In Haiti, voodoo is still standing
By recklaz - Fri Feb 05, 1:39 am
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The story of a makeshift tent next to the others on the Champ de Mars, the main square in Port-au-Prince turned into refugees camp. At night in the darkness of the camp devoid of electricity, a werewolf just suck the blood of survivors sleeping. The rumor is not surprising in a country where imagination wander. In Haiti, a man may remove his skin to turn into a turkey before resuming his usual pace the next day. And a driver can make a sudden swerve to avoid a zombie that crosses the road. “Here, nobody dies a natural death. There is always a magical explanation, notes with amusement Professor Jean William Pape, the head of anti-AIDS center of the capital.
The raids of the werewolf in the Champ de Mars, however, have the gift of enervating Max Beauvoir, the supreme head of the Voodoo religion in Haiti. ” “This fable is imported by Western evangelists. There never was a wolf on our island or in Africa where we come from. “Max Beauvoir declared. The gray hair can be spotted all over his head, he wears a robe over his trousers and moccasins quality shoes . He is a hougan, a Voodoo high priest. Also called ati. “It means the great forest tree whose shadow protects small. Its major branches are used as repository for birds that foul, but fortunately the rain washed, developed the high priest.
The great days, he puts on his costume. The recent holiday season, those Makaya back in late December. They were spent in baths. An opportunity to purify themselves for the coming year. The next, those of Papa Loco, are scheduled for March. We will honor the spirit that operates the peristyle in Mariani, a place of worship founded by Max Beauvoir.
“Divine justice is implacable”
But this well-ordered schedule is disrupted by the earthquake. Part of the temple collapsed. Luckily, the Potomitan (The main Beam) the sanctuary where the ritual takes place, is intact. The voodoo priest allows visitors to cross. “It is not a desecrate ceremony,” says Max, The “lab”, as called by Max Beauvoir, a chemist by training, has also taken a blow. The hougan treats in this room, by techniques mysterious, the soul of its visitors. It heals a patient, for example by transferring the disease to an animal. It also conducts offerings. But the aviary was dislocated. The white doves are the sacrifices that have surged.
Sitting on the steps of the temple, a craftsman restores a statue damaged by the earthquake. It depicts a man bent on goat’s head on his shoulders a macaque. “It is very dangerous,” he warns. “He meant that divine justice is inexorable,” corrects the hougan without dwelling on the subject. He prefers to speak of the wooden effigy of Cousin Zaka, the divinity of the work, Ogou, the god of cataclysms and Dambala, the wooden stick representing the serpent god. This is unusual to deprive of speech or the use of his legs a person “owns”.
“It considers himself fortunate. Voodoo temples have fared better than the churches and the cathedral. They are still standing. I presented my condolences to the Catholic and Protestant representatives who have suffered so much, “said Max Beauvoir recalling its counterparts, the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince and the pastor of the Protestant churches, have perished in the disaster. The hougan attributes the resistance of places of worship voodoo to their hardiness, but also natural selection. “Nature has put things afloat by beating us,” says he. We have an unjust society since the death of the Emperor in 1806 (General Dessalines, the first head of state after independence, Ed). The Vatican and the major Western powers have banded together for Christians working in the deletion of voodoo, the religion of origin. All this must change. The earthquake marks the beginning of a new era. ”
Max Beauvoir is often a tone and postures Tribune. He believes, like the bishops, as the senior representative of a religious community that wants to impose on the national scene. In search of fame, he likes to show the gallery of photos that decorate the meeting room of the community. On one shot, he poses alongside Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the UN. On Monday, President René Préval has received in his office with him to prepare the ecumenical ceremony commemorating the victims provided February 12, one month to the day after the earthquake. “We will hold parallel celebrations around the meditation deities of courage, strength and love,” says the hougan.
Max Beauvoir is part of a reformist current of voodoo. He wants an occult practice exploded into many communities and families an institution like the others. An approach challenged, even feared by many observers. “This decision brings the” Voodoo on the market for competing religions with Christianity, Hinduism or Islam, is Guy Maximilian, a historian of religions. Beauvoir is a hougan that followed an initiation, but it is in its way a usurper, because the voodoo has always worked without a single direction. ”
Voodoo is the survival of the ritual events of former slaves deported from Africa. It is a cult rather complex, with its pantheon of deities, the lwa. “These mysterious and powerful entities are from the first wonder and terror of the first individual to nature. They still evoke the archaic parts of rights which poetry and religion are addressed, “said Guy Maximilian, who is also an expert in Sanskrit.
Measuring the voodoo influence on society, he said, impossible. For he would marry opposites. Confession of the shadow, it attracts and repels. “I think very few Haitians fear to join the voodoo as a religion, but they are afraid of her magic,” says William Seabrook in The Magic Kingdom, a cult novel published in 1929 with a foreword by Paul Morand . That voodoo that opens the fantasies with people turned into zombies, black magic, poisoning her, her dolls stuck with needles, his charges of gunpowder. His defenders see themselves as victims of an enterprise of demonization. “Satan is a Christian creation. We have nothing to do with it, slice Max Beauvoir.
Religion of intimate
Renowned plastic surgeon, Patrick Vilaire outlined some years ago at the Fondation Cartier in Paris. In 2008, he has presented in Amsterdam a work entitled prescient: The Potomitan or the Richter scale. The metal sculpture shows the central axis of the sanctuary of a temple shook. The column that makes the connection between the servant and God is maintained by the outstretched hands. “In conducting this work, I meant they were going to a big problem. It is home to an imbalance in our culture due to a policy and an economy that led to disaster, “he said. He added: “The earthquake has destroyed the physical and moral frame. He crushed the places of worship. It is experienced by the mass of believers as a divine punishment. People think that the voodoo gods have expressed their anger. ”
Patrick Vilaire is a sort of mystic atheism. After the earthquake, he went with some friends in mass graves for the bodies out of mass graves and bury them more acceptable. He mined the corpses, wrapped and covered in earth. Then he planted a cross on the mound. In the voodoo ritual, the dead are regarded as a carnal envelope that deserves respect. Their departure has to do with dignity. According to tradition, the spirit of the dead meets the sea are to believe Max Beauvoir, who built his temple on the coast, “a soul back sixteen times on earth to eight lives as a man and woman in eight lives. Then it becomes a pure spirit who travels at the speed of light and protects the living. ”
The Vaudouism are convinced that some of the lost tragedy of January 12 will be reincarnated in November, the month dedicated to the worship of ancestors. This is an opportunity for the deceased to pass messages to the living and ask questions. Practitioners will meet with the family. The ghost takes possession of a participant. Like every year, these celebrations of the dead will be chaired by Baron Samedi, the god of the dead, and his wife, Brigitte Grande. They are animated by Guede. “These are people who suffer unbearable not regulations. They orchestrate lascivious dances that Catholics disavowing “notes Elizabeth, wife of hougan Port-au-Prince. In the temple, a statue symbolizes the reunion: she is a woman hugging a skeleton.
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