Voodoo You Think You Are?

Holy Watermelon

Voodoo has a long history originating in the West African Vodun tradition. While pop culture has made Voodoo out to be dark or evil, it's actually a spiritual religion that is syncretic with Catholicism.

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Katie Dooley 00:09

Hi Preston.

Preston Meyer 00:12

Hey, Katie,

Katie Dooley 00:13

things are getting spooky.

Preston Meyer 00:15

Right? We're getting closer to spook Tober? Yes. Have you heard people call it that?

Katie Dooley 00:24

I just I feel like that's really stretching for a cute name for October.

Preston Meyer 00:28

Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Okay.

Katie Dooley 00:31

What are we talking about today on the

Preston Meyer 00:36

holy watermelon podcast? We're talking about voodoo. Spooky, right? Well, no, it's not really the way it's depicted in pretty much all of popular media. Absolutely. It's, it's meant to be a little bit spooky.

Katie Dooley 00:55

But like most religions, it's just misunderstood.

Preston Meyer 00:59

Yeah. Oh, more than most. Yes.

Katie Dooley 01:03

There are some perhaps McCobb parts to voodoo, but we'll talk about that. But

Preston Meyer 01:08

there's some some dark and shady and seldom visited corners of most religious traditions. So I don't, I don't think this is really that much different.

Katie Dooley 01:20

All right. Let's talk about

Preston Meyer 01:24

there's actually kind of a lot of variety within what we like to call voodoo. And I mean, it's not even all voodoo. There's so many different ways to pronounce this one word based on different cultures.

Katie Dooley 01:39

Well, and I'll just interject and say originally, we were on this episode to be on both voodoo and hoodoo. And then I realized how big booty was. And I cut the hoodoo, because I was like, There's no way we can cover both properly in about an hour.

Preston Meyer 01:55

So I think that was right choice. Thank you. But the Vodoun tradition comes from West Africa. If you want to imagine Africa, for those of you who aren't terribly familiar with geography, that little the armpit I guess, I No, that's not the best way to describe it, to keep friends with people who are from there. But for those of you who aren't familiar with that the countries that are there, that's so helpful description. Yeah. The countries that are along the Gulf of Guinea, is where the voting tradition primarily is born with the job people

Katie Dooley 02:37

and then photon made its way to North America that the Americas through really shady means.

Preston Meyer 02:46

Shady. Yeah, I mean, perfectly legal slavery. Yes.

Katie Dooley 02:51

Yeah. So the spirit based tradition that is Odin moved on over to four countries predominantly, Haiti, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Dominican Dominican Republic are two different countries they are and then then you get the migration of people from those countries to America, where Louisiana Voodoo is kind of its own entity. So we'll talk about all of those today. Yeah,

Preston Meyer 03:20

it's kind of interesting. The way that the voting tradition has evolved over the years, like Shintoism, an awful lot of people found it difficult to classify it as a religion unto itself. And when we talked about Shinto, even though everybody in Japan was Shinto, basically, they didn't see it as a religion, they thought it was easy to adopt. Yeah, another national religion

Katie Dooley 03:48

becomes so integrated. It's just part of the culture. You don't even think about Yeah.

Preston Meyer 03:54

And so the way that the Vodoun tradition and respect for spirits and everything that is attached to it, carried along with the people who are displaced by slave traders, they adopt adapted their religion, primarily, including a lot of principles from Catholicism. And so there's a lot of syncretic elements taken from Catholicism and transposed onto the voting tradition in really interesting ways.

Katie Dooley 04:23

Yeah, let's um, expand on the term sin kradic. Because this is the first time I have really heard about and dive deep into it. So for our listeners, let's define syncretic religions a little bit.

Preston Meyer 04:36

A syncretism is the practice of taking features from one tradition and incorporating them into your own. That's, that's the short of it. And there you can see it in a lot of different ways. The Roman Catholic tradition, is also originally a very syncretic adopting a lot of features from Greek and Roman culture, and why it's so very different from Judaism from which it initially was born. There's a couple other little similarities I thought were nifty comparing it to Shinto. Remember, we talked how Shinto has a different name for the religion among the people who practice it. Often you'll hear it called Camino mici which means the way of the spirits. Vodoun literally means spirit. So I thought that was really nifty, a nice little parallel. And so they believe spirits are in everything, but there's one main creator, pretty similar to a lot of the religions that we've talked about especially tightly similar to Shintoism. They're

Katie Dooley 05:44

obviously like any religion, there's varying degrees, but one thing I read about the main creator is that it's a very hands off creator, or they built the world and said by and left it to the spirits.

Preston Meyer 05:54

Yeah, there's not a lot of religions look at their theology that way. Some of the founding fathers of the United States, were deists that had adopted that particular idea, though, where

Katie Dooley 06:07

there was an initial mover and then he said, by got other things to do fun. Yeah,

Preston Meyer 06:12

exactly. And so instead of interacting with this great Creator, who is now unreachable, you deal with a lot of intermediaries and call upon them to do some pretty cool things, which sounds

Katie Dooley 06:28

a lot like Catholics. Were where they get this really interesting. Mix.

Preston Meyer 06:34

Yeah. So when all these people who are displaced by trader, they are told that you can't worship your old way, you have to worship our way. And they're like, well, that's not terribly different. So fine.

Katie Dooley 06:48

Yeah. Yeah. The sound a lot like this guy. I know. Right? They must just have the name wrong, silly white folk. Yeah,

Preston Meyer 06:59

that's kind of the deal. And so it was easy enough for them to adapt enough to avoid beatings.

Katie Dooley 07:07

Perfect. That's the wrong word. But yeah,

Preston Meyer 07:11

it's unfortunately, everything that we see in popular voodoo, as far as we see it in the Western Hemisphere, is coming from a place of pain, which is really unfortunate. But there's an awful lot of celebration in it as well.

Katie Dooley 07:28

Yeah, we'll dive more into the perception of voodoo. As we go throughout this episode, I just want to mention that's in our notes before we dive into beliefs, that the spirits in voodoo are called Lua. Lua. Is their term for a specific spirit.

Preston Meyer 07:49

We've talked a lot about how a lot of your your mileage may vary with a lot of religions. And that's incredibly true with the Voodoo traditions. Even when you talk about Louisiana voodoo, the various some variety from one town to the next from one family to the next. So I mean, like I've always heard a prance lower rather than Lua. That that's not to say Lua is wrong. It's just there's a lot of variety. And there's many different spellings because of the way people pronounce it differently. I

Katie Dooley 08:25

mean, just like from Christian church to Christian church, it's a little bit different. Exactly.

Preston Meyer 08:31

Yeah, I did put in my notes that there's actually some some interesting though not entirely valuable for educational depictions of voodoo in popular culture. Some of my favorites are the use of voodoo in American Horror Story. And also in Marvel's cloak and dagger was actually kind of cool. I'm

Katie Dooley 08:53

really upset that you didn't add the Princess and the Frog to this list.

Preston Meyer 08:57

I haven't seen the whole movie is the problem. I am aware that it is Baron Samedi that's in that movie, right?

Katie Dooley 09:09

I don't know if he's named named Baron Samedi. But there is uh, you know, the the dark character as you know, Disney, you know, picks Hades or something and wrecks it. Just yeah, there's a dark yeah, there's the bad guy. I don't know if he's called i It's been years since I've seen I don't know if he's called Baron Sandy. But he's obviously based off of barren Sandy. Right, which there is one of the ladies in the movie is love voodoo. She's supposed to be a voodoo priestess. Sure. But again, it's been a minute since I've seen it myself. So we're gonna get some anger email being like, you haven't wrong.

Preston Meyer 09:45

But there's reasons I didn't put it on my list.

Katie Dooley 09:50

But it's the chicken movie.

Preston Meyer 09:52

Believe you I don't remember. Because I didn't see all of it. We'll have to have a movie night I guess so.

Katie Dooley 09:58

So what do people Paul who follow voodoo actually believe Guess what? It's not devil worship.

Preston Meyer 10:07

Yeah, an awful lot of people like to say that Voodoo is evil because they deny God and worship Satan. I don't know where people come up with these ideas.

Katie Dooley 10:18

I mean, if it's like one thing, if you and that, not that I'm saying this is a good thing, but it's one thing if you think people are evil, because they're whatever, not your religion, not Krishna, Jewish, not whatever, but then to like, then put on them that they believe in Satan, when they don't follow the first group, like only those Abrahamic religions believe in Satan. So if they're not an Abrahamic religion, then don't throw Satan on top of it. Right? It's just it's just too much. Yeah,

Preston Meyer 10:51

it's, it's, it's a huge problem. People don't like talking to each other. And huge misunderstandings come out of that.

Katie Dooley 11:02

And actually on that devil worship topic. Voodoo, even though it's syncretic with the Catholic Church does not have a satanic equivalent, right? They do not have any you figure that they go, oh, yeah, Satan. So even though there are these elements of Christianity in voodoo, they don't have any belief in the devil or this big, bad evil thing.

Preston Meyer 11:27

Yeah, the closest they get. Let's go back to that issue we have with Hades in the Hercules cartoon, where Hades is, for some reason, a bad guy because he's the closest thing we can come up with to a King of the Underworld as Satan who is not the King of the Underworld, like Hades is. And so Papa legba, or Baron Samedi, serve as the keeper of the dead. And so that's why he is occasionally portrayed as a villainous character, which is nonsense. Well, and

Katie Dooley 11:59

I don't want to jump ahead too far. But in food death isn't this negative thing that it is an Abrahamic religion? Right? So there you go. He's even less evil than you might think he is right? Even though he's just watching the dead, which is a noble job, right?

Preston Meyer 12:18

Yeah, it's a way people look at religions is just so weird. And that's why we're here to hopefully fix that.

Katie Dooley 12:25

Okay, I really like this the semantics of the creator the universe, right. Do you want to talk about my Whoo, because I didn't actually find that note I found on Barney. Right. So I want to talk so Barney, broadly

Preston Meyer 12:40

speaking, the West African tradition addresses the the great creator goddess as Malu or Ma, who I find mahu a little easier to say. But my Whoo, I think is actually slightly more common pronunciation. And thanks to the French influence on the tradition as it came across the great big lake, or the ocean,

Katie Dooley 13:04

I love this. It makes me so excited. The

Preston Meyer 13:07

creator of the universe has a, a kind of a cooler name, but

Katie Dooley 13:12

it comes it's fun because it comes full circle. So because of the French influence and colonization in the slave trade. Lavon Zhu means the Good God. But in the Haitian tradition, it turned into Bonnie or bhanji. But then in the Louisiana tradition, which came after a turn back until Ubuntu because of the French influence in Louisiana, right? I guess it'd be the Acadian influence in Louisiana, but I just thought that was pretty cool that it went from the Bantu to Bondi to levant you again. Right? And it all just means the Good God.

Preston Meyer 13:51

So Mahou or Bonnie or Bon DIA is connected to the moon, and there is a male counterpart that is connected to the sun. And his name is Lisa. Which I assume for many people listening like me, that sounds an awful lot more like a a woman's name. I

Katie Dooley 14:11

have the Simpsons for at least a birthday song in my head. Now Lisa, it's your birthday.

Preston Meyer 14:19

But Lisa is coming from a different culture not weird to see as a man's name. But my who has seven children that I think are pretty cool. And each of them are Vodoun of a specific element, I guess of of the way that the world is understood. We have sock PATA the Vodoun of the Earth, which is kind of cool. It just takes care of the earth. It's almost half of Hades job actually. Then we've got agbay voting of the see Joe voldoen of the air. So Hades, Neptune and Hey, Zeus. I'm totally mixing together things aren't I? Neptune is Roman, yeah. Poseidon, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. I'm ashamed that makes those things together. See how often I talk about Greek stuff? I

Katie Dooley 15:16

guess I could cover that in the new year. Right, get you back.

Preston Meyer 15:21

We've got Auggie voting of the forest. And also as an extension of that pretty much anything relating to agriculture. And then we've got zavio. So photo Vodoun of thunder

Katie Dooley 15:33

Guardium Leviosa, right,

Preston Meyer 15:37

like, you know, mine too. So in addition to being the voting of thunder, he's also responsible for justice. And then we've got Guth, a Vodoun of iron, and also of war. And then legba, sometimes called Papa legba, Vodoun of the unpredictable and fate and a variety of things attached to that. He's kind of like, the god of like, not everything else. But kind of that catch all title of an awful lot of things that aren't part of the other things are

Katie Dooley 16:11

just too hard to predict. Right.

Preston Meyer 16:16

So it's a kind of a cool set of seven siblings instead of three as are actually really quite common in a lot of other totally collections of gods,

Katie Dooley 16:25

especially as you get into older religions. Having things based off of the elements is super common. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So as Preston mentioned, the lewat are intermediaries between humans and MA who are bond you. And they will help you in exchange for ritual service. And yeah, all right. I just have a stroke, I just like don't know how to move into the next slide. So decease, voodoo priests, and priestesses may become lewat. Or you can have talismans or objects that can also become the law, surprisingly, similar to Shinto. Right, right, from the ritual service to who or what can become a spirit. I find it interesting, because I don't think they would have had any influence on each other, which is why I find it pretty confident that you're right. Right, which is why I find the similarities. Fascinating. Like, it's one thing to be like, oh, there's similarities in Judaism and Christianity.

Preston Meyer 17:28

Expect, right, but there's,

Katie Dooley 17:29

these are two cultures that, again, I assume have never or in the time of development would never have

Preston Meyer 17:36

well, once Atlantic Ocean stuff and once Pacific Ocean stuff. Yeah. And Shintoism I guess spread across the Pacific Ocean, about the same time that this voting tradition spread across the Atlantic Ocean, that didn't really have much time to mix. It's just kind of a, a cool way to look at and study primal religions, I guess,

Katie Dooley 18:01

maybe they're the ones who are right. Maybe, because they were both developed in a vacuum and they're the same.

Preston Meyer 18:09

I don't think anything's developed in a vacuum. And they're not the same, but they have similarities. Fine. But they're absolutely worth studying in much greater detail than what we're going to offer in this episode. And, like you mentioned before, most lower have been linked to Catholic saints, Papa legba, in his role of taking care of the keys to the spirit world is very often connected to St. Peter. I think that's pretty cool. Being the dude who holds the keys, the kingdom of heaven

Katie Dooley 18:46

to take over there. And then there's the Mbala, who is a serpent spirit, and he is linked to St. Patrick who notoriously chased all the snakes out of Ireland. What

Preston Meyer 18:57

an ironic connection there that seems a little bit weird. They would have heard the

Katie Dooley 19:01

story of St. Patrick's coat chasing the snakes out of Ireland. Oh, okay. He's killed the serpent.

Preston Meyer 19:08

Maybe, maybe that's how they swung it because when I initially read that I'm like, but one is when one is the serpent voting fella and the other one, like, celebrated for getting the snakes out of Ireland. Now I need to share the druid, however you want to look at it.

Katie Dooley 19:29

It was the druids that were never snakes.

Preston Meyer 19:33

But he also didn't get rid of the druids either. He converted many but druids that shouldn't

Katie Dooley 19:40

be a saint. I'm kidding. I mean, I know I wish I had looked deeper into Dunbar because maybe he's the king of the serpents and can control them. Maybe. And so then because St. Patrick can control the serpents and send them on their way. They were like Oh cool. I'm sure I'm

Preston Meyer 20:05

Vodoun theology is best described as monotheistic. Polylang Patrick, that's the new one, right? So we've talked about monotheism, worship of one single god, or well, not just the worship, but the belief in God. And then Polly Lautrec means that view worship many beings. And so that's basically how we look at the boat in tradition, that there is one Creator God. Of course, he said, Peace out, y'all can deal with the rest of the Vodoun and the laws. And so polymetric is that worship of all of those figures. So there's an awful lot of variety, people will latch on to a specific Vodoun or LOA that they find valuable to their worship, much like you see in the Catholic tradition, where people will hang on to a specific Saint for most of their interests, I guess, and then occasionally branch out to other saints when necessary for their specific needs relative to that saint, but people have patron saints and favorite saints. Same for the Voodoo tradition, my

Katie Dooley 21:18

viewers, St. St. Bernard of Clairvaux.

Preston Meyer 21:24

The lactation what a great miracle. What's interesting, though, is that the idea of this theological model goes a little bit deeper. Like we've talked about some traditions, they look one thing, and then you dig a little deeper, and it looks a little bit differently in the voting tradition. It's, it's kind of funky that because the Creator God is sometimes described as encompassing all things, which would lead us to a pantheist pen. In theistic conclusion, there is a distinct separation between the creature and the unapproachable creator. So it's not true pen and theism. It's kind of a an interesting and complicated distinction we see here. Like

Katie Dooley 22:16

it's you just splitting hairs, right? Did you know Preston, that voodoo practitioner prefer priestesses to priests contrary to most religions?

Preston Meyer 22:35

I had suspected it based on the way it's depicted in some of the more interesting popular media that I've consumed. But I didn't know that before I actually went and dug deep into this. Yeah.

Katie Dooley 22:47

And I guess I've definitely seen them. If you'd asked me prior to research in equivalence, but digging deeper. Yeah, I saw more on voodoo priestesses and voodoo priests. Yeah.

Preston Meyer 23:00

That's, it's kind of nifty that the idea of voodoo priestess would have actually been incredibly offensive to a lot of the colonists in the Americas.

Katie Dooley 23:13

Well, Catholicism you can't have a female priests. So Right.

Preston Meyer 23:17

But the idea that you have a powerful black woman up against the power of the white man, that was offensive to an awful lot of people. I mean, it still is, let's be real.

Katie Dooley 23:32

Gets the scary washing that it does. I think you're right. It's, it's absolutely racism. And these processes will perform regular family ceremonies like marriages, funerals and baptisms, just like a non voodoo priest. What, right?

Preston Meyer 23:52

It's kind of cool. It's, it was weird to me when I first saw that these voodoo priestesses performed baptisms. And then I remembered, oh, yeah, even Katie can perform a baptism and have it recognized by the Catholic Church. Really? Yeah. How do I do that? Well, first, you have to profess the faith in Christ and feel the need to perform the baptism, and then you're good to go. Oh, the Catholic Church acknowledges valid baptisms by pretty much anybody because they want as many Catholics as possible. Yeah. The exceptions, of course, are groups like Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons. They don't like those groups for farming

Katie Dooley 24:38

or a Mormon. I mean, I guess, my belief in Christ and I'm not an atheist anymore, right?

Preston Meyer 24:46

If you're a temporary nondenominational Christian Oh

Katie Dooley 24:53

no, I'm phenomenal. I love that. In this moment. I believe in my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Preston Meyer 25:00

I mean, it would be weird to have you perform a baptism. But if you felt the need to perform a baptism to, you know, accepted,

Katie Dooley 25:07

I can perform a baptism on behalf of the Sandlin out of fellowship. Yeah,

Preston Meyer 25:12

you can. Not that baptism is terribly important to this and Lynette is fellowship not yet.

Katie Dooley 25:23

This was a terrible tangent.

Preston Meyer 25:28

What's interesting is that Voodoo is more vulnerable to change than most other religious traditions. Because there's no single authoritative scripture or unifying leadership. It's just an oral tradition that passes from one generation to the next, and is deliberately adaptable to specific needs and situations. I think that's really fascinating. And so you'll see minor changes from one place to the next or one generation to the next. But for the most part, it's still something that you could recognize looking back as being a similar related tradition. I

Katie Dooley 26:05

think so. Yeah. And I think, you know, just knowing its history rooted in slavery, is that that's something they would want to keep recognizable, right, as part of that culture that survived that whole ordeal,

Preston Meyer 26:19

right? Well, it was originally syncretized. With with Catholicism, an awful lot of voodoo practitioners in America have also incorporated elements of Judaism and Hinduism In more recent years. Interesting.

Katie Dooley 26:31

Right? Did you find any specific practices that were incorporated? Not

Preston Meyer 26:36

specifically just other scholars saying this is a thing that I've noticed, and it's possible they're just like, This feels kind of flavored like, since I didn't find those specific notes. Yeah,

Katie Dooley 26:51

no, that's fine. We're gonna talk a little bit more about Baron, Zandi. Yeah. All right. Hey, it's a very good room. I believe you it there's a Yeah. Good. Brom. Great designed to Yeah, you can tell it's sudo inspired ROM.

Preston Meyer 27:10

Make sense with a name like that? Yep.

Katie Dooley 27:16

He's kind of the, I don't want to say most popular because in the religion, he's probably on par with anyone else. But sort of for outside observers of voodoo Baron Samedi would probably be the most recognizable spirit. Like he said, he guards the dead.

Preston Meyer 27:37

He takes the good. Those who have not displeased him back to Guinea and allows him to live in the paradise that is there. And if you've done something to offend Baron Samedi, then you would be left here to kind of suffer and potentially even end up as a zombie. We'll talk about a little bit later. Yeah.

Katie Dooley 28:03

Which is, again, where the zoo gets this like weird rap. But yeah, they absolutely believe in zombies, but not like the walking dead zombies. Yeah,

Preston Meyer 28:12

no, it's, it's kind of weird. And everything that we see in Baron Samedi, there are some that will attribute all of that to Papa legba. So it's things differ from one place to another not really that big of a deal.

Katie Dooley 28:30

All right. So if you were practicing your voodoo beliefs, what the heck do those look like? Oh, is it ritual sacrifices, kidding?

Preston Meyer 28:40

I mean, there's rituals, there are rituals, there are ritual sacrifices, and they're important, but they're not like the be all and end all defining feature of the religion. I think one of the most visible things that you can see in blue is the use of Vevey which are sometimes kind of abstract, sometimes more obvious, they're they're drawings, line drawings that are used as beacons during rituals that represent specific lower and they can look really cool so the

Katie Dooley 29:13

lower will prison possess these things as the presence in the ritual is the

Preston Meyer 29:20

belief until they move from that to a person right, just a thing that is

Katie Dooley 29:27

and these are drawn on the ground with usually some sort of white powder most commonly asked and cornmeal but it would depend on what you have on hand and where you are in the world. And yeah, we

Preston Meyer 29:37

got variety there for sure. Yeah. So animal sacrifices are used to give energy to the lower they take the life energy from the sacrificed animal, and that's used to rejuvenate and re energize the lower to whom it is offered. Way It sounds really foreign. But if you get through the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, that's not wildly different from what we see in the sacrifices offered at the temple,

Katie Dooley 30:12

and it's like a chicken, and then they eat it.

Preston Meyer 30:14

Yeah. Much like we see in the Jewish tradition. It's more of a holy barbeque situation where people share in the meal in most situations. Yeah,

Katie Dooley 30:25

it doesn't go to waste. It's, I mean, if you need to wrap your head around and think about praying before you eat dinner right now, you're just doing you just do a little more prep work. Yeah.

Preston Meyer 30:36

So I think that's kind of cool. These sacrifices are not used in casting dark spells or anything shady, because that's not what the religion is about.

Katie Dooley 30:47

No, there's really no not like Wicca where they really do believe in spell casting and magic. That's not where and like you said, it's not actually spooky, but that's where the okie that's not where the Kooky spooky and voodoo comes from? It comes from the possessions, the spirit possessions. I probably misunderstood that are definitely misunderstood. Definitely. But it is it is a very full. I mean, again, I'm an atheist. So it is a very foreign thing for me to you know, I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and spirit possession and voodoo, but Christians are taken by the Holy Spirit and ended up rolling on the ground and speaking in tongues. So. Right. Yeah, so prime is different. Yeah. But I mean, for me, I'm like, Well, yeah, that's hard to wrap my head around. But yeah, depending on your even fairly mainstream Western religious practices isn't actually that out there. It's a different spirit. Or maybe it's the same spirit. And we just haven't all figured it out yet. Right.

Preston Meyer 31:52

So the the whole deal with possessions in the Voodoo tradition is actually really interesting to me. And they, the terminology is kind of interesting to a person who is being possessed is referred to as the horse. And the incident of possession is called mounting the horse. Kind of an interesting turn of phrase, I don't think this is universal, among all voodoo, but definitely seen in Creole voodoo.

Katie Dooley 32:20

Well, it's an interesting just just imagery to kind of put it into context. And like you said, I watch a whole bunch of YouTube videos on voodoo spirit possession, these people don't remember what's happened to them. So I kind of, even if it's not universal, I like that imagery of you, our blood vessel. Yeah.

Preston Meyer 32:39

You're not the the active participant. It's kind of interesting. And so low are specifically called to possess a person to bring a message or accomplish a task, sometimes performing business transactions, which seems a little bit weird. But that isn't actually crazy, because the God of Abraham is a covenant making God. So having somebody show up, make business transactions, still not that foreign. I will or sometimes they'll simply show up to receive worship, which is not too crazy. Sometimes, however, things get a little bit more complicated, possessed person could receive an unexpected lower, or even a sequence of several lower, which makes for an interesting day, or week, several days. Yeah, it's, there's no set time on how long these possessions can last. And this seems like it'd be a problem when, say the possessed person has social duties to perform. Yes,

Katie Dooley 33:44

um, I mean, that being said, I guess it depends on where you are in the world. Maybe if you're in Louisiana, it's a little different. But when in places like Haiti, where especially in the rural communities where Voodoo is that way of life, people would be like, oh, yeah, he's possessed by Allah. And they either like, wait it out, or get a priestess to intervene, or to figure out what the Spirit wants. But, you know, I think, yeah, this was your everyday life. And again, I I watched a lot of YouTube videos. Yeah, there was one where some guy's son was possessed. And he was just like, wandering around the town. And they're like, well, but I get the priest involved now, because it's been a minute. But

Preston Meyer 34:27

yeah, there are ways to artificially end a possession, to say, hey, it's time for you to go back home lower. There's also ways that people will act to prevent possessions that are unwanted. Usually it means putting something in your hair or your head dress or your hat or whatever. Wax is used, actually, pretty often, in this way. I thought that was kind of nifty. But

Katie Dooley 34:52

I also saw sort of the opposite to that. Were people that the spirit has a preferred color. and they would know that so they these whole like houses and villages are painted a certain color to tempt to encourage a specific law to come. So I searched freeze painted blue and houses painted blue and so that whatever spirit they want to come to visit is more likely to come visit and she knows that's her place. She's welcomed there, right female spirit in this case,

Preston Meyer 35:24

a lot of work goes into this. Yeah,

Katie Dooley 35:27

I mean, it goes until all the religions, right,

Preston Meyer 35:32

like Wicca, as we talked about where people are really not too keen on dividing good magic and bad magic, or black magic from white magic. It's just magic is the thing. It's the tool not doesn't have a will of its own or a moral value in the Voodoo tradition, that they feel the same way if they don't like distinctions between good and bad magic. But there is a thing that's called red magic, which is named because of the color of the eyes when a person is possessed by a malicious spirit. I thought that was kind of nifty. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So it's not like any moral quality thrown on the color red, apart from the malicious spirit happens to cause this thing in a human's eyes, which there's a lot of things that can turn eyes red. So there's no real moral value put on that red color either. Yeah. Apart from the fact that it's a warning of a malicious spirit.

Katie Dooley 36:36

Yeah. And I was I was thinking while you were talking that, you know, this good versus bad or white versus black magic, like, in in, you know, Western Abrahamic religion. We talk about God's will is God's will, whether you agree with it or not. You know, and I disagree with some of this. But you know, someone gets cancer and they say, well, that's God's will. That person saying that doesn't go cancer is bad. They're just saying that's God's decision. Right? Or they're not saying God is bad, excuse me that that's just God's decision. That's his bigger plan for you. So same thing, if you're kind of going, where does this fit or how do I make sense of, but this feels bad or wrong? That's a parallel. I was thinking about. Sure. Okay, fair, parallel. Excellent. Okay. Just like in Shinto, altars are a big deal. And funnily enough, they always include images of the Catholic saints, even if that's I mean, I guess it would relate to the spirit that they're trying to invoke, but it's not like they're saying, hey, St. Patrick, come for a visit. You're trying to bring the spirit that was synchronized with St. Patrick Dunbar in this case, but I just think it's funny you see all these like Catholic prayer candles and statues and right. That's not really it at all.

Preston Meyer 38:04

It's, it's an interesting combination of faith traditions, for sure. In addition to saints, and the more common LOA and the vodien ancestors are often revered and added to the list of LOA and are sometimes invoked in various ceremonies as well. Like if your grandma was a great sorceress or a priestess, depending on your tradition, you might want to have her come and help you with something specifically.

Katie Dooley 38:33

And this I actually found really interesting because it's so different than North America is that in Haiti, graveyards are actually family owned, because that's how important a graveyard is in their rituals, whether that is for invoking a family member or accessing Baron Samedi. graveyards are huge in their rituals, so they're just like, privately owned.

Preston Meyer 38:55

I think it was pretty nifty.

Katie Dooley 38:57

I mean, I don't want to own a graveyard.

Preston Meyer 39:01

It's I feel like an awful lot of people think it's weird until you realize how many people even among Christians, and atheists want to be buried on their own homestead?

Katie Dooley 39:15

I guess so I just like, and maybe this is partially North American culture and partially the state of the world, but like, people move around so much, like grandparents or burden, Saskatchewan. And we're not in Saskatchewan. We're in Alberta, and who knows where I'll end up when I met that, you know, half of my life so to have a privately owned family graveyard is like it's it feels like more of an inconvenience. But, you know, North America, far more affluent than Haiti, unfortunately. So we're a lot more mobile and yeah, so I can see why. If you're kinda staying where you grew up that it would make sense, but yeah, I know. I'm not shipping bodies to Saskatchewan, right? My notes say this is where voodoo can get kind of spooky is that human skulls can be included in some of the altars. And like I said, altars are very common to be found in graveyards, since this is where spirits like to hang out. But not this is not exclusive. Some people have their own home shrines or there's community trends or altars as well so that you're not just always gonna find people in graveyards in Haiti.

Preston Meyer 40:37

Yeah, so the idea of fetishism. And I feel like we posted on Instagram about what a fetish is, but I'm going to restate it here because I think it's a great point to illustrate that a fetish is not not an obsession or a kink. A fetish is an object that brings you power. Within shamanic traditions like voodoo, a fetish is a necessary tool in a charm. Much like in your sex life where a fetish is what gives you the power associated with arousal, which without which you might be impotent. Oh. So a fetish gives one power. So if we get pedantic, having a foot fetish sounds relatively innocent. Owning a fetish. Sounds a bit creepy.

Katie Dooley 41:29

I do.

Preston Meyer 41:33

Do I own a foot fetish? No? No, okay.

Katie Dooley 41:38

I don't know anyone with a foot fetish?

Preston Meyer 41:40

I do. I bet you do know somebody who has a foot fetish. But it's most people don't talk about their fetishes and play company. But I feel like it's a lot more common than most people expect.

Katie Dooley 41:59

So on the topic of, there's like, a rabbit's foot is a fetish.

Preston Meyer 42:04

Or a rabbit's foot is a foot fetish

Katie Dooley 42:07

that you own. That you've put luck on.

Preston Meyer 42:11

Yeah, if it brings you luck, if it's a talisman or a magical artifact of any kind. That's not a non fetish. It is a fetish.

Katie Dooley 42:24

At all malarious right now. So bad.

Preston Meyer 42:32

And an awful lot of manmade objects are believed to have supernatural powers in the Voodoo tradition.

Katie Dooley 42:38

Yeah, and this is just like in Shinto, where spirit could possess basically anything as well. Yeah. Um, during rituals at the altars, offerings of food, like recent animal sacrifices and drink which is typically rum. I think that has to do something with the geography are offered to the spirits.

Preston Meyer 42:59

Absolutely. Pouring out for the departed pour one out for whoever is collecting.

Katie Dooley 43:04

Yeah, one for me. One for the spirit. One for me. One for the spirit. Right. Okay, so when everyone's wanting to hear is about voodoo dolls. And I was so excited to learn about voodoo dolls. And then I was grossly disappointed because they don't exist. Pretty

Preston Meyer 43:25

much. Yeah. voodoo dolls

Katie Dooley 43:29

do not exist. It's like a karate chop.

Preston Meyer 43:33

Doesn't exist. You trying to tell me that? There's no such thing as a karate Joey. No, it's

Katie Dooley 43:37

a judo chop. That doesn't exist. Yeah, Judo is all throwing, isn't it? Yeah. Pinning. No, but when I was a kid, my daddy school Judo that needs to go Judo chop. And then I learned that due to chops aren't real. Voodoo Doll so Andy there Santa.

Preston Meyer 43:54

Hey, Santa Claus is real. He's just been dead for a long time and deliver.

Katie Dooley 44:03

On this horrible tangent voodoo dolls don't exist. They come from English folklore. I'll flashback to last episode. And they're actually called puppets. Puppets are used exactly how culture has made the voodoo doll to look out where you represent the human and you cast magic on it. The idea of the voodoo doll is it's anti black sentiment. Basically they're trying to make voodoo look like a scary world religion and dehumanize it but there's it doesn't voodoo dolls don't exist at all. Like there's nothing even close that I can be like, Oh, it was taken from this. Nope. Only the puppets, which are English folklore are

Preston Meyer 44:47

sure I did find some voodoo doll ish things in the Voodoo tradition in my researches, but they were not meant to be used to hurt

Katie Dooley 44:57

people do not stick pins in them to get Do people body aches? No,

Preston Meyer 45:01

that's not it at all. They're pretty much exclusively used to draw positive attentions of the spirits to the intended person. And from my observation, they're not super common, but I've seen some work that says that they are real thing. Oh, interesting.

Katie Dooley 45:20

Everything I read said, No, you've been fooled.

Preston Meyer 45:24

Maybe the dude I was reading up on, I had been fooled. Maybe.

Katie Dooley 45:29

There you go. So like he said, All this making wudu to look like a scary devil worshipping dangerous. Religion is basically racism.

Preston Meyer 45:39

Yeah, absolutely. It's not basically how can we villainize the black? Absolutely. Yeah. How

Katie Dooley 45:43

do we make them other?

Preston Meyer 45:45

Yeah. But

Katie Dooley 45:47

that being said, they do believe in zombies.

Preston Meyer 45:50

They do. It's interesting, most of what we see as the zombies apart from of course, the more popular science fiction zombies that we've been seeing in the last couple of decades. Most of them are kind of tied to the Haitian tradition. But that's not to say that they didn't exist in the West African tradition, either. The zombie is the Congo Bantu word for God. And new zoom B is a Congo, Congo Bantu word for fetish. And so the zombie that we see is in between, but part of both worlds, it's kind of interesting that it's an object with the divine power connected to it. And they are basically slaves to a book whore, or a sorcerer, they have no personality, or spirit or will of their own. And they are just mindless, kind of like we saw in Dawn of the Dead, which is nice and simple and slow and dumb.

Katie Dooley 46:56

I mean, I saw the report that basically, it's like being in a coma, you can be that kind of zombie to where you appear dead. And they, honestly, they probably aren't good. But they believe that they're still like this life force in them. And they have no control. So

Preston Meyer 47:16

yeah, and sometimes they are walking around. And those freak people out real bad. But there's also the opposite side, where a second kind of zombie is a disembodied spirit. And both of these are terrible fates that are meant to be avoided by faithful vodien practitioners. And the threat of being turned into a zombie was used to keep patients slaves from killing themselves to escape their terrible slave drivers, who are also usually slaves themselves. So life in Haiti before the revolution really sucked. Yeah.

Katie Dooley 48:00

And was that to just like, preserve the population and the culture? Yeah.

Preston Meyer 48:06

It's awful. Yeah. Cuz

Katie Dooley 48:08

I mean, they're discouraging you from killing yourself to be a slave? Yeah.

Preston Meyer 48:16

Yeah, it's awful. And what I thought was really interesting. And we went looking up into some some law books. And article 246 of the Haitian Criminal Code, which was established in 1864, dictates that turning somebody into a zombie counts as attempted murder. What I thought that was really interesting that it is attempted murder rather than outright murder. So I think they get some credit for knowing the difference. Because it's hard to say that a walking body is dead, but you've definitely messed him up. Absolutely. There's been a fair bit of research looking into how these zombies are actually made. And it's a few chemical compounds that basically make you just mentally malleable, like super easy to control and docile and slow and some details kind of line up with a stroke. It's pretty messed up. But there are some elements that they haven't been able to really figure out what's going on with it. And the morality of the issue is actually a problem. Because part of one of these compounds is made from the brains of a buried child. We can go ahead and be testing that.

Katie Dooley 49:44

Yeah, that's interesting. And I I wouldn't be surprised and I don't know this for sure. This is just Katie talking out of her ass. I wouldn't be surprised if some of that is just the faith of it. You know what I mean? That

Preston Meyer 50:00

frogs eyes.

Katie Dooley 50:01

Yeah, right that if you you're I mean a placebo right? If you believe that somebody's tried to turn you into a zombie and then there's chemical chemicals already that are interfering with your your brain chemicals. And you have this belief for your entire life on in voodoo and zombies and spirits. impressionable is not the word I want to use because I think that's unfair, but it's the best word I have for what I'm trying to describe.

Preston Meyer 50:29

Yeah, there's a lot of social reinforcement. That's the existence of these zombies. If you if you are told, and are in a state where you're going to believe that you are dead and a zombie, you're going to behave that way. And people who see you and know that this has happened to you are going to treat you this way. There's no discouraging it. It's hugely problematic, not that it's a common everyday practice. The people who make zombies are generally hated by their communities at large.

Katie Dooley 51:05

Because it's not this is not a smiled upon practice. No, zombies is bad. Yeah, no matter what tradition you're in zombies are bad.

Preston Meyer 51:16

But it's, it's fascinating that it's such a visible part of Haitian folklore, and also visible in other parts of the world as well. Absolutely. On a lighter note, I think it's interesting to note that today, most voodoo practitioners in the Americas at least, and the Caribbean, have been baptized into the Roman Catholic Church. In 1993, Pope John Paul the second actually spoke favorably about the magical tradition that has become so tightly bound to the church, which of course was spoken out against by an awful lot of people who don't like the Pope and Catholicism. Some of the more American traditions of Christianity are like, It's proof that the Pope is terrible. And the Pope is a Satanist in disguise, which is nonsense.

Katie Dooley 52:06

You don't believe in Satan? I mean, I guess the Pope would believe

Preston Meyer 52:11

he does. But the people that he's offering favor to don't. He visited the voting practitioners in Benin in West Africa, and praised their faith and told them that being Catholic does not require them to betray or abandon their voting traditions.

Katie Dooley 52:29

How Hannah theistic have him, right?

Preston Meyer 52:32

Except he is definitely speaking from a point of, Hey, y'all need to become Catholic.

Katie Dooley 52:39

Can you keep that but you gotta become Catholic, right? Yeah.

Preston Meyer 52:42

He is saying this fully aware that syncretism has been a thing in their tradition for so long, that it's just like, hey, that God that y'all talk about? worship Jesus. JC, right. And I think it's kind of interesting. While there are bad actors in voodoo traditions, like the book horror Sorcerer's that we mentioned before, Voodoo is not about casting spells on people, or hurting people. That's not the deal. You're not going to make friends hurting.

Katie Dooley 53:16

As long, right?

Preston Meyer 53:18

The voodoo tradition is about healing. I think that's kind of the best takeaway from all of this. On the small scale, it's about healing individuals in times of need, being able to call on papa legba, or Baron Samedi when somebody is near death, and bless them and have them turnout. Okay. Pretty cool. Pretty positive stuff. On the larger scale. Voodoo is about healing a nation and in some respects the whole world. It's, it's born to us in a place of pain, carried over by the slavery and some terrible abuses, but it's all about becoming better and healing

Katie Dooley 54:02

like that. That was a really hopeful message.

Preston Meyer 54:07

Yeah, I can't take credit for it. That's just what I've gleaned from my studies. All

Katie Dooley 54:11

right. I'll take credit for it, then. You're not going to do it. Oh, well. All right. Well, I really enjoy learning about voodoo. Right. And if you enjoyed learning about voodoo, you should check out our Discord. And hop into the conversation that we're inevitably going to have about voodoo. And you should check out our Patreon so that we can keep producing great content like today's episode, or if a subscription model is not your thing, you can always check out our Spreadshirt and buy some sweet sweet holy watermelon merch.

Preston Meyer 54:51

Thanks for joining us. Peace be with you.