Voodoo :: Essays Papers

bewitchIt is often presumed that within a slave society everyone has the same deprived status as the former(a) for the colonial masters, but recent studies have begun to examine the power structures within the slave community itself. Herbert Klein, in African break ones backry in Latin the States and the Caribbean (1986), has pointed out that knowledge was an essential granter of status in the slave community. Knowledge of African ways or customs, or even in some cases elect 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 male 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 powerfu l and significant individual on the plantation was the conjurer.Voodoo is a syncretic system 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 speech spoken in Benin, vodun means an invisible force, terrible and mysterious, which can meddle in human affairs at any time.As a reception to being torn violently from their roots, the slaves tried to resume their cultural and religious traditions. Ancestral 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 support 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 provide them with a sense of self and community.Th e process of syncretization among the African religions helps to explain why those cults found it comparatively easy to accept and integrate parts of Christian religious belief and practice into the local cult activity. Initially this integration was purely functional, providing a get over of legitimacy for religions that were severely proscribed. But after a few generations a real syncretism became part of the duality of beliefs of the slaves themselves, who soon found it possible to accommodate both(prenominal) religious systems.The conjurer in African-American culture is frequently referred to as a two-headed doctor, a person of double wisdom who carries power as a result of his or her initiation into the mysteries of the spirit.