed together.
After a few minutes she is followed by another loa who talks in hiccups from the back of the throat, like an old man. The congregation greets him with ‘Good morning, brother Linglessu’ and Tullius adds ‘We are in thy hand, you are our patron and protector’...Linglessu speaks, but his voice is so distorted I cannot understand him; then he gives place to Ogu-balindjo. Tullius is much gratified by the arrival of his patron loa and greets him in a confident and affectionate voice, ‘I am in thy hand, Ogu Saint-Jacques, my father and protector...’ Ogu-balindjo replies in the same spirit and passes some remarks which make Tullius laugh. He promises to become ‘Linglessu’s servant’. Balindjo then speaks to the congregation and inveighs against a certain hunsi whom he dubs ‘a bad lot’—a judgement which he pronounces with disdain. He advises the confiance to be careful because ‘bones wear the dog out’. Tullius whispers in my ear that this proverb means it is wrong to make trouble between people. It was directed against a certain Joe who seemingly was addicted to making mischief.
Suddenly a horrible lowing accompanied by the noise of clashing plates comes out of the sanctuary. It is Agirualinsu who has burst in without being called. He is amusing himself by terrifying Ogu-balindjo with fearsome cries. Agirualinsu can be heard saying, ‘You have stayed long enough with me, now it’s my turn.’
However he does not stay long and Lorgina explains to everyone present that he went off in a huff because they forgot to greet him. The hunsi protest, saying it is for the mambo to greet him first.
Lorgina recites various formulae in langage and each time she stops a cavernous voice is raised in reply. No one can identify the visitor who, as I learnt later, is none other than Agau-léfant. He has a grudge against Joe who answers him vehemently and cries out in despair: ‘Don’t say that.’ Tullius intervenes and implores: ‘But she’s only a child: she doesn’t know what she’s doing.’ The hunsi, stricken, cry out ‘Have pity, have mercy, don’t kill her, forgive, forgive! She is a little angel!’ Joe begins sobbing and begs the loa: ‘Comfort her, don’t eat her! Have mercy—pity.’
Agau-léfant then tells Vertilis of traps which have been set for him at a crossroads but assures him he has nothing to fear, that he will protect him in spite of having good grounds for complaint against him—Vertilis having neglected him and favoured another loa.
My notes end thus: I find Joe leaning weakly against the door of the sanctuary, his face tense, frowning and anxious. I ask him what it all means. He snubs me, saying ‘I can’t give my mind to anything after what I’ve just heard...’ Lorgina who seems well pleased with the séance explains to me the incident which created such a stir. Joe’s niece had been entrusted to the mambo to be trained for and passed through her initiation rites, but her family had withdrawn her before she was ‘brought to bed’,{80} thus depriving Lorgina of her fees, upon which she had counted, and offending the loa, in particular Agau-léfant who had no doubt been selected as maît’-tête-to-be. This spirit had intimated to Joe his intention of killing the girl! Moreover the latter had just had a dream in which she had seen her dead mother bringing her money. With this she was to buy provisions for a journey. The dream had been interpreted as a premonition of death, since the voyage in question could only be beyond the grave.
Some mambo work more simply. They put themselves in a state of trance and become possessed of a god whose speciality is divination. Certain Guédé like to foretell the future; the seer’s crystal ball is one of their attributes. With one of the grand hungan I got to know a young hunsi who was often ‘ridden’ by Guédé-double. She assumed the attributes of this spirit and then revealed the future by looking into a glass of water beside which she lit a candle.
XIV.—THE FEAST OF YAMS
Although Voodoo is practised mainly by peasants it is not strictly speaking an agrarian religion. Magic rites are the commonest means by which a peasant tries to increase or maintain the yield of his acres, and it is this which gives the relationship between agriculture and religion an individual rather than a collective stamp. The only public ceremony directly related to harvests is the one known as the manger-yam: this corresponds with the sacrifice of the first-fruits which, among the Fon of Dahomey and Togo, is practised in exactly the same way.
The manger-yam is celebrated in all Voodoo sanctuaries shortly after the yam harvest. Its purpose is to allow the peasants to eat the tubercles they have gathered from the soil with perfect safety. Here are the exact words in which a Voodooist explained the object of this fete: ‘When the yams of Guinea appear they cannot be eaten under the peristyle until a manger-yam has been held for the mysteries of Guinea. The fete does not take place at a fixed date but must follow the first harvest as closely as possible: in the south of Haiti this falls about the middle of October.’
The manger-yam comprises the usual elements of any Voodoo grand ‘service’—African prayers, libations, consecrations, dances, sacrifices, parades. These rites substantially agree with those which we have described elsewhere; only the general outline of the ceremony and the actual treatment of the yams need concern us.
> The ceremony goes on for two days. The rites of the first evening are in essence designed to confer a sacred character on the yams, on the bananas and on the dried fish collected round the poteau-mitan. All these are cross-signed with flour, sprinkled with libations and finally carried into the bagi by a procession of hunsi. There they are laid down on the vèvè and thus come in contact with the loa; then they are covered with mombin leaves, whose supernatural powers we have often remarked upon, and with an aizan made beneath the peristyle, as in the rite described above (see page 196). This first part of the ceremony is the ‘putting-to-bed of the yams’ (coucher des ignames).
The following morning the rites called the ‘rising of the yams’ (lever des ignames) are carried out and go on all day. In particular they include the sacrifice of chickens and goats. When the bodies of the victims have been put down on the vèvè, the mambo installs herself in the bagi. There she lines up the yams which have ‘slept’ under the eye of the gods and spirits and cross-signs them again with maize-flour mixed with ashes. Everyone present is invited one after the other, according to his rank in the society, to cut a tubercle into several pieces. When the yam has been divided with the matchet it must then be ‘orientated’; the ground is kissed both before and after the cutting-up. This ceremony is repeated in the different caye-mystères (houses of gods) of the sanctuary.
In the evening the yams are boiled up with fish and everyone feasts himself. The loa’s share is buried in a hole dug in front of the altar.
XV.—VOODOO CHRISTMAS IN HAITI
THE QUEST FOR THE MAGIC WATER
The voices of Haitian church bells and sanctuary drums mingle on Christmas night, but they summon people to very different kinds of ceremony.{81} On the one hand the birth of Christ is celebrated, on the other, beneath the watchful eye of African divinities, magic powders are prepared to afford immunity from the machinations of sorcerers, from the evil deeds of werewolves and from misfortune of all kinds. The coincidence of dates is certainly no mere chance for ‘Christmas’ has come to indicate rites which formerly fell about the winter solstice, or which heralded the new year. A similar phenomenon is known to have occurred in Europe at the dawn of Christianity. Voodoo, standing closer to its origins, has not bothered to establish a link between the two festivals. Extensive rites of preparation for Christmas are begun a long time ahead and are themselves occasions for complex ceremonies. Voodoo Christmas is the culminating phase of a veritable cycle of rites. The picture of them which we shall give here is incomplete; much is missing, in particular the practices observed during the picking of the magic plants. On the other hand I had the opportunity of accompanying the whole staff of a humfo in their search for the water used in the preparation of the ‘baths’. At Port-au-Prince these ablutions are made with the sulphurous water of the Source Balan, situated at the foot of one of the mountain chains which border the Cul-de-Sac plain on the north side. The subterranean cavern from which it emerges is said to be the dwelling place of numerous loa: Damballah-wèdo, Agwé, Maîtresse-la-Sirène and Grande-Bossine.
The quest for this sulphurous water is carried out with great pomp and all members of sanctuaries—priests, acolytes and servants of the spirits—take part, treating it as a pilgrimage. In 1947 I was invited by Lorgina to join one such pious expedition. On the day agreed for the start, the mambo made a sacrifice to the water loa in her humfo room. ‘I ask you,’ she said firmly, ‘to open the way for us tomorrow to go to the Balan spring. Give me your help throughout the journey. Grande-Bossine, I’ve promised you a present, I’ve given you a chicken; the other chicken was for all the mystères. I killed the chicken this evening so that I might give it to you tomorrow at the Balan spring. It is tomorrow that you’ll get it. All mysteries, help me, watch over me, let me make profits. Let those to whom I have done good be grateful to me. The mysteries know very well that I am good. Take away the bad luck which has been afflicting me and which is preventing people from being grateful to me. Let people come and succour me when I am ill and let them remember the good I do instead of abusing me. Give me your help so I may have the means of sleeping, eating and living, and so that peace may be in my house.’
When she had finished this speech, with all its implied reproach of the hunsi of her society, she threw whole handfuls of food in the pool of Damballah-wèdo and made libations. With this gesture, the first ceremony of the Christmas cycle came to an end.
The next day, turning up early at the humfo, I found mambo and hunsi in the process of loading packages wrapped in white cloth into a motor-coach. Before its departure Lorgina shut herself in one of the sanctuary rooms in order to consult two of her favourite loa—Ogu and Linglessu. Those who like myself kept near the door heard monotonous incantations punctuated rhythmically and ceaselessly by the clinking of the rattle, then the noise of plates being clashed together, finally a hoarse voice—which meant Ogu had come down into the govi. I did not understand much of the dialogue between the mambo and the two loa but the consultation must have been satisfying for she left the humfo in a cheerful mood. We piled into the coach as best we could and set off at a good speed. The hunsi, like a band of schoolgirls on holiday, sang hymns loud enough to split your ears and waved the ‘Society’s’ banners out of the windows.
When we had gone about twenty miles towards the mountains the vehicle left the main road and began to plough through a forest of acacias whose thorny branches whipped our hands and faces. Despite the efforts of our chauffeur who hoped to save Lorgina and her rheumatism a long march, we were compelled to stop in the middle of the bush. We unloaded the bus and the mambo, followed by her hunsi, boldly set out along a narrow path towards the chain of hills in which lay the Balan spring. Arriving at a crossroads we halted so that we could pay homage to the patron spirit of crossroads—Legba. The god’s emblem was quickly traced out in flour in the middle of a clearing, a small fire was lit and into it each in turn made libations and offerings. The hunsi sang hymns to Legba, and the standard-bearers, having done the rounds of the fire, kissed the earth. Legba chose this moment to possess a girl who was still almost a child. She fell to the ground convulsed and struggled as though trying to escape from the clutches of the invisible being who was trying to take root in her. She finally gave in and her abandon made it possible to lift her to her feet. She then fell to her knees and stayed thus, her arms hanging slackly, her head loosely slumped on her chest, amid the hunsi who, with their songs, saluted the presence of the god. The possessed girl at last came out of her torpor and went back to her place in the procession as though nothing had happened. Legba having departed, we moved on again—everyone having made four libations and four offerings of dried food, as before.
A nauseating stench of sulphur showed we were approaching the Balan spring. Now we found it, in a hole about a yard wide, lying at the foot of a mass of rock. The water which keeps it filled escapes into the forest in a thin stream. An arch rose up near the source; some vèvè, partially rubbed out, bore witness to the recent passage of other ‘Societies’ come here to get water for the Christmas ablutions. Without losing a minute, the hunsi opened their parcels of provisions and put out a great variety of foods in the dishes and calabashes which they laid out on the ground. These were offerings for the guardian spirits of this place. Tullius, who was very active, dug near this picnic-place a shallow ditch, doubtless to inform the ‘mysteries’ that when the time came they would get their share of the feast. After a few Catholic prayers recited by Lorgina, Tullius ‘launched’ a song, probably composed specially for the occasion.
Marie, vini Jésus moi
Grâce ô grâce
Deshabillé dishabillé
Grâce, Marie, grâce
Mary come Jesus to me
Mercy, o mercy
Undress, undress
Mercy, Mary, mercy.
At this the hunsi began to undress in readiness to enter the cavern from which came the waters of the Balan spring. This subterranean pilgrimage is quite an adventure.
Indeed the only means of access to the cave is the spring itself and you have to slip through it, into a narrow enclosed channel which leads to the bottom of a tiny lake. Tullius and another young man acted as guides. They set off ahead, as path-finders, their cheeks stuffed out with candle-ends and a box of matches to light the cave.
After a quarter of an hour the head and the hands of Tullius could be seen at the bottom of the spring. He had come to let us know that all was ready: the hunsi could come to him; and he disappeared again. First to go down into the hole were the men. When my turn came I slid as best I could into the narrow opening having first taken a deep breath to last out my period of submersion. This was short, for I was no sooner under than I felt myself seized by energetic hands. When they let me go I was able to reach the surface with a few strokes—and found myself in a darkish pool. By the feeble light of the candles I could make out a low vault of basaltic rock and at one end a sort of beach lighted by daylight which filtered down through a narrow crack in the wall. Those who had gone on before me had gathered there and were rubbing their bodies with bunches of herbs which they subsequently laid on a ledge of rock where other such bunches were in the process of decomposition. Everyone was silent as though afraid of disturbing that abode of loa. Noise, however, there suddenly was—and violent too—yappings and gurglings such as might have been made by someone drowning. A young woman who had just emerged, possessed by Damballah, was giving in to a crisis. She struggled violently, fell into the water, came up and tried to hiss like a snake, but failing, broke into a sort of barking which may have been shouts of terror. Since she seemed unable to keep herself afloat Tullius and his acolyte went to her assistance and pulled her up on to the beach where she might stay till her trance was over. Another possession gave us even more anxiety: the man concerned had fallen into a state of torpor which verged on catalepsy. When an attempt was made to bring him into the open air, it proved exceedingly difficult to get him through the neck which he blocked with his inert body. It took the combined efforts of all the hunsi to get him out of the hole. They lifted him on to the edge of the spring where he remained stretched out as though dead. Lorgina seemed unmoved by the incident. She came and shook her rattle over him, recited a few prayers in a low voice and finally ‘rode’ him—stood astride him—as is customary when a loa prostrates itself in front of a priest. Clearly the mambo was trying to make the spirit leave the man whom it had so seriously endangered. Her treatment proved effective for gradually he came to his senses. When he was quite himself he seemed to have no recollection of his misadventure.
Voodoo in Haiti Page 24
