Voodoo in Haiti

by Alfred Métraux

  The manger-mort described to us by R. P. Peters includes some rites which are not mentioned by any other writer. For instance he says the père-savane summons the dead twice over ‘from the four cardinal points’. He reads the list of a family’s dead, pausing after every tenth name to pour out a libation of rum and sing psalms. The nomenclature of the deceased ends with the strange formula: ‘Toussaint Louverture—with the dead, to invite all the dead.’ At dawn a procession wends its way towards a crossroads to the strains of hymns: ‘Go my angel’ and ‘Send my soul’. When it arrives the père-savane tells the dead that ‘all is over, and they must stay satisfied and never come back to make demands’. A jar (canari), wrapped round with a piece of stuff, or with leaves, is broken against a stone placed in the middle of crossroads. The congregation sings in chorus ‘Now is broken the jar of the dead’. Everyone comes away—quickly—without looking back ‘for fear of drawing upon themselves the vengeance of the dead’. Once more the congregation dances, in the clearing where the fête was held. The dance is the bambochard—which is probably the equivalent of the banda.

  5—MAGIC AND SORCERY

  I.—MAGIC AND SORCERY

  Many Haitians, in their anxiety to clear Voodoo of the charges which have so often been levelled against it, oppose the cult of loa and magic with the utmost vigour. To make this distinction (between the worship of the loa and magic) is only possible if the word ‘magic’ is restricted to meaning black magic and sorcery. In other words the Voodooist regards as ‘magic’ any rite accomplished with evil intent, with or without the cooperation of loa. This essentially moral criterion could hardly be adopted in these pages. We must take—and have taken—magic to include any manipulation of occult forces, any use made of the virtues or properties immanent in things and in human beings and any technique through which the supernatural world becomes submissive to domination and exploitation for personal ends.

  Taken in this sense magic is inextricably mixed up with what people are pleased to call ‘the Voodoo religion’. Public ceremonies of homage to the gods always include elements which really pertain to sympathetic magic and which neither prayers, offerings nor sacrifices are able to disguise. Reciprocally, magic derives part of its ritual from traditional religion and relies on invocation of loa. Indeed, of the many loa venerated in the sanctuaries, the most ‘pure’ are those whose function it is to watch over the efficacy of magic rites. The saying ‘Petro is the art of magic’ which hungan like to repeat in a sententious way, merely means that, as we have said before, the magic arts fall mainly within the province of that class of spirits.{85}

  The grand-master of charms and sorceries is Legba-petro, invoked under the name of Maître-Carrefour, or simply Carrefour. Indeed crossroads are favourite sites for the ‘works’ of magicians; handfuls of earth taken from them are an ingredient of many beneficent or harmful spells. Some loa, the Simbi for instance, prefer white magic; others protect and assist sorcerers: Ezili-jé-rouge, Ti-Jean, Kita-demembré are scarcely distinguishable from the familiar spirits of ‘the black art’.

  Rites of sympathetic magic which by their very nature should work mechanically, are not effective unless terms are first made with the Maître-des-cimetières—Baron-Samedi: even the most powerful sorcerer cannot kill a man if Baron has not first ‘marked out his grave’.

  Medicine, as practised by the hungan, shares this ambiguity. A ‘treatment’ usually includes interminable prayers, appeals to patron spirits, offerings and sacrifices—all acts of a pre-eminently religious nature, yet the cure proper, with its symbolic ritual, complicated prescriptions, rites of elimination, belongs to the province of magic in its most blatant form. The ceremony of Christmas for example, one of the most brilliant occasions in the cycle of Voodoo feasts, is it not merely a simple exercise in magical prophylaxis, the efficacy of which is guaranteed by the presence of spirits?

  Just as no precise frontier can be laid down between the religious and the magic, so the rôle of priest is difficult to distinguish from that of magician, or even sorcerer. The boko, or sorcerer, is only a hungan who ‘serves with both hands’ (sert des deux mains) a nègre mazimaza (double-faced man) who appears to fulfil his priestly functions but does not hesitate to have recourse, when it suits him, to ‘bought loa’ (loa achetés). Driven on by a desire for gain, he uses illicit means to foster the cupidity of his clients and even plays the part of a tool in their various vendettas. A hungan worthy of the name knows all the techniques of sorcery since he is constantly required to counter them, but in his honesty he will not allow himself to make use of them. He also avoids any dealings with devil-loa. Hungan only deviate from this line of conduct if it becomes necessary to protect a client threatened by a sorcerer, or to lay low a criminal. The hungan who casts a spell on a thief or an assassin does not incur the opprobrium which falls on a hungan who, using exactly the same means, eliminates an innocent person. In short it is neither his ‘knowledge’ (connaissance) nor his functions which distinguish a hungan from a sorcerer, but the uses to which he puts them. A hungan is ‘like a shop. He has a lot of merchandise...’{86}

  Does Haiti deserve to be called the ‘Magic Island’—the name given to it by Seabrook not because of the charms of its tropical climate but because, in his eyes, it was the country of sorcerers and spirits?

  The stories of blood and death which this author raked together assort ill with the open gaiety and gentleness of the Haitian peasant, with his acute sense of what is comic and his love of banter. Nevertheless Seabrook did not invent things. The scenes of black magic which he described with such verve, the mysterious deaths and the whole disquieting world of the boko, werewolves and zombi which he conjures up, are taken from perfectly straightforward accounts which may be heard today in the country and in the popular quarters of Port-au-Prince. He drew amply, with both hands, on a folklore which in this respect is bewilderingly rich. And it must be remembered that beliefs and ‘folklore’ practices are not always harmless superstitions. For many they are a source of anxiety and a cause of serious expense. They sow discord between relations and neighbours, foster chronic hatreds and sometimes end in murder.

  The ordinary man believes implicitly in magic. He is convinced, also, that among the people he knows there are many who lead a double life, one peaceful and normal, the other criminal and demoniac. The Protestants themselves, who often represent the most educated and enlightened element in the peasantry, firmly believe in the maleficent power accorded by Satan to some of their compatriots. That deep insecurity, which is the lot of most peasants and workers, predisposes them to practise magic and to believe themselves the playthings of occult powers. Ever since his earliest days the Haitian has heard talk of werewolves, sorcerers and evil spirits. Even among educated people there lingers a certain uneasiness and a propensity to believe the most extravagant stories; they disclaim total belief but wonder if behind all this diabolism there may not be ancient ‘African secrets’ which may enable the hungan and boko to set our poor science at nought. Left to himself, without much chance of teaching himself or enlarging his horizon, the peasant remains shut up in a world in which mystical powers intervene every moment.

  It would, of course, be wrong to see every Haitian peasant as a primitive obsessed by magic. Many of them resist all these beliefs if not with positive scepticism then at least with a healthy indifference. Without actually denying the existence of sorcery, they do not pay much attention to it. But unfortunately rural society has plenty of neurotics or simply troubled and downcast spirits who are quick to suggest that an illness is not ‘from God’, that an accident is surrounded with suspicious circumstances and that a death was not due to natural causes.

  Such people it is who are always hinting at ‘bad men’ and who take advantage of others’ anxiety and unhappiness to sow doubt in their minds and arouse the most absurd superstitions. Those who have been struck down by misery listen only too easily to such mutterings. Is not grief less painful when it turns to hatred? In everyda
y life the threat of charms, sorcery and spells makes but one more care to be listed with drought and the price of coffee and bananas. Magic is at least an evil against which man is not entirely powerless. He can protect himself with amulets, ‘drugs’, ‘degrees’ (degrés) and also by confiding in loa. These last watch over the servant who is dutiful and they warn him if someone has done ‘an evil thing’ (cast a spell) against him.

  Magic has spread in Haiti rather as weeds spread in a tropical clearing. ‘Black atavism’ some would say. Actually the African cultural heritage has come to a propitious social climate—to a setting of extreme poverty and ignorance which has proved a veritable forcing house for the development of every kind of magic. But in talking so much of Africa we incline to forget France—whose contribution to the magic and sorcery of Haiti is far from negligible. A great many beliefs and practices in Haitian magic originate from Normandy, Berry, Picardy or ancient Limousin. The world of European sorcery is hardly any different from that of African sorcery and so it was with the greatest ease that the Blacks borrowed practices and rites from the Whites; all the more willingly since the Whites, being the feared and admired masters, must therefore have more effective magic. Those who doubt this should remind themselves of the vogue enjoyed in popular circles, if not among the petit bourgeoisie too, by Le Grand et Petit Albert and La Poule Noir. It is from these books, imported from France, that hungan drew some part of their magic skills. The writer Jacques Roumain, detained in Port-au-Prince prison for political reasons, found that he was not allowed to read Seabrook’s Magic Island because the officer commanding his guards thought he might use it to escape from his cell.

  The small manual of magic which appears as an appendix to Seabrook’s work was found on the body of a rebel caco killed by American marines in 1920. It is a disappointing document. It tells us nothing about the secret art of the boko: it is only a compilation of old wives’ recipes partly taken from works of popular magic and it gives rather a poor idea of the originality of Voodoo sorcery.

  Until the revision of the penal code the practice of magic was forbidden under Article 405. This read as follows: ‘All makers of wangas, caprelatas, vaudoux, dompèdre, macandale and other sorceries will be punished by three to six months’ imprisonment and a fine of sixty to 150 gourdes, (a) by ordinary police tribunal; and on the second offence by imprisonment of six months to two years and a fine of three hundred to a thousand gourdes, (b) by the tribunal correctionel, this without taking into account the severer penalties which may be incurred for crimes committed in the preparation or execution of their maleficent practices.

  ‘All dances and other practices, of whatever kind, likely to nourish in the hearts of the people the spirit of fetishism and superstition will be regarded as sorcery and punished accordingly.’

  The second paragraph of this text, which dates from 1864, has often been invoked against the practice of Voodoo but it is clear that in the minds of the men who drew it up, it was aimed at sorcery. Since the colonial period both the power and the number of magicians have been exaggerated. Having said this, however, we must add that there can be no doubt that in Haiti today many people are still addicted to the black arts and are encouraged in this by people who are genuine professionals of those same arts. The sorceries at crossroads, the vestiges of mysterious ceremonies which one discovers in the cemeteries, the ‘passports’ of werewolves, the objects confiscated in the humfo at the time of the anti-superstition campaign, the occasional inexplicable weird crime—all prove that even though many of the stories of enchantment and poisoning may be the fruit of unseated imaginations, the practice of black magic none the less exists. To tell the truth, however worthy of condemnation may be this form of law-breaking, it is preferable to real murders. Better cast a spell on someone than stab him. I am disposed to believe that sorcery explains the low percentage of murders committed in Haiti. A person who casts a spell on his enemy already satisfies his hatred—and avoids the kind of action which, if actually executed, would be much more serious.

  I should like here to contribute to the dossier of Haitian sorcery a document which is completely authentic. It is the account of a murder attempted, for magical reasons, on a three-month-old child. The authoress of the text—an anthropologist—is no one other than the victim herself.

  ‘I often heard my mother and grandmother tell the extraordinary story of my first contact with a werewolf, a story which nearly had a tragic end.

  ‘I was only three months old at the time. My parents were pre-occupied with the health of my sister Madeleine, who was suffering from an attack of whooping-cough which dragged on without deriving any benefit from the careful nursing lavished upon her. At about four in the morning the young nurse, whose main responsibility was myself, was dandling me on the back balcony of the house. Suddenly my parents heard me give out a sharp cry followed by an altogether untypical series of screams. My mother, always quickly concerned if it were anything to do with one of us, asked the nurse what was the matter. She replied there was nothing the matter—though her efforts to calm me were in vain. My mother said, “There’s some reason for this screaming; she does not usually cry like this; make sure she hasn’t been pricked—you’ve been told before never to pick the child up when you’ve got a pin in your dress.” The nurse continued to insist that she had no pins on her and that nothing had happened. My screaming, however, did not abate.

  ‘My mother had me brought along and undressed me, and there on my chest could be seen the head of a needle. My father immediately went to fetch Dr. Audain who lived not far away. He, being unable to draw out the pin because it was so deeply embedded, prescribed a strong magnet. I screamed and threw myself about so much that he feared the needle might start “travelling” and so pierce the heart. He had no course but to perform an emergency operation with whatever lay to hand.

  ‘The nurse it seems swore, when questioned, that a hungan had told her he must have “an angel” before Christmas. Apparently she first tried to poison my sister Madeleine in which she was prevented by the continual attention with which the ill child was surrounded. Then, feeling time was short, she made a surprise attack on me.

  ‘No legal action was taken after this affair. My mother, in her revulsion for the girl who had wanted to sacrifice her child, told her to leave at once and never trouble her sight again.’

  The classic form of sorcery with a doll or some other object symbolizing the victim is well-known in Haiti but sometimes takes an unusual form. The sorcerer, by means of incantation, tries to lure the person he is required to kill into a bucket of water. When he sees the image of his victim reflected in the water, he stabs it. If successful the water immediately reddens. Naturally a person can be killed if certain rites are carried out on objects which have belonged to him. In this connection I was told the following strange story: a curé of the Jacmel area had been called urgently to an old peasant who was on the verge of death. This man had been a boko whose whole life had been a tissue of crime. Now to the curé he confessed, among other misdeeds, that shortly before falling ill he had cast a spell over him by means of his maniple. He described the place where he had hidden it and advised him to go and find it as quickly as possible because, according to his calculations, the spell should work that very day. The curé heard him to the end, gave him absolution and went off in haste to find the maniple. He found it—only to die at the very moment when he was trying to undo the spell. By then only a hungan could have helped him since even the originator of a charm is often unable to prevent it taking effect.

  Suicide is not regarded as a truly voluntary act, but as the consequence of a state of mental alienation brought about by a sorcerer.

  No one will ever know how many crimes are intended and attempted, magically. The number may be less than people say. Whoever casts a spell on his enemy knows that he runs the risk of having his secret discovered by a hungan who, in response to demands from the victim’s family, will not hesitate to pay him back in his own coin. Wh
en the parents of someone deceased suspect poisoning they spare neither money nor trouble to discover the culprit and hit back. And finally there is God, the Grand Master’ who sees all and will not tolerate sorcery. Even if God does not sooner or later bring down a punishment, the guilty party still runs the risk of finding himself on the wrong side of his own family loa. As a sign of their displeasure they may withdraw their protection and abandon him, without defence, to the sorceries and charms of his enemies. Also: whoever practises magic has good reason to fear the magic of other people. Such considerations certainly stop a good many people who are in the way of committing crime. Others prefer slower methods than brutal witchcraft—methods equally criminal but less akin to straightforward assassination. Such are they who use poisons to cause long, lingering and finally fatal illnesses. Some suit the nature of the evils they cause to the degree of hatred they feel, and get satisfaction from painful illnesses, accidents or ruin of which they know themselves to be the cause. Boko therefore have to be in a position to meet the widest range of demand; their arsenal must include all kinds of weapons.

  Sorcerers’ ‘works’ are carried out in the secrecy of the humfo, at lonely crossroads, and at the foot of the Baron crosses in cemeteries. They are shrouded in complete mystery. Nevertheless there are plenty of good people who feel well informed on every little detail of the art of casting spells and preparing lethal poisons. For, let us remember, it is not so much the boko’s art which is secret as the act of sorcery itself. Many people have great knowledge in magic but this does not mean they practise it.