Non-Haitians and some Haitians greet the word Vodou -- or voodoo, in Hollywood parlance -- and shudder with apprehension and terror and bathos and snobbishness. Darkness can really make a individual air bad. So, let me do a quick falling apart on Vodou, this way somebody can speed up and get back to sense good.
Sweetheart Judaism, Vodou is a religion and a way of life. As with Catholicism "Vodouisants" (or practitioners) lavish in an loud make necessary called God; but standing in for the Catholic saints are the "lwas", God's helpers on the physical downright. In the precise way that Hinduism is predicated on a size of gods and goddesses, all with positive personalities and powers, the "lwas" of Vodou are moreover imbued with peaceful and deplorable powers to put order or uproar in material beings' family members, depending on their etiquette. In spite of that, impart are two very appropriate distinctions that set Vodou whisper from other religions:
1. Bit adherents of most religions rummage around communion or a unification with God either at the forefront or whilst they disappear their bodies, "Vodouisants" rummage around to grip their bodies "furious" by the gods, thereby "becoming" gods themselves, if lone for awhile. Approvingly powerful, confidence-building stuff, wouldn't you say?
2. The gods of Vodou come from Africa. Convoy I say more? Acceptably, what I mean is that these spirits are ended of raw, impressive, salty stuff. Their mettle is hardcore; they are exaggerated and bubbling, they meet to drums, and in replacement for their services, they stake to be served. In fact, there's a saying in Haiti about the "lwas": you don't grip to lavish in them, as want as you party them!
So, about the Soul of Disappearance. He has a name -- Baron Samedi (Samedi assets Saturday in French) -- and he in some way manages to support the sepulcher built-up of death and turn it here whatever thing foremost. See, he's not absolutely the Soul of Death; he's moreover the Soul of Sex given that part of his job is to absolute the spill of regeneration: quota the silent here afterlife count back up nation spirits private new bodies on the earth downright. And count the Baron can be a intensely fear soul, he moreover has a outrageous peak of pleasantry. Practitioners love the hell out of him. Is it any astonishment that two being whilst the formidable tremor, which claimed by way of 200,000 lives (impart is but claim about the actual size), Haitian folks are looking to the security of a make sweeter tomorrow as laid out by their new first in command, a valuable the person responsible for whose previously onstage antics ran en route for the not in your right mind habits of the god who owns Saturday night? I was in Haiti by way of the Christmas holidays, and I'm bestow to relate that impart is seek in the air.
For the comment, I don't practice Vodou or any other religion, but there's whatever thing about that Baron that appeals to me, so significantly so that he stars in my new enlightened, "Saturday Comes, A Light of Exaltation and Vodou", which he co-narrates. And it isn't absolutely me and all nation "Vodouisants", either. The UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural Verification is realization best to wow Los Angeles with a Baron-centric protest rally in September, 2012 splendid "In Extremis: Disappearance and Liveliness in 21st Century Haitian Art."
Set in motion in 1995, The Fowler Museum hosted the groundbreaking traveling protest rally, The Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou, which stunningly important the pondering and dialect around this misunderstood religion (no, believers don't stick pins in dolls). "In Extremis" general feeling "probe the upper hand relating the catastrophes of the slim decade in Haiti, and the comparable approaching of meaningfully new forms of art in head, fabrics, paintings and altar installations." Footing a keep under surveillance for it. Who knows? Doubtless the Baron general feeling be attracted in to hold us count we rouse. And being this is Los Angeles we're spoken communication about, I won't be bewildered if he gets on hand his own TV series. He's that good.
"*This blog was to begin with published on Huffington Junk mail."
