Voodoo :: Essays Papers

VoodooIt is often presumed that within a buckle down society everyone has the same deprived posture as the Other for the colonial originals, but recent studies have begun to examine the power structures within the slave community itself. Herbert Klein, in Afri foot Slavery in Latin the States and the Caribbean (1986), has pointed out that knowledge was an important granter of status in the slave community. fellowship of African ways or customs, or even in well-nigh cases elite status transferred directly from Africa gave some slaves a leverage in their community in contrast with their official status. The same occurred with many of the phallic and female Africans who were part-time religious, health and witchcraft specialists, most of whom had a status inside the community completely unrecognised by the master class. The historian John Blassingame, in The Slave Community (1972), has saidWhatever his power, the master was a puny man compared to the supernatural. Often the most powerful and significant individual on the plantation was the conjurer.Voodoo is a syncretic body derived from deeply rooted Africanist beliefs and colonial French Catholicism. African-American religious systems and subcultures can be seen in Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad, and other Antillean areas. In the Fon language spoken in Benin, vodun means an invisible force, terrible and mysterious, which can meddle in mankind affairs at any time.As a reaction to world torn violently from their roots, the slaves tried to resume their cultural and religious traditions. communicable spirits, forces called supernatural, were invoked and celebrated in secret, far from the masters eyes, yet in the shadow of the Church, as the worship of saints and the Catholic sacraments served as a screen and a stick up for African beliefs. The creation of a coherent belief system was extremely important in the development of a feeling of cohesion among the slaves which would declare oneself them with a sen se of self and community.The process of syncretization among the African religions helps to explain why those cults found it relatively easy to accept and integrate parts of Christian religious belief and practice into the local cult activity. Initially this integrating was purely functional, providing a cover of legitimacy for religions that were severely proscribed. But after(prenominal) a few generations a real syncretism became part of the duality of beliefs of the slaves themselves, who presently found it possible to accommodate both religious systems.The conjurer in African-American culture is frequently referred to as a two-headed doctor, a soul of double wisdom who carries power as a result of his or her initiation into the mysteries of the spirit.