Vodou 501: Approaches to God
Vodou explicitly honors the idea that there are a multitude of paths to the divine, reflecting the generosity of the divine and the diversity of that all. Even inside vodou, the diversity of vodou houses or societies reflects that generosity. Houses might be more Christian, more Muslim, more African, more American, more Dominican, more Haitian, etc—the head priest and their relationships to the spirits of the house set the tone, and the people who are drawn to the house adapt to that tone.
Often, these people think it is the only way to god. Many discussions online which lead to disagreement or acrimony between initiates happen because the initiates can only understand the way to god they are taking, and all else must be evil/bad/heresy. Neither are wrong and both are wrong. The path they aren’t on is wrong for them, but only for them. The only thing those initiates are doing is declaring their immaturity.
A head priest can only give you what they can give you: their approach to god. For some priests, this has more formality than others. I can only speak to being makout. I can only speak for the process of traveling that path which I am traveling, and only for the initiates of my house: it is possible to know that you are on the path you need to be on, but to also know that this is true for other people on very different paths.
I like “not my path, not my problem.” It resolves a multitude of attempts to be a busybody.
The issue of formality is where I most often run into problems with the initiates of other houses, and one of the many reasons I do not often post on social media, on others’ posts. It is not that what I am doing has no formality, it is that the formality of the path I walk is not the same formality that many would recognize. Every path has rules. Every path has requirements. Some paths are more open-ended and less predictable than others. For people who need a proscribed and predictable path, anything less formal or predictable than their path looks like something wrong to them. I find, generally, that the less prescriptive and predictable someone’s path is, the less they have to say about it publicly. It is not, after all, for everyone.
It would be pointless for me to distract them, though I do occasionally find their overwhelming need to draw a line and put me outside it annoying. Or amusing.
If I had to give advice, I would say that it is best to leave the paths of others to them, and let the divine shepherd them where they need to go. The process of learning that everyone is enrolled in is quite active, even when it appears not to be. The spirits are more than capable of tending their flocks.
