Haitian Voodoo Priestess Calls for Calm

CROIX-DES-BOUQUETS, Haiti (Feb. 25) -- Voodoo priestess Elsie Théanou Joseph rolls her eyes and lets out a hearty laugh when she is reminded of American Christian televangelist Pat Robertson's now infamous explanation of the Haitian earthquake as divine retribution.

"He shouldn't hold one group responsible for this natural catastrophe," Théanou Joseph said, speaking French Creole through a translator, as she stood inside a hand-painted Voodoo temple sitting isolated on a large plot of farmland in Croix-des-Bouquets, a suburb of Port-au-Prince.

A few days after the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed more than 222,000 people, Robertson said Haitians need to have "a great turning to God," having been "cursed by one thing after another" since they "swore a pact to the devil" to gain their freedom in a slave revolt more than 200 years ago.

After evangelicals attacked a voodoo ceremony in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Cité Soleil this week, Max Beauvoir, supreme head of the Voodoo religion in Haiti, raised the prospect of "open war" between proselytizing Christians and Voodooists, according to Agence France-Presse. He claimed further that some evangelicals are using food aid to "buy souls" and steer adherents away from Voodoo.

While such clashes could multiply, in many cases the division between Christianity and Voodoo is far from clear-cut. While 70 percent of Haitians are officially Catholic, many also practice the blend of African folkloric tradition and Catholicism they call Vodou. The religion's animist origins came with the African slaves brought to the island from the late 16th century onwards to work on French colonial sugar and coffee plantations. They had to practice their religion in secret and in some cases melded it with less objectionable Christian elements, until revolt led to independence in 1804, making Haiti the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere and the first black one.

Unlike Robertson and Beauvoir, some believe the quake has encouraged a newfound unity between Voodoo believers and the country's majority Christians.

"Humanity doesn't want us to be separated," said the Rev. Frantz-Michel Grandoit, a Catholic priest. Grandoit has planned several interfaith prayer vigils with Voodoo priests, including a three-day national prayer for rebuilding, held earlier this month and sponsored by the Global Network of Religions for Children, an international nongovernmental organization.

In a ceremony at the Croix-des-Bouquets temple earlier this month, priestesses and parishioners knelt at the base of a tree trunk, lighted candles and solemnly chanted prayers for the earthquake's victims and for the future of their country.

"Hold Haiti's sweet hand!" they sang as they threw water on the tree trunk and conjured up what is known as the Veve, a mystical symbol embodying the Voodoo deities. "Save us! Give us grace and deliverance!"

Clapping their hands, they called upon a spirit they call King Lucifer, and the spirits of their ancestors.

But there are no "voodoo dolls" used to exact revenge, a common Western misconception about Voodoo tradition, experts say. The mambos -- priestesses -- wear African garb, and Théanou Joseph wears a traditional headscarf.

"Voodoo dolls seem to come from British and German witchcraft, to the best of my knowledge," writes Patrick D. Bellegarde-Smith, a professor in the Department of Africology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is also the grandson of Haitian diplomat-historian Dantès Bellegarde and himself a Vodou priest.

In an e-mail exchange, Bellegarde-Smith drew parallels between Voodoo, Japanese Shintoism and Indian Hinduism. He says they are all "nature religions" and "are anchored philosophically and theologically in the same principles."

"One of the female priests who trained me in Haiti, who was a yoga teacher, studied Hinduism for several decades," he said. "I have spoken to Native American professors who were dumbfounded by the awesome similarities between African religious thought and their own spiritual disciplines. Many of these religions, incidentally or not so incidentally, are rooted in science."

Voodoo is also inextricably linked to the country's collective historical consciousness. "It fills some of the same roles as Judaism for Israel, as part of the national ethos," Bellegarde-Smith said.

Haiti's founding act, a bloody slave revolt, was launched in 1791 by a Voodoo priest called Boukman. He and other runaway slaves fled to Bois Caiman (Crocodile Forest), where they summoned Voodoo spirits to shepherd their plot to overthrow French colonial slave masters.

More than 200 years later, most Haitians have converted to Catholicism, but many are turning to ancestral traditions at a time when so much of the past has been destroyed and so much of the present is uncertain.

Many believe the earthquake reflects the rumbling anger of the Voodoo gods, or loas.

"Our country is divided; our families are broken. We abandoned our God to save a strange God! That's why they punish us," the mambos chant.

Although Mambo Elsie and Pat Robertson may not see eye to eye on religion, Elsie's mystical rationale for why the earthquake happened actually mirrors Robertson's "pact with the devil" explanation. Except that the so-called devil Mambo Elsie sees is "foreign powers." She said the Haitian people behave like "parasites," allowing outsiders to come into the country and take control.

"Haitian people are losing their dignity; they are acting like children instead of saying exactly what they want," she said. It's not that they don't appreciate foreign aid -- they do -- but they feel sometimes it can be insincere, she added.

"Giving is good! But there is a way to give," she said as she gave a tour of the temple. "Dropping food onto the soil is insulting, that's not good," she said. "Hand-to-hand, person-to-person is better."

Théanou Joseph, along with Silviana Désir, another mambo and one of the original founders of the temple in 1989, are practicing what they preach. They've been working around the clock to feed and shelter 40 people left homeless by the quake.

Children who've lost their parents play with chickens in the yard. Wives who lost their husbands cook the group dinner. The community is self-reliant.

Members of this congregation believe the temple was spared by the Jan. 12 earthquake specifically because it was under the watchful eyes of the loas. Murals depicting their colorful images adorn the temple's brightly sky-blue walls. St. Jacques Majeur, a warrior spirit, is depicted as a knight wearing shining armor and astride a white horse; Erzulie, the goddess of love, is draped in floating red hearts. The watchful divinity Marguerite, the goddess of midwifery, carries a cross.

As for Robertson, Théanou Joseph said, "He better watch out. If Voodoo can be responsible for such a big catastrophe, it means Voodoo must be strong!"