blog 3

Voodoo In New Orleans

Highlight 3 examples from the chapter that you see to be the strongest examples that challenge or dispel the common misconceptions people have about Voodoo. Support your position with discussion. Be sure also to point out what misconception you think many people have about Voodoo.

If, prior to this reading, I had been asked “What is Voodoo?” I do not believe I would have attempted a response. My only previous knowledge of Voodoo comes from trinket stores in the French Quarter and pop fiction. However, in conversation I have observed that a lack of knowledge need not prevent one from giving an opinion, and the universal opinion of Voodoo seems to be cartoonish at best and bigoted at worst. Voodoo seems to bring up horror movie-esque dread, filled with visions of witch doctors, pin-filled dolls, and zombies.

The fact that Voodoo is an established, organized religion as put forth by the author challenges popular notions. Gaston  writes: “Vodu has a highly organized hierarchy of deities, with vodun priests, priestesses, novices and other persons devoted to serving and protecting them,” and goes on to state that “the religious system is rigid, and its methods of worshipping the various deities appear to be unchanging.” (115)

The best example that Gaston gives is that of anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, who in the 1920s was initiated into the religion of Voodoo. Hurston describes a fantastically elaborate ceremony that the Vatican could appreciate, and possibly learn a few things about ritual from. But the ritual portion of the narrative, as impressive as it is, does less to do away with ill-informed views on Voodoo, than does Hurston’s description of the feast before the final ceremony. Hurston describes the scene:

            “Eat first the spinach cakes,” Samuel exhorted and we did. The meal began. It was full of joy              and laughter even though we knew that the final ceremony waited only for the good hour of twelve  midnight. About ten o’clock we piled into the old Studebaker sedan – all but Samuel who led us in a truck. (120)

Although the animal sacrifice that completes Thurston’s narrative almost certainly conforms to prevailing ideas of what Voodoo is, the point is this: the parts of Voodoo that make it a target for fear and/or derision are not representative of the religion as a whole. Every religion subscribes to notions that make non-believers queasy.

Cosmology and Ontology

My knowledge of cosmology is limited, but the knowledge I do possess is because of physicist friends, astronomy classes, and an occasional Youtube lecture/debate series. However, I perceived what may be an analogous structure, and that is the Gullah’s though processes regarding the hereafter.

Through a mingling of Christian and African religion, slaves used logic to develop ideas as to what happens after death. Margaret Washington writes

            In Christian belief the finality of death was often negated. One of the most appealing aspects of       Christianity for Gullahs was the expectation of a better life after death. This afterlife was not      visualized in the African sense, which held that an individual’s status would not differ from one’s     mortal position. Instead, Gullahs strongly adopted the Christian concept of heaven, where all      “true believers” would sit on “Christ’s right side.”

This adoption of Christianity was tempered, however, with other more logical ideas. Washington goes on to state that “slaves were convinced that the ‘Kingdom of God’ would have almost no white subjects. Gullah Christianity was one of recompense.” (169)

Regarding ontology, the study of “what is,” the Gullah approach seems in turn subversive and synonymous with the acculturation process. Washington puts forth that “Gullahs maintained a passionate love of humanity and confronted the masters without motives of revenge. Yet they also displayed a keen sense of revolutionary rationalism through a calm realization that masters and slaves were natural enemies.” (160)

Conversely, Joseph E. Holloway notes that the Gullah, through their ongoing study of  “what is,” continued the acculturation process in a somewhat heady fashion. A good example of this is the tradition of cooperative labor. Holloway writes that in the Sea Islands, “Gang labor survived because it was reinforced by similarities with the European mode of gang or cooperative labor. African institutions and customs seem to have been able to survive when they did not directly conflict with European customs.” (203) Although, as stated by Holloway, due to technological advances, cooperative labor is not needed as it was practiced in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, his descriptions of the various African roots from which this practice sprung are illuminating.

Florida and the Sea Islands

In the cases of the Sea Islands and Florida, the Gullah seem to have retained similar cultural artifacts in differing manners. Margaret Washington writes: some cultural homogeneity was retained as Africans passed from the Old World to the New. In the Sea Island region of South Carolina, cultural similitude was coupled with relative isolation and resulted in a tendentious process of African provenance, American acculturation, and intergroup socialization.” (153) With regards to Florida, Robert L. Hall states that “Africans transformed themselves into African Americans without totally losing their African past but also helped transform and enrich Western culture itself,” only, rather than through isolation, this occurred through what Richard Wright is quoted as observing: “the portals of the church.” (243)