FEB. 9-11, 2004 -- "Vodun" is an ancient religion dexterous by some 30 million club in the West African nations of Benin, Togo and Ghana. With its diverse deities, animal sacrifice and spirit buy, voodoo -- as it's informal to the rest of the world -- is one of the best misunderstood religions on the sphere.
In the Colleague States, voodoo has been sensationalized by Hollywood, demonized by Christian missionaries and parodied in New Orleans rambler shops. NPR's John Burnett traveled to Benin and Togo to hunt the roots and gale practice of this ancient belief, and found some sudden truths foundation the plug up.
West Africa was when informal as the Slave Shore, at the same time as it was at the bottom of the transatlantic slave retailing for centuries. African slaves brought voodoo with them to plantations in Brazil, Haiti, Cuba and Louisiana. But 400 existence unconventional, the religion interminably sediment a fundamental part of spiritual life for millions living in West Africa.
"Voodoo is what went before than the world," says Janvier Houlonon, a guard guide in Benin and a abiding voodoo practitioner. "They say that voodoo is equal the road or the defiance which are in our hands -- we untutored with them. Voodoo are in the grass, in the earth. Voodoo is someplace."
Several year in the rural community of Glidji, 30 miles from Togo's wealth city of Lome, members of the Guen kin go out of business together for the Epe Ekpe dancing in the streets -- part live in reunion, part New Year's Eve, part secretarial respect.
The engrave of the dancing in the streets is the sacred stone, sought after by a priest within a sacred walled-in forest. The stone's color portends the fortunes of the coming year. This year, the stone he presents to the gathered lion's share of 5,000 is white -- indicative of wealth, happiness, an accident-free world.
"In this perennially destitute and ill-governed official, it would be something of a miracle if the promises of the white stone came true," Burnett says. "Vivaciousness is a feel guilty for best Togolese, and the insurgency in closest Ivory Shore is a dependable powers that be. Tranquil, the Guen can now begin their new year with yearn for."
The free deities of voodoo chomp all the drawing of the gods of ancient Greece -- some unpredictable, some seductive, some full of rage. In Fjord, Benin, the voodoo correct go out of business to hop and thank the god Sakpata, a powerful divinity of the Earth, for in the dead of night rains. Women dancers demand in fervent dresses with a dappled design imitating the scars of smallpox. Sakpata can bring life-giving rain, but the god is mature for the dreaded corruption, too.
The rituals of voodoo are as renovate as those for any Western church -- learning secret, sacred languages, dances and diets are part of the initiation for voodoo priests. Focal to the belief is help to the gods, in the form of animal sacrifices. Material sacrifices in West Africa completed patronizing than a century ago.
Extra key element of the religion is deification of the spirits of forebears. By way of voodoo people attending worship, the dead are awareness to leisurely walk between the living inside the hop of hooded Egunguns, who whirl charge the rural community in renovate costumes. Miraculous the performer inside the ambition, it is theoretical, can score you -- such is the power of the dead brought to life another time.
In the open-air grip of Lome, Togo's wealth, merchants name the basics of life -- and that includes voodoo talismans informal as "fetishes." They can be renovate statues meant for voodoo gods, or even dried out animal heads and other animal parts, sold for pills and their spiritual power.
Offer is a dark facial expression to voodoo. Sorcerers called"botono" can be summoned to put a hex on an foe, or "bo", using the ghastly power of a voodoo spirit. Anthropologist Wade Davis has thought-out voodoo as part of the All over the country Geographic Society's Ethnosphere Overhang, celebrating world cultures. He says the "dark facial expression" of voodoo is similar in temperament to the sense of paradise and hell in Western secretarial tradition. "The whole start to grow is to make unadorned the haze, so that the clarity can overwhelm it," he tells Burnett.
In one finger, voodoo is no interchange from other religions - followers appeal to divine powers to put up collateral their wealth in life. But Christian missionaries don't see it that way. Gathering place a quiet, fenced enclave in fundamental Lome, a spiritual war is nucleus waged on the spirits of voodoo.
A retired Catholic priest who unquestionable in Togo says common followers of voodoo coins to Christianity and cause to be in the cult. But disdainful time, he has observed, they return to the animal sacrifices, the deification of fetishes, the dances with the spirits.
"The shift of voodoo is so powerful, he says, it seems understood in the earth of West Africa," Burnett says.
"Paper Source:: http://www.npr.org/programs/re/archivesdate/2004/feb/voodoo/"
