Vodou Culture 101: Authenticity
The US majority culture does a neat trick to shut down arguments: they find the oldest possible text reference to something, call it real or authentic, and in doing so end arguments by labeling everything not as old irrelevant. Whomever or whatever is oldest wins.
This is very much a way of thinking inherited from religions of the book (the Abrahamic religions). The oldest book ‘wins’ the ability to represent the topic, and everything that happened after that isn’t quite as real, especially if it differs from what’s in the oldest book. For a great example of this technique at work, pretty much every argument about the US Constitution which happens in the public sphere has some species of this argument in it somewhere. Other examples are easily found in the sermons, lectures, and prayers of the Abrahamic religions, especially where they concern resisting change (or sin).
Vodou never got the textual support of the Abrahamic religions, and as a religion built both on evading scrutiny—because slave masters can and did kill people for participating in vodou—and on an oral tradition, this argument is particularly useless. Even if you could find an oldest book, the religion has no central authority to determine what is or is not vodou, nor does it have clean boundaries between the vodou of different countries. The majority culture’s method for disregarding ideas fails entirely under those conditions.
It is also a religion which has explicitly, frequently adapted to circumstances, whether that’s the available resources in an area (7 day candles versus bougies are a great example of this) or the blending of cultures: vodou in the US is a blend of African religions, Abrahamic iconography and prayers, and languages or practices from every culture in which it was practiced.
People coming out of the US majority culture often approach vodou with the idea that there is or needs to be a ‘real’ vodou, and that they need to find the real vodou. They often look for the oldest example of it to do this, because they’ve been taught that’s how you recognize real.
They aren’t wrong in that, to the eye of someone who practices vodou, there’s a lot of misinformation on the topic, or information which violates the few consistencies between the types of vodou (for instance, the idea that you don’t need a teacher/can initiate yourself. In an oral tradition, a teacher is about the only way you’re going to get most of the information you need to serve.) However, they’re out of luck, in terms of how to judge if the vodou is real—you need experience with vodou to do that.
In my godfather’s house, we ask a few questions, which I’ll relay here:
Does the vodou being practiced here result in personal growth or elevation?
Does the vodou being practiced here result in healing or cures for those who need it?
Does the vodou being practiced here result in greater wisdom, knowledge, or understanding?
My godfather likes to point out here that he’s met many people with very nice pedigree, in terms of who initiated them and where they were initiated, but they may know very little of the faith or experience very little personal growth over years. He remarks that he’s not sure what an initiation is worth if it’s not resulting in growth, elevation, wisdom, and healing.
It’s completely understandable that people want to come in on the best possible footing, with the best credentials. They live in a world where their ability to even have conversations depends on it. But vodou is, above many other things, a very practical spiritual path. If the answers to all those questions is yes, then by all means, practice the vodou you’ve run into. The majority culture will not be able to understand what you do.
But you owe the majority culture no explanations nor justifications.
