POSSESSED!

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Vodoun is not an animistic religion. Believers do not endow natural objects with souls; they serve the loa, multiple expressions of God. There is Agwe, the spiritual sovereign of the sea; and there is Ogoun, the spirit of fire, war, and the metallurgical elements. But there are also Erzulie, the goddess of love; Guede, the spirit of the dead; Legba, the spirit of communication between all spheres. The Vodounists, in fact, honor hundreds of loa because they recognize all life, all material objects, and even abstract processes as sacred expressions of God. Though God is the supreme force at the apex of the pantheon, he is distant; it is with the loa that Haitians interact on a daily basis.

The ease with which Haitians walk in and out of their spirit world is a consequence of the remarkable dialogue between human beings and the spirits. The loa are powerful and if they are offended can do great harm; but they are also predictable, and if they are properly served will reward men and women with good fortune. But just as humans must honor the spirits, so the loa are dependent on people. They arrive in response to the invocation of songs, riding the rhythm of the drums. Once believers are possessed, they lose all consciousness and sense of self; they become the spirit, taking on its persona and powers.

One night on the coast, I was invited to the temple of a prominent houngan, a Vodoun priest. I watched quietly as a white-robed girl--one of the hounsis, or initiates of the temple--came out of the darkness into the shelter of the peristyle. She spun in two directions, placed a candle on the dirt floor, and lit it. The mambo, or priestess, bearing a clay jar, repeated her motion, then carefully traced a cabalistic design on the earth, using cornmeal taken from the jar. This was a vEvE,the symbol of the loa being invoked. After a series of libations, the mambo with a flourish led a group of initiates into the peristyle and counterclockwise around the centerpost, the poteau mitan, until they knelt as one before the Vodoun priest. Bearing a sacred rattle and speaking in a ritualistic language, the houngan recited an elaborate litany that evoked all the mysteries of an ancient tradition.

Then the drums started, first the penetrating staccato cry of the cata, the smallest, whipped by a pair of long, thin sticks. The rolling rhythm of the second followed, and then came the sound of thunder rising, as if the belly of the earth were about to burst. This was the maman, largest of the three. Each drum had its own rhythm, its own pitch, yet there was a stunning unity to the sound. The mambo's voice sliced through the night, and against the haunting chords of her invocation the drummers beat a continuous battery, a resonance so powerful that the very palm trees above swayed in sympathy.

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