Vodou Culture 101: The Altar

One of the showiest or most obvious aspects of vodou is our altars, the collection of paintings, made objects, vessels, prints, stones, statues, and cloth that we use to honor our spirits. There are some common symbols—some saints that tend to get used for particular spirits—but as a living and evolving tradition, vodou can and does make use of personal symbols not just the same set of saint pictures.

If you know how to read the symbols, you can tell quite a bit about a house by looking at their altar. This altar is being used by Haitian, Dominican, and Puerto Rican vodou practitioners.

An altar is a riot of color. It is often incredibly cluttered, in part because unlike many religions, our altars are communal. The whole house uses the altar in the picture above, as do people staying on my godfather’s property or visiting to work with him or one of the house’s residents. It is kept communal both to emphasize the communal nature of the religion and to foster relationships, whether because we’re all trying to figure out when we can do things in the altar room or figuring out how to manage offerings. The interaction at the altar forces us to remember that we are all the spirits’ children.

An altar also serves as a practical reminder that together, we succeed. Even in something as personal as our relationship to our spirits, we come together and help each other, or provide support and supplies, or even just help each other with the labor of keeping that space clean. There is no aspect of our lives which we are not expected to understand and honor the communal nature of the religion.