Black magic of the African religion Voodoo

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

When the slave traders led ships with holds full of frightened slaves to America, they did not even suspect that they were bringing along with the slaves the black horror of the African continent - the mysterious religion of Voodoo.

African footprint

Even after a little familiarization with the history of voodoo, we can say with confidence that this is not a collection of various superstitions, not a type of magical practice, but a harmonious religion with its pantheon, cult and philosophy, except that it is connected with magic more than other religions of the world. It should be admitted that of all the world's religions, we know the least about her. Moreover, the main source of knowledge is horror films, where in the frame gloomy sorcerers slaughter black cocks, pierce fear-people dolls with needles and lead in a formation to villainous deeds of frostbitten zombies. All this exotic is actually only part of the essence of voodoo. What do voodooists really worship, what do they believe?

Voodoo beliefs are so ancient that it is impossible to determine when they originated. But this religion turned out to be so tenacious that even today it has the status of a state in a number of West African states, such as, for example, Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Congo.

Translated from the language of the African people background, the word "voodoo" means "spirit" or "deity". For a long time, the peoples of Africa lived (and many still live today) according to the laws of the tribal system and believe in the universal spirituality of nature, when all animals, plants, objects and phenomena have a soul. With this system, it is also customary to honor the spirits of deceased ancestors, which can influence the life of descendants. The meaning of the voodoo religion is, therefore, in establishing communication with the spirits and achieving their location and help through various practices, primarily through interaction with the souls of people.

A person, from the point of view of voodoo, is made up of several components, of which only the physical body is accessible to ordinary perception. The next is the "spirit of the flesh" - something like an energetic duplicate of the body, allowing it to function. The entity called the soul, according to voodoo beliefs, is made up of the "Good Big Angel" and the "Good Little Angel". The "Big Kind Angel" is a purely energetic part and after the death of a person it returns to the general energetic field. "Little kind angel" is an individual part of the soul, a repository of a person's personal information. It easily separates from the body and then comes back (during sleep, severe fright or obsession, when it is temporarily replaced by external loa spirits). It is the "Little Kind Angel" of a person who becomes the main target of magical actions or magical protection.

In fact, voodoo binds together a person, nature, that is, the world around him, and supernatural forces that lie outside of objective reality. The cult of voodoo is democratic, and spiritual practices in it are available to everyone without any intermediaries. "Obsession", which in other religions is considered a rare, abstract phenomenon, in voodoo there is a purely practical goal, achieved by very specific rituals. “A Catholic goes to church to talk about God, and a voodooist dances in the courtyard of the temple to become a god himself,” the believers say about their religion.

Step across the ocean

At the beginning of the 16th century, along with thousands of black slaves, voodoo migrated to the American continent. There, a paradox happened to her, nowhere else found in the history of world religions. The fact is that American planters categorically forbade slaves to have something of their own, including beliefs. Slaves were baptized without exception, and Christianity was planted among them in every possible way. But like everything forbidden, voodoo did not disappear, but mixed in the heads of the unfortunate blacks with Catholicism, reborn into a strange conglomerate of paganism and Christianity.

However, if you look closely, they are not so different. Both religions worship one supreme deity and believe in life after death. The parishioners of the Catholic Mass ritually use the body and blood of Jesus, which makes it akin to the bloody victims of voodoo. In addition, the intermediaries between the supreme deity and the believers clearly resemble each other: the saints among the Catholics and the Loa among the voodooists. Thus, the masters and their slaves believed essentially the same thing, only under different names. The renewed voodoo religion allowed the natives of Africa to preserve a piece of their world in their souls and at least partially resist the surrounding evil.

With minor differences, voodoo became part of the culture in Haiti and Cuba, in Brazil, in Louisiana and still exists there almost unchanged. Neither the voodoo deities themselves, nor the servants of their cult have changed.

Voodoo priests and gods

Voodoo followers consider Nsambi or Bondyo, the Good God, to be the creator god. He himself does not participate in the life of his creatures - people, instead of him it is done by the spirits of loa, the children of Bondyo. Spirits are honored as senior family members, they are prayed to, they are asked for advice and help. Having created the world of people, God moved away from it, but continues to observe it and control everything, as a true Creator. He does not incarnate on Earth and is not the direct object of the Voodoo cult. But, as voodooists believe, everything around in the human world is permeated with the forces of loa, it is with them that believers interact during religious rituals. Indeed, the name of the loa spirits is legion, each with its own name and purpose. It is impossible to try to list all of them, but among them there are the most powerful and revered characters.

The first should be called Pope Legba, who is usually addressed at the beginning of a voodoo ceremony. Actually, without Legba and the ceremony, nothing would have happened, since he is a guardian, a gatekeeper between the world of the dead and the world of the living. If you do not do it justice, the doors between the worlds will not open, and the loa will not hear people's requests and prayers. The image of Legba is an old lame man with a stick, which makes it easy to recognize people possessed by Legba: they all move with difficulty, and some can only lie motionless on the ground, unable to move.

Another representative of the loa is Baron Samedi or Baron Saturday, who is responsible for everything related to death, the dead, sex and childbirth. He is usually depicted as a skeleton in the attire of a funeral master (black suit and hat) with a cigar in his teeth. People possessed by this spirit show an immoderate addiction to alcohol, smoking, and the joys of the flesh. As a spirit, behind whose back Death always stands, the Baron is especially revered by various bandits and other asocial elements.

The most famous of the loa women is Erzuli, the goddess of love and beauty, in part related to the ancient Greek Aphrodite. She rules love, romance, luxury and luck (including in gambling), loves men and willingly helps them, but as a true woman, she does not like her own kind too much. It is believed that Erzuli is often unfair to the desires of women, and they are almost never possessed by this goddess.

Only specially trained people - the Ungan sorcerers and the mambo sorceresses - can communicate directly with the loa. During the ceremony, sacrifices and ritual dances are performed, then the sorcerers fall into a trance and begin to beg the loa for help and protection. If the loa are satisfied with the honors they have received, there is no doubt about the favorable outcome of the rite. But, being for some reason rejected, exiled or taking revenge, the Ungans and Mambo become bokor - performers of black voodoo magic.

Practices and rituals

To harm a person, a bokor does not even have to approach him. At his service is a volt - a doll that, after a magical ceremony, gets a connection with a certain person. And after the connection is established, it becomes possible to influence the person whom it embodies through the doll, with the aim of harming him. To make a volt, fragments of the victim's body (nails, hair, saliva, blood), as well as small things belonging to her, are necessarily used. Having made a doll, the bokor sticks needles into it, cuts it with a knife, burns it with a flame, and all these actions should affect the victim's health through the doll. As a result, the volt hides anywhere near the victim so that the impact is constant. There is a belief that the most powerful people are not able to stay alive for a long time after such witchcraft. Bokors rarely act alone. Usually they are members of secret societies, which include only a select few, the most powerful black magicians.

The sorcery of Voodoo was not ignored by politicians, for example, the notorious President of Haiti, François Duvalier, used it on a grand scale. "Papa Doc" Duvalier had an army of trained magicians that kept the entire island at bay. People from this army served simultaneously as secret police officers and executors of terrible sentences.

Duvalier's favorite way of influencing people was zombie - that is, turning them into a kind of controlled biological robots. It was believed that a person was deprived of life, and then, with the help of spells, resurrected again, after which he loses his soul and becomes a slave to his master-bokor. However, bokor doesn't actually kill anyone. He only needs to prepare a potion from certain varieties of plants that blocks vital functions, but leaves consciousness intact. A potential zombie, having taken a potion, seems to die, and then comes to life, not remembering his past life, and becomes an obedient toy in the hands of a sorcerer.