I need hardly say that I was never invited to the casting of a spell or to any conjuration of bad spirits. The few ‘works’ which I witnessed all pertained to white magic. My information on the whole subject comes from very varied informants, some of them peasants, some town-dwellers. Several stories were told me by friends belonging to the Haitian bourgeoisie. I have thought it useless to go into such technical and irksome details as the enumeration of ingredients of a charm. Recipes of that nature can easily be come by, with the smallest research into the subject of magic cookery. Witch’s broth is made up in much the same way whether the sorcerer be black or white.
The magicians most feared are those veritable hired assassins who undertake the murder of innocent people. There are a number of ways of committing murder magically.
SENDING OF DEAD (‘EXPÉDITIONS’)
The most fearful practice in the black arts—the one which the ordinary people are always talking about, is the ‘sending of dead’ (l’envoi morts or expéditions). Whoever has become the prey of one or more dead people sent against him begins to grow thin, spit blood and is soon dead. The laying on of this spell is always attended by fatal results unless it is diagnosed in time and a capable hungan succeeds in making the dead let go.
The dead are sent under the auspices of Saint Expedit who is invoked after his image has been placed upside down, in the following prayer:
‘Almighty God, my Father, come and find so-and-so that he may be “disappeared” (sic) before me like the thunder and lightning. Saint Expedit, you who have the power to move the earth, you are a saint and I a sinner. I call on you and take you as my patron from today. I am sending you to find so-and-so: rid me of (expédiez) his head, rid me of his memory, rid me of his thought, rid me of his house, rid me of all my enemies, visible and invisible, bring down on them thunder and lightning. In thine honour Saint Expedit, three Paters.’{87}
The success of this curse still depends on the goodwill of Baron-Samedi, the all-powerful master of the dead. The boko strikes his matchet three times against the stone consecrated to this god and at each blow utters the god’s name. He is then possessed by Baron-Samedi who, through his mouth, orders the person appealing to him to turn up at midnight at a cemetery and there offer bananas and potatoes, chopped small, in front of the cross which symbolizes him. There too he must take a handful of earth for each of the ‘dead’ whom he wishes to send and must spread it on some path frequently taken by his victim. Whether the unfortunate man shall step on or step over the earth makes little difference: the dead will enter his body and hold him close for ever. A client may also take as many stones from the tombs as he wishes in the knowledge that each will become ‘a dead’ ready to do his will, as soon as he has thrown it against his victim’s door.
There is another way of rousing the enmity of ‘a dead’ against someone to whom you wish harm. When a member of the victim’s family dies, two nails are surreptitiously driven into a beam of the house in which the decease took place. The dead person then cannot leave the precincts and in revenge begins to persecute his kin, in particular the person against whom the spell was cast. Atenaïze, who complained a great deal about the persecutions she had suffered from her dead husband, had discovered two suspicious nails in a beam of her hut and had had them removed. Unfortunately in the process one of them fell to the ground and was never found. She attributed all her troubles to this lost nail.
The presence of ‘a dead’ in someone can affect not only his health but also his character. Milo Marcelin{88} tells the pathetic story of a father, good and honest, who overnight became a drunkard and even an assassin because one of his subordinates had dispatched against him a drunken, vagabond ‘dead’.
Those who ‘send dead’ risk the wrath of their messengers if they fail to feed them.
Cattle no less than human beings are vulnerable to expéditions. It often happens that out of jealousy or vengeance sorcerers put ‘dead’ into a cow or a pig which soon seems afflicted with madness. Since an animal possessed is as dangerous as a human being in the same condition, its master is unable to sell it, and so must slaughter it.
TREATMENT FOR ‘EXPÉDITIONS’
According to hungan, illnesses resulting from expedition de morts are not easily cured. The dead embed themselves in the organism into which they are inserted and it is very difficult to make them let go. That this is no exaggeration may be seen from a description of an exorcism of ‘dead’ which I had the chance of witnessing in all its complexities at Lorgina’s sanctuary.{89} The patient who was put through this treatment was a certain Antoine who had been taken into the mambo’s humfo ill. With earthy complexion and wasted body he lay on a mat motionless as though eking out what little remained to him of life. A few weeks earlier this same man was a sturdy stevedore in the Port-au-Prince docks. His story was simple: he was taken suddenly ill and then went into an alarming decline. His family sent him to a hungan at La Salines who diagnosed an envoi morts. The magician was confident he could save him. In spite of the high fees he demanded Antoine took him on and endured a cruel and complicated treatment of which burning with seven matches was not the easiest part.
Antoine, seeing the dead would not yield, fell into such a state of prostration that he could no longer swallow. His parents then decided to take him to Lorgina and implored her to do anything she could to save him. She only agreed to take on his treatment after the loa Brisé whom she had invoked had promised her full co-operation. She threw shells and learnt that there were three dead in Antoine and there was no time to lose.
Given the nature of the illness the treatment had to be carried out not only under the aegis of the Guédé but even in the house which is reserved for them. There, the Guédé symbols had been traced out in ashes and coffee grounds.
On these vèvè the patient’s mat had been placed in order to establish a more intimate contact between him and the Guédé. Various ceremonial accessories were put on the table, the stone of Brisé (blackish with a mirror inset), five bunches of leaves and three calabashes containing maize and grilled peanuts. In each of these a candle had been planted (one black, one white and one yellow). Two gamelles (wooden troughs) under the table contained a brownish liquid. This was the ‘bath’—that is to say bits and pieces of plants left to soak in water with bull’s bile.
Lorgina ordered her hunsi to go and fetch the patient who had been sitting in the peristyle, clad in a nightshirt, with his back against the poteau-mitan. He was so weak that it was almost necessary to carry him. From what people said later it seems that on the way the ‘dead’ inside him continually defied the mambo and swore they would not let themselves be driven out. The patient was stripped of his clothes and with nothing on but his pants, was laid out on his mat, his head resting on a stone. Washing and ‘tidying up’ was now carried out as though the body were already that of a dead man. His jaw was bound up with a piece of stuff, his nostrils blocked with cotton-wool, his arms crossed against his body, palms uppermost, and his big-toes firmly tied together. On forehead, chest, stomach and in the palms of his hands were arranged small piles of maize and peanuts. Lorgina, taking a zinga (spotted) hen and a ‘curly’ cockerel, orientated them and invoked the spirits. She gave the birds to her acolyte who brought them to the patient and made them peck at each pile of food, beginning with the head. The cock’s refusal to touch the grain was taken as a bad sign: another cock was fetched. This one attacked the grain with such gusto that the man’s eyes had to be shielded from his greed. Now the birds were placed on the body of the invalid, two on the chest and the third between his legs. Meanwhile Lorgina, who had never ceased mumbling Credos, Aves and Paters as well as a long prayer to Saint Expedit, launched into a series of invocations to loa and magical formulae which invariably began with ‘In the name of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, in the name of Mary, in the name of Jesus and all the Saints and all the dead...’
She got up, took the hen and a cock and passed them at length over the body
of the patient starting with his head. Into this business she put a certain roughness and repeated several different incantations of which I only picked up one sentence: ‘All that is bad is to come out, all that is good is to go in.’ The mambo and her aide broke off to emit little noises something like the hissings of the snake-god Damballah. The assistant with a bird in each hand went through the whole thing again. He lingered when he came to the chest as though trying to sweep up something tangible. The patient trembled from time to time but the mambo cautioned him in commanding tone to keep still. She listed the names of the loa of her humfo and addressed herself to Brisé, to Agirualinsu and to her other protectors, but she also invoked the ancestors and root-loa of her client. She asked them to save him and to give him back his health ‘with the help of God’. For one last time the cock and hen were passed over the patient and were then left beside him, so dazed they did not move. It was the spotted hen which had taken l’expédition. As to the curly cock, he it was who had taken upon himself the patient’s mauvais-air (malific emanation). He would be set free. He was supposed to disappear mysteriously a few days later.
Each of the three calabashes with the candles was passed over the patient from head to foot. The same was done with the stone of Brisé. Lorgina continued praying and making the ‘tététété’ noise. She dipped her cupped hands into the bath and raising as much of it as she could, threw it brutally into the patient’s face. The latter terrified, trembled, shuddered, grunted and tried to get up. He was persuaded to keep still. Lorgina explained that it was not his fault that he moved but merely that the dead were on the move inside him and disturbing him. More of the ‘bath’ was thrown at him with the same violence as before and now several people took turns at it so the procedure might be continuous. The man was now streaming and covered with leaves and bits and pieces of half decomposed vegetation. This showerbath was a veritable offensive against the ‘dead’, an attempt thoroughly to drive them out. Their resistance took the form of incoherent movements which they imparted to the body of the man they possessed. Faced with the spectacle of such brutal treatment, a relation of the patient, who till then had remained quiet, burst into tears, and crying out that she could stand it no longer, tried to escape. She was constrained to sit down. The mambo ordered the dead to depart and told them that if they persisted in their obstinacy she would find a sure way of expelling them. Garlic was put in the patient’s mouth who, in the violence of his reaction, threw off his chin-bandage and bonds.
Finally he fell back on his mat visibly exhausted. The mambo called him several times by his name: ‘Antoine, Antoine, is it you there? Is it you?’ The patient replied faintly ‘Yes’; whereupon the assistant set fire to some clairin round the stone of Brisé on a plate and seizing the flames in his hand, ran them all over the body of the patient. Lorgina, filling her mouth with kimanga, squirted it roughly into Antoine’s face. He tried to shield his eyes but was prevented. The confiance rubbed him vigorously and struck him with the edge of her hands on the shoulders, the inner crook of the arm and under his knees.
Baths, rubbings and general massage now brought to an end this first part of the treatment which had taken place in the ‘house of Guédé’. The second act took place in the court, where a ditch had been dug. The patient was led there leaning on two hunsi, still walking with difficulty. Seven lamps made from orange peel were burning round the ditch and with them might be seen the three calabashes. The patient was helped into the bottom of the trench and handed a young banana palm which had just been uprooted. This he held in his arms. The chicken which was used earlier in the treatment was once again passed over all his body. Lorgina recited the formula ‘By thy will Good Lord, Saints and Dead, by the power of Papa Brisé, Monsieur Agirualinsu, Monsieur Guédé-nuvavu, Tou-Guédé, I ask you for the life of that man there, I mambo Yabofai, I ask you for the life of that man there, I buy him cash, I pay you, I owe you nothing.’ Once the prayer was finished the mambo poured the contents of the calabashes into her hands and with it rubbed the patient’s body. She poured the water from a jug over his head and all over his body and then broke it against the parapet of the trench. She anointed his body with oil from the lamps. The speckled hen, all huddled up, was put at the bottom of the trench against the roots of the banana palm. It was this hen which, buried alive, must buy back the patient’s life. If Baron-Samedi accepts the deal the banana palm dies; but if he refuses it the tree prospers and the man dies.
Quickly the loose earth on the edge of the ditch was pushed in and the patient helped out. The filling-in of the trench was completed as quickly as possible. The surface was levelled out and then crowned with three ‘perpetual lamps’.
Now came the most dramatic moment of the treatment, the moment which must bring about the final defeat of the dead. The patient was rubbed vigorously with blazing rum and three small charges were let off between his legs. Lorgina and her assistants squirted kimanga over him, blowing some to the four cardinal points—all this done to the cracking of the petro whip. A white maldyoc shirt with red facings was brought. One of the flap-ends was slightly burnt. With the blackened edge signs were marked on the face and chest of Antoine. The latter put on the shirt and over it the night-shirt which he was wearing at the beginning of the treatment. Lorgina told him to spit as much as possible and go in under the peristyle alone. He did so, stepping almost firmly. There a cloth was bound round his head and his feet were washed with an infusion of medicinal herbs; then he was given tea to drink. He said he was feeling much better.
And indeed the cure was almost miraculous. A few days later Antoine was a changed being. He ate well and having got some of his strength back wanted to get up and move about. Soon he resumed his arduous work as stevedore.
It is not always necessary to endure such a spectacular treatment to get rid of ‘dead’. The daughter of a certain Florilon was suffering from a serious illness. Florilon put it down to ‘dead’ which his own brother had sent against the child to be avenged of the death of his son—an event for which he held Florilon responsible. Florilon first went to herb-doctors, then to the town doctors who all said they could do nothing. He decided—much against his better feelings since he was a fervent Catholic—to consult a hungan. The latter diagnosed the illness, prescribed ablutions (bains) with herbal infusions and gave the child’s father an arrêtement, that is to say a talisman to stop the dead. This was a bottle full of magic herbs which he had to bury near his house. The girl was made to wear a chemisette paman (chemisette with facings) made of many coloured strips on which had been drawn indigo crosses. The child recovered but ever since then Florilon has felt an implacable hatred of the brother who had thus involved him in heavy expenditure and put him in debt to a hungan. At the time when I met him he had not yet finished paying off the fees of the hungan who, he feared, would unleash the morts which he had succeeded in ‘stopping’ if faced with further delay.
‘ZOMBI’
Zombi are people whose decease has been duly recorded, and whose burial has been witnessed, but who are found a few years later living with a boko in a state verging on idiocy. At Port-au-Prince there are few, even among the educated, who do not give some credence to these macabre stories. It is generally believed that hungan know the secret of certain drugs which can induce such a profound state of lethargy as to be indistinguishable from death. From time to time a story crops up of a zombi being found by the wayside and then taken to the police station. There is still talk of the celebrated case recorded by Zora Houston{90} of a society girl who a few years after her death was found in a house in the town: her family, at a loss what to do with this child returned from the grave, are said to have shut her up in a French convent. Zora Houston also visited and photographed an authentic zombi who had been picked up at the hospital of Gonaïves. In spite of the assertions of Zora Houston, who is very superstitious, it really seems that the woman concerned was an imbecile or a moron in whom the peasants had recognized a person who had been dead for twenty years. I
myself at Marbial once thought I was to meet a zombi. Some distracted peasants came to fetch me to see one in the middle of the night. I found a wretched lunatic with a farouche manner who remained obstinately silent. The people crowding round her stared at her with thinly disguised dread. Only on the following day was the zombi identified—as a poor idiot girl who had escaped from the house in which her parents kept her shut up.
Article 246 of the old Penal Code relates to zombi as follows:
‘Also to be termed intention to kill, by poisoning, is that use of substances whereby a person is not killed but reduced to a state of lethargy, more or less prolonged, and this without regard to the manner in which the substances were used or what were their later results.’
‘If, following the state of lethargy the person is buried, then the attempt will be termed murder.’
The common people do not trouble themselves with such subtleties. For them the zombie are the living dead—corpses which a sorcerer has extracted from their tombs and raised by a process which no one really knows. It is thought the sorcerer passes to and fro beneath the nose of the corpse a bottle containing his soul, obtained with the connivance of the corpse-washer. When there is some reason to fear that a dead person may be transformed into a zombi, family feeling calls for measures to prevent such a terrible fate. Normally the dead person is killed a second time by injecting poison into him, strangling or firing a bullet into his temple. My colleague M. Bernot witnessed at Marbial the strangulation of the corpse of a youth. This procedure, it was hoped, would rescue him from the man who was making him into a zombi. Whoever has the job of killing the dead man must stand behind him in case he is recognized and reported to the sorcerer who, baulked of his prey, will try and get his revenge. Another way out is to bury the corpse face down, mouth against the earth, with a dagger in his hand so he may stab any sorcerer who troubles his rest. Since a corpse can only be raised if it answers its name, it is important to prevent it from doing so. That is why sometimes the mouths of the dead are sewn up. Attempts are also made to provide a corpse with distractions such as may prevent him from hearing appeals from sorcerers. Just as is done with a loa when it is ‘limited’, an eyeless needle is put beside the dead body so the dead man may spend aeons trying to thread it, or sesame seeds are scattered in his coffin which he will devote himself to counting one by one.
Voodoo in Haiti Page 30
