Vodou Culture 101: Gatekeeping

I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this series that vodou is not a democracy and does not share the US majority culture’s ideas about the freedom of ideas and the essential sameness (because it’s less about equality than it is about everyone being the same) of people. Generally, in vodou, a person has a divine nature which emerges over time but their current state might be quite immature no matter how old they look like they are. For this reason, and because participation in vodou is not something you choose for yourself, vodou is not something everyone gets to know about, participate in, or access.

If you are aware of the history of vodou, you’ll know why this is the case.

This also protects people from doing things which can hurt them—vodou is effective—but is often understood in the US majority culture as gatekeeping for the sake of gatekeeping and as a part of the racist systems with which we often interact. Sometimes it is gatekeeping for the sake of gatekeeping.

The problem is complex, mostly because of the way people approach it. Some people feel like all information, including cultural information, should be secret or at least kept away from some specific racial or ethnic group that they feel wronged them or people like them. They want to defend something sacred that they feel is under attack, also to make sure the people that hurt them don’t get to hurt them again. Some people just want cultural information because they’re interested in the culture. Some people feel as if they have a right to secret information (secrets entrusted to initiates) because of race or ethnicity, some because information should be free, some because they just really like it or feel drawn to it. Some people have genuinely been divorced from the culture by factors in the US majority culture and want to come home.

Vodou, as I learned it, has a very simple answer to this problem: the divine chooses who participates and the lwa bear that message. People do not, no matter how they feel about the whole thing.

One of the motivations to do this blog is because vodou is as much about culture as it is about magic or religion: it’s as much about what it is to live in the culture as it is any ritual, spiritual party, or magical work. Vodou is survival, when the world around you is trying very hard to kill or maim you. And, much like the survival of human beings in history, it relies on collaboration.

The other motivation is this: the lwa go where the divine tells them to go, not where we think they should. Each of these entries is the attempt to leave breadcrumbs for travelers, travelers who might have no racial or cultural connection. Maybe their families were abducted, as is the case with slavery, severing connections they would otherwise have. Maybe they have dreams but no one to tell them what those dreams mean. Maybe they have no one to help them understand. Maybe no one in their family has ever done this sort of thing.

Vodou is not for everyone, it’s true.

But the decision of who can participate is not up to people. Part of my job as priest is to follow up, to see who the lwa have sent a message to and help them if it is for me to do.

And yes, part of that help is saying “no.”