Tracing the Vèvè, Healing the Nation: Exploring Bakongo Cosmologies in Haitian Vodou

Mariah A-K Bender

THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

MASTER OF ARTS PROGRAM IN THE HUMANITIES

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Tracing the Vèvè, Healing the Nation: Exploring Bakongo Cosmologies in Haitian Vodou

Argument:

The ability for Africans in the Americas to retain, reshape, and reinvent elements of their

African religious identities has long been studied in relation slavery in the Atlantic World, the

spread of Christianity, and the European colonization of the Americas. The religious beliefs,

traditions, and legacies of enslaved Africans reflect the resilience of oral histories and narratives

as legitimate sources of historical record. Despite the enslaved Africans experiences of brutal

chattel slavery, abuse, familial separation, and dehumanization, these African people maintained

a connection to their memories of African spiritual practices, beliefs, and rituals. To explore

more of the connection between spirituality and the creation of a new identity in a strange and

faraway land, this paper explores the embodiment of the spirit within the Petwo or Kongo

derived rites in Haitian Vodou. Through the analysis of Bakongo cosmological traditions, this

paper investigates the role of the spirit as a place for enslaved people to retain their African

cosmological beliefs on personhood, explore the spirit’s manifestation in rituals, and finally how

enslaved people constantly revered ancestors in their connection to the African identity. Thus, I

argue that the Petwo rite of Vodou with its close association to Bakongo elements such as nkisi,

are a consistent place of healing for Africans in the diaspora. I choose to describe the ability for

the spiritual conceptualizations from West Central Africa to travel and guide African people

through the uncertainty of the Middle Passage, the horrors of enslavement and colonization,

racial segregation and police violence as immortally liberated.

Conceptualizing the spirit is debated among historians, anthropologists, and theologians, but,

specifically the debate regarding the manifestation the spirit through possession of a devotee has

been privileged within the genealogical studies of the African-Atlantic and in exploring Afro-

2
Diasporic religion. One recent work by anthropologist Christopher Paul Johnson explores the

intellectual concept of possession. In: “Toward an Atlantic Genealogy of“ Spirit Possession”

Johnson explains what he terms an ‘orienting’ proposition for the field of spirit, possession, and

the Atlantic: “At this juncture, I propose an orienting proposition: Spirit possession, the

ownership or occupation of the body by unseen agents, emerged out of an analogical relation

with material possessions and lands, even as perceived possession by spirits also complicated the

lawful exchange of possessions and lands.”1 In this case, the concept of possession is relation to

a being, yet, though Johnson discusses the misrecognition and meta-category of African

spirituality, the process and action of ‘possession’ was in fact a European construction.

Consequently, Johnson’s studies on the concept of possession are lacking African perspectives

and more importantly, traditional African religious theologians who use the African experience

as a source of theological narrative. In Johnson’s establishment of his argument in this chapter,

his focus is on the role that the ongoing historical event and rising importance of property,

contracts, and thus the growth and economic wealth of a country, ultimately overshadows any

observation of African cosmology as in existence pre-European contact. While the discussion of

European ideas on the spirit and the economic context within the Atlantic World is contextually

important, by situating the bulk of his discussion in a European context, Johnson is in fact,

reinforcing a Eurocentric model in his discussion of the spirit and its function. Consequently, the

reader quickly loses sight of the African person as an independent, living, thinking ‘being’ and is

instead encouraged to consider African spirit possession as an object of the European intellectual

imagination.

1
Johnson, Paul C. (Paul Christopher). Spirited Things: The Work of "possession" in Afro-
Atlantic Religions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014, 35

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 The appropriation of European ideas on possession within the African context has immense

consequences for the field of African studies and further delegitimizes the current scholarship

from African scholars who view possession as a tool of resistance and an extension of African

cosmologies in the New World. As Johnson continues, he constructs a European focused

economic and social analysis of the Atlantic world as he builds his argument that spirit

possession in relation to the African as other was largely dependent on a growing world of ideas

about the self, possession, and property. Johnson references Enlightenment thinkers Kant and

Hobbes to discuss how specifically ideas on agency and contracts would have contributed to a

growing body of beliefs that viewed possession as negative. Though, in the worldview of the

Bakongo, possession was not reminiscent of the dispossession discussed in Johnson’s

explanations of contracts relative to authenticity, identity, and agreement as to mediating

authority are all rendered uncertain by spirits’ occupation of bodies.”2 In the BaKongo

cosmologies, the spirits of ancestors and those twice-dead often referred to as basimbi [simbi in

plural], were essential components of the reverence and significance of the cosmology. In

Michael Ras-Brown’s text, Afro-Atlantic in the Lowlands: he assesses the relationship between

the simbi and their manifestations. The Kikongo word simbi implies a possessive nature, and is

translated as: ‘hold, keep, preserve,’ and also, ‘take hold of, to seize” and “support.”3 In any

translation, it is clear that the concept of a specific relationship between spirits and nature was

essential to this specific African cosmology and by extension its social and religious structures.

2
Johnson, Paul C. Spirited Things: The Work of "possession" in Afro-Atlantic Religions.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014, 33
3
Brown, Ras Michael. African-Atlantic Cultures and the South Carolina Lowcountry. New
York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012, 133

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Methodology:

Traditional African theologians privilege the lived experiences, proverbs, narratives and

myths within specific African ethnic groups as the foundation of religious beliefs and rituals on

the African continent. As a result, a methodology which is rooted in African Traditional religious

experiences is essential to any discussion on the role of the spirit in the African diaspora. The

foundational text to contextualizing the field of African traditional religion is religious studies

scholar, John Mbiti’s Introduction to African Religion. Mbiti’s discussion on African cultures

and the traditional function of spirit is fruitful to this methodology. In his description and

definition of culture, he elucidates both the individuality of ethnic groups, and their shared

qualities: “Each African people has its own cultural heritage. Some aspects of our cultures are

fairly similar over large areas of our continent. There are also many differences, which add to the

variety of African culture in general.”4 Later, Mbiti discusses the specific function of the spirit in

the African context, this function then, is compatible with the Bakongo cosmological view of

humanity and the role of the spirit in the composition of a human. Mbiti explains: “It is held in

African societies’ that a person is made up of body and spirit (or soul, life, breath, shadow or

double.) There are other parts but these two are main ones. They have to be joined together to

make a living person.”5 Ultimately, a theological and historical lens rooted in the African

context gives context to the origins of African spirit possession before European contact

constitutes the African as an autonomous being independent of European influence.

4
Mbiti, John S. 1991. Introduction to African religion. Oxford [England]: Heinemann
Educational Books, 7
5
Mbiti, 136

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 In addition to a discussion rooted in African traditional religion, a historical approach which

acknowledges the genealogy of spirit possession is essential to contextualizing the role of the

spirit and understanding its development across cultures. Historian Geoffery Parrinder’s 1954

text African Traditional Religion is both historical and culturally relevant to the discussion of

spiritual leadership, he mentions the role of mediums and priests found in his study of African

religions. The practice of possession Parrinder describes is evident of the structure and value of

community, deference to religious leaders, and ultimately order. He explains the priest’s role as

such: “Priests themselves may be possessed, in some parts of Africa but not in others. Sometimes

they prefer to have a number of mediums under their control, who are consulted by order and

whose possession is carefully regulated. The mediums may thus be dependent on a priest. Very

frequently they set up as freelances and go into trances when being consulted by those in need of

guidance.”6 The guidance Parrinder describes can also be found in the process in which mediums

undergo in order to perform possessions. He notes that in Dahomey another region in West

Central Africa, specific convents were established and mediums and assistants often remained

for months and years while undergoing training.7 The training of mediums, close oversight of

local priests, and the immense time required for specific possessions are all examples of just how

methodological spirit possession were in many traditional African societies.

To explore the role of the spirit through cosmological views, religious rituals, and the role of

ancestors in identity making, comparative theology offers an entrance into the processes of

meaning-making in the African context and later in the Haitian context. Comparative theology

6
Parrinder, Geoffrey. African Traditional Religion. London: Hutchinson's University Library,
1954, 102
7
Parrinder, 102

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also assists in a nuanced discussion of namely the sources of theology in the African context and

the positionality of the enslaved person’s experience as a source for the creation of a theological

model which posits the religion (traditional or otherwise) has a primary function to bring

liberation to its devotees. The historical legacy of Atlantic slavery, the widespread conversion of

African peoples to Catholicism, and finally the consequences of colonialism in the Caribbean

reveal the essentiality of a methodology which considers history. Further, in addition to historical

considerations, one must also consider the lived experiences of Black women within these

historical events. Womanism which authenticates Black woman’s lived experience as a source of

theology is a generative and inclusive framework which acknowledges all genders and

sexualities in the creation of a theology to liberate. Theologian Emilie Townes notes a series of

questions which are paramount to employing this lens for our purposes the following are the

most significant: “How does this source portray blackness, darkness and economic justice for

non-ruling class people? What are women doing in this text? Are women infantilized,

pedestalized, idealized, or allowed to be free and independent? Identify "spirit helpers,"

indigenous people who create opportunities of transformation.”8 This paper utilizes a womanist

lens to authenticate and explore the spiritual relationships that Black women construct in Vodou

both historically and in modernity.

In addition to Townes, theologian Karen Baker Fletcher’s definition of womanist

theology gives life to the analysis of Black women within the context of the Atlantic World.

Specifically, Baker’s definition is generative alongside Townes’s questions of ‘spirit helpers’ in

providing a theological framework to explore the concept of the spirit in both West Central

8
Townes, Emilie, Womanist Theology Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006, 171

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African and the Caribbean. Baker describes her interpretation of Womanist theology and posits:

“Womanist theology begins by considering the revelation of God in the lives of black folk

historically and in the present, particularly in the lives of ordinary women of African descent. It

may take the form of a Christian theology, Islamic theology, or non-organized religiosity and

spirituality. Womanist theology asks, “Who has God been in the lives of black women

historically and today?”9 For the purposes of this discussion, our questions alongside of “Who

has God been?” must also be reconciled with “How has God been present in the lives of Black

women historically and today?”

The elements of the spirit which materialize into objects, drums, or minkisi necessitate an

ethno-historical analogical framework in object analysis.10 Ethno-historical analogy gives space

to analyze both socio-political elements of the West Central African reality to the creation of the

new Haitian lived reality. Ethnogenesis in the New World, outlines this process in his chapter on

a Model for a Diaspora. Anthropologist Christopher Fennell in his text Cosmologies and

Crossroads and Cosmologies: Diasporas contends that the first step in an ethno-historical model

is to demonstrate that the cultural system selected to provide the source information is relevant to

the subject of material culture to which it will be applied.11 In this case, through artifact analysis

of first-hand ethnographic accounts from historians and anthropologists, using a comparative

lens, I then identify which elements of Bakongo religion were retained and manifested in Haitian

9
Baker-Fletcher, Karen. 1998. Sisters of dust, sisters of spirit: womanist wordings on God and
creation. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 109
10
minkinsi are objects which hold ancestral spirits, medicines, or other healing elements.
11 Fennell, Christopher. 2007. Crossroads and cosmologies: diasporas and ethnogenesis in the

new world. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10476973, 47

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Vodou, or conversely, which elements of Bakongo religion and cosmology were inverted and

repurposed for a new socio-political reality in Haiti.

Finally, to observe and study spiritual concepts of the African people in the Americas

through a lens which acknowledges the impact of creolization, the syncretism of Atlantic

religions, and the transformative process of these religions and their subsequent creation of new

identity formation is essential. Further, this new identity formation was one developed under the

presence of French Catholicism in Haiti, and in Portuguese Catholicism in the Kingdom of

Kongo, therefore in exploring Bakongo religions, the Western frameworks and restrictive sacred

and secular binaries are not applicable. Therefore, to properly analyze the conceptualization of

the spirit in Afro-Diasporic religions, the Western Judeo-Christian binary of sacred-profane must

be abandoned in exchange for an African cosmological lens which emphasizes the worlds of the

visible and invisible.

Historical Context of Vodou in Haiti:

The significance of the function of spirit which links African peoples to their African

identity was established in Haiti prior to its independence from France. The slave revolt between

the years of 1791 and 1803 resulting in the creation of the first Black republic traces its origins to

the Afro-Caribbean religion of Vodou. Haitian folklore traces the origins of the revolution to a

small vodou ceremony, on the Gallifet estate that was known to have incited a revolutionary

spirit.12 In an account from Antoine Dalmas, a young doctor of the Galliffet estate, he describes

the ceremony and the centrality of a black pig to be what incited slaves to overthrow their white

masters, “An entirely black pig, surrounded with fetishes and loaded with a variety of bizarre

12
Geggus, David, The Haitian Revolution: A Documentary History. Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company, 2014, 78

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offerings, was sacrificed to the all-powerful spirit of the black race. The religious ceremonies

that accompanied the killing of the pig were typical of the Africans, as was their eagerness to

drink its blood and the value they placed on getting some of its hairs as a sort of talisman that

they thought would make them invulnerable.”13 Dalmas’ misconceptions about the religion are

revealed in his belief that the ‘hairs would make them invulnerable.’14 The hairs in this context

are likely referring to a kongo paquet which are similar to minkisi and embody ancestral power

and healing for practitioners. This commentary of ‘bizarre offerings and fetishes’ is consistent

with French beliefs of African traditional rituals as inferior and further failing to identify them as

religions whatsoever. Historian Kate Ramsey catalogues the history of Vodou, French

colonialism, and the law in her text Spirits and the Law. Ramsey outlines that in the wake of

increasing slave rebellions the French colonial administration enforced harsher punishments for

slaves gathering without their master’s permission, but moreover, slaves were forbidden to carry

their spiritual packets: “free people of color as well as slaves were forbidden from: ‘creating,

selling, distributing, or buying Garde Corps or Macandals, on the penalty of being

extraordinarily pursued, as profaners and seducers.’15 Both accounts which penalize the spiritual

practices essential to maintaining the cosmology of the enslaved Africans in Haiti epitomize the

fear of non-Catholic religious practices and ultimately the attempt to retain power in the empire’s

most profitable colony.

13
Geggus, 79
14
Geggus, 79
15
Ramsey, Kate. The Spirits and the Law: Vodou and Power in Haiti. 2015, 35

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Defining Spirit:

To begin, the definition of spirit closely uses the lens from the Petwo rites element of Vodou

which has elements found in traditional Bakongo religious practices and cosmologies. The

conceptualization of physical and spirit self is foundational in Bakongo cosmologies and their

articulation in philosophies are exceedingly clear. The construction of the self consists of three

entities: nitu, kisi, and mwela.16 The first entity is nitu: the physical, visible body, or the ‘death-

body.’17 Then, kini is the invisible body which is seen as a shade of the nitu. Finally, the self

consists of mwela: which is seen as the soul with no bodily form. In the Bakongo beliefs, mwela

is the only level of self which can operate independent of the physical and invisible body.18 The

Bakongo conception of mwela is incompatible with European perspectives on thinking,

embodiment, consciousness and the civil person which Christopher Johnson highlights in his

texts. For example, we can compare the independence of mwela to Locke’s discussion of what

determines consciousness. For Locke, humans are defined by consciousness: ‘what makes the

person is consciousness, not soul (thinking substance that which “thinks in us”) or body.19

Specifically, it is consciousness dispossession he describes as a result of being possessed, clearly,

these two concepts are incompatible and further emphasize the cultural differences between

European concepts of spirit, reason, and materiality to the African worldview in which the line

between the sacred and profane are flexible. Further, in the larger cosmological order, as one’s

physical nitu passes away the engagement with the simbi remains essential in facilitating the

16
Bockie, Simon. Death and the Invisible Powers: The World of Kongo Belief. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1993, 147
17
Bockie, 147
18
Bockie, 147
19
Johnson, 36

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transition from the land of the living to the land of the dead. Thus, while European enlightenment

thinkers were postulating on the role of reason, primacy or inconsequentiality of the soul, a

highly complex cosmological order and belief system in the majority of West Central Africa

exemplifies that the soul, to many African people was essential. Further, the African worldview

asserted that without the soul, an embodiment of the spirit through the performance of

possession, one could not fully exist.

Given the abstractions surrounding the concept of ‘spirit’ the analysis of its manifestation

is best observed in its duality: in cosmological narrative and in physical manifestation through

rituals. In the New World, enslaved Africans retained their beliefs and practices surrounding

one’s engagement, embrace, and possession of a spirit. Further, enslaved Africans interpreted the

role and manifestation of the spirit which reflected African traditional religious beliefs.

Specifications on which type of spirit albeit ancestral, natural, or deified were embedded Haitian

Catholicism, but largely the function of spirit remained intact. Within Central African societies

like that of the BaKongo, often the spirit was not solely a religious construction, but it also

governed political and social interactions. In David Gordon’s text, “Invisible Agents of the

Spirit” he outlines the historical significance of the essentiality of the spirit in relation to nature

and society. Gordon points to oral and material accounts of a tangential Bantu group, the Lunda

in this discussion: “In south-central Africa, remnants of Luba and Lunda oral and material

cultures describes spiritual interventions in society and politics.”20 The presence, manifestation,

and cosmologies of African spiritual systems were essential to the survival and humanization of

the African people throughout slavery. The role of Basimbi (spirits) in Bakongo cosmology,

20
Gordon, David M. Invisible Agents: Spirits in a Central African History. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2012, 9

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prioritizes the connection to the spirit and communication and reaching towards God would have

been through an intermediary, thus, the relationships between the spirit and the African people as

to give a voice. The manifestation of spirit and communication with the divine is further

embodied in the process of utilizing ground markings called vèvès to communicate with deities.

Graphic writing has roots in traditional Bakongo cosmology as a tool for practitioners to

communicate with the land of the living and of the dead. In Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz “Kongo

Graphic Writing and Other Narratives of the Sign,” he notes that as a result of the Bakongo

worldview which was based on maintaining harmony between the two worlds, priests used

graphic systems to communicate between the two worlds. 21 Vèvè are similarly utilized in

communication, but can also function in some spaces as art. In Art Historian Robert Farris

Thompson’s Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art & Philosophy, he discusses how

vèvès are often sites of spirit possession themselves and are a part of continuous artistic tradition

in Vodou:

“Everywhere in vodun art, one universe abuts another—the gathering of the ‘chromos’ of saints upon the altar walls; the standing of

embottled (sic) souls upon the altar; the flash of the double vodoun flags and swords about the peristyle; the coming of the deities, responding to

this brilliance through the pillar at the center of the dancing court. Luminous force then radiates, so it is believed from the bottom of this pillar in

the form of the blazing chalk-white signatures of the goddesses and gods. These signs, these vèvè, are then erased by the dancing feet of devotees,

circling around the pillar, even as, in spirit possession the figures of these deities are redrawn in their flesh.”22 In this way, vèvès

facilitate the connection between vodouisant and deity and exemplify the blurring of sacred and

profane which reflects the adaptation of an overtly Bakongo cosmology in the creation of Vodou.

21
Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz. Kongo Graphic Writing and Other Narratives of the Sign.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013, 31
22
Thompson, Farris Robert: “Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro American Art and
Philosophy” Flash of the spirit: African and Afro-American art and philosophy. 1st Vintage
Books ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1991, 211

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A Note on Vodou

The centrality of spirit to voudousaints is revealed in its name vodou which invokes the

interactions between the divine and humanity. The word vodou itself means god or deity in the

Dahomean language.23 Harold Courlander, an American anthropologist whose work analyzes

spiritual, literary, and political history of Haiti is useful in identifying the wide range of the word

‘vodou.’ In the following ways: 1) Voduou as only the rites derived from the Arada and Nago

ethnic groups 2) Vodou as a complex of rites including others clustered around the Arada and

Nago such as the Ibo 3) Vodou as all Afro-Haitian rites including those of the Congo and

Petro.24Identifying Haitian Vodou using the terms which vodouisants themselves use are

fundamental in further scholarship on the religion. Africology professor and oungan Patrick

Bellegarde Smith summarizes the connection between the definition of Vodou and the religion’s

world view. In “Vodou Cosmology Worldview: Haiti The Breached Citadel” he explains:

“Vodou is a coherent and comprehensive belief system and worldview in which every person

and everything is sacred and must be treated accordingly. This unity of all things translates into

an overarching belief in the sanctity of life, not so much for the thing as for the spirit of the

thing.”25 Ultimately, the most efficient way to understand this ‘spirit of the thing’ as it manifests

in Vodou is through song, dance, rituals and prayers. The concept of the spirit appears materially

through the paket kongo which is a both a translation of a Bakongo nkisi representing a physical,

sacred, and material iteration of the spirit. Practitioners connect to their own spirits, ancestors,

23
Desmangles, Leslie G. 1992. Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti.
Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press., 9
24
Murphy, Joseph M. Working the Spirit: Ceremonies of the African Diaspora. Boston, Mass.:
Beacon Press, 1994, 15
25
Bellegarde-Smith, Patrick Haiti: The Breached Citadel Toronto Canadian Scholars Press,
2004: 24

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and wounded selves using these physical materializations which grounds practitioners to the

earth, the spirit realm and ultimately, their humanity. Here, the vèvè is essential in facilitating the

healing process by opening the lines of communications from practitioner to divine being.

In the Bakongo world view, the spirit is a universal connection between humanity and the

Supreme Being. “Death and Invisible Powers: The World of Kongo Belief” illustrates the

primacy of the spiritual connection between humanity, the intermediary ancestors, and the

impersonal Supreme Being Nzambi Mpungu through the creation story of the Bakongo:

“General detachment of the figure of God which is evident in the creation story of Mahungu as

the first human being with both genders and possessing knowledge of God’s secrets, he as

irresponsible and so god allowed humans to suffer – then he took pity on them and brought them

death so they could return and gradually become like God again – they are ‘little gods.’ Further,

the term ancestor is reserved for this group of beings. When ancestors lose their earthly existence

embodied by their descendants’ remembrance and are unremembered they then become

incarnated in newcomers called nkukunyunugu: light.26 In Haitian Vodou, this process of

ancestral remembrance is embodied in the funerary rites and the rituals surrounding death. It is

believed that the body is composed of two parts: The gwo-bon-anj: which is motion and the

driving force of one’s actions in a physical body [comparable to the Bakongo kinu]. In this way,

the presence of the physical material world is shown through the root of one’s being, blood,

creativity and consciousness thus ensuring material life.27 The counterpart is the ti-bon-anj [little

good angel] which is the person’s conscience or morality [mirrors the gwo-bon-anj]

‘demonstrates moral behavior, that psychic element in the self that makes it possible to detach

26
Bockie, 134
27
Desmangles, 69

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oneself from the pressures of the world in order to make morally upright and responsible

decisions.’28 Though both parts have differing functions, they are viewed as dual, twin, or

mirrored entities which further defines the Bakongo world view of collective meaning making;

which is to say, the gwo-bon-anj and the ti-bon-anj are interdependent and cannot exist without

the other—much like the belief that African people cannot exist individually, but their meaning,

their life is derived only through their interaction and collective identity together. 29

Collective Identity:

Despite the brutal dehumanization of French colonialism, enslaved Africans in Saint-

Domingue kept their connection to Africa through a reconceptualization of their African spiritual

practices. The ethnic diversity of Africans in the Americas is evidenced best by records of

British, French, and Dutch slavers. The port of entry of human cargo was essential to identifying

specific ethnic groups in West Central Africa. It is important to note however, that many

Europeans misidentified and arbitrarily identified African with ethnic groups based on their

physical features or perceived languages. Thus, while the use of records from specific slavers is

significant, it must also be corroborated with specific ports on the west coast of Africa and

societies who actively participated in the slave trade. In his work on the composition of the

French Slave Trade, David Geggus notes that upwards of 60% of the enslaved Africans in

colonial Saint Domingue were referred to as Congos in the period before the Revolution.30 Thus,

28
Desmangles, 69
29
Desmangles, 69
30
Thornton, John K. ""I Am the Subject of the King of Congo": African Political Ideology and
the Haitian Revolution." Journal of World History 4, no. 2 (1993): 181-214. Accessed April 16,
2021, 185

16
the retention of Bakongo traditional religious practices can be directly traced to the presence of

the Bakongo ethnic groups in colonial Saint Domingue. In addition to these Bakongo groups,

colonial Saint Domingue recorded African people from the Yorùbá / Dahomey groups as well.

Vodou then reflects the incorporation of Yorùbá, Fon, and Kongo deities and practices which

reflects the creolization enslaved Africans underwent in Saint Domingue. Though not solely a

phenomenon in Saint Domingue, the remnants of all three ethnic groups are preserved explicitly

in the practices of the Rada and the Petro rites of the faith. Thus, the collective identity of

Vodouisants is tied to their diverse African origins, the preservation of religious practices which

grounded African people to their cosmological origins in West Central Africa.

To explore African traditional religions and cosmological origins, we must privilege

narratives, creation stories and myths as invaluable sources in the construction of African

theology. Creation stories are fundamental to both development of the spirit and the meaning of

religious experiences in the African context. In relation to the function of the spirit, specific

creation stories from Yorùbá traditions, highlight the Yorùbá beliefs on death and living, and

also the significance of the spirits. One significant belief establishes the significance of the

Supreme Being; in short, Oludumare the supreme being created solid earth – gave Obatala [Orisa

Nla] a handful of earth a cockerel and a palm nut and he created solid earth, Obatala released a

pigeon to spread sand for dry land, the palm kernels became trees. As a collective, orishas are

highly personified, and their presences are in other Afro-Diasporic religious traditions, namely in

Lucumi in Cuba. The devotees are connected to the spirit in that they allow devotees to ‘possess’

them and take over in order to perform extraordinary feats or give blessings. In the Yorùbá

context, possession is welcomed and represents a presence of an orisha during a celebration or

festival. Though not as hierarchical as Judeo-Christian theological systems, the Yorùbá tradition

17
does differentiate between the Supreme Being, ancestral spirits, and the orishas. The ancestral

spirits known as egungun are representations of the ancestors and another indication of the

cyclical nature of traditional African religions – in many traditions, and especially in Yorùbá,

Bamana, and BaKongo ones, the role of the ancestors is significant.31 In Yorùbá traditions, the

ancestors hold immense power and their return to the earth are celebrated in yearly festivals.

The return of ancestors is celebrated in the yearly egungun festivals where masks are worn to

celebrate the ancestors. It is believed that the marks are powerful and anyone who wears their

family masks is believed to have possession of their ancestral spirit. Men possess the masks in

the processions, but women are instrumental in singing praises to the egungun. Ultimately,

during the ancestor manifestation donned in egungun attire, the devotee is endowed with spiritual

powers of their ancestor. 32

The Yorùbá orisha Ogun emerges as Papa Ogun’s in his role as a warrior and protector

spirit of African peoples. His presence as a dominating spiritual figure emphasizes that despite

being dispossessed, enslaved Africans were guided by protective spirits like Ogun. While many

other deities from the Yorùbá tradition were lost in the journey across the Atlantic, the fearless

and protective spirit of Ogun was foundational to the establishment of a new religious identity in

the New World. Known as Sen Jak, Papa Ogou, or Ogou, he is revered as an iron god. In Plain-

du-Nord, pilgrims visit the church which is revered with spiritual power and embodiments of

Ogou’s.33 Donald Cosentino explained his observations upon arriving at the festival which are

31
Badejo, Diedre L. "Unmasking the Gods: Of Egungun and Demagogues in Three Works by Wole
Soyinka." Black American Literature Forum 22, no. 4 (1988): 663
32
Olupona, Jacob K., Abiodun, Rowland.; Ifá Divination, Knowledge, Power, and Performance,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016. 73
33
Cosentino, Donald J. "It’s All for You, Sen Jak!" Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture, 2006,
200.

18
held most Thursdays of the year and during the Lenten season and in tradition with the collective

identity of vodousaints he observed a wide range of people participating in the festival:

“At this festival, all is synchronic. The bull falls to his knees. Nearby, pilgrims overcome with emotion and

spirit, fling themselves into the mud and lie face down, not visibly breathing. They arise, looking like primal

creatures. Bystanders are moved to offer alms to the beggars in the mud. Three groups of drummers playing Petwo

rhythms are situated at cross-points around the Trou [Sen Jak].”34

Prior to Cosentino’s work, however, the memory and imagery of Ogun was prolific in

anthropologist Katherine Dunham’s text Island Possessed. Dunham in her social anthropological

study of Haiti, dance, and African culture traveled to Haiti in 1936 to immerse herself in Haitian

Vodou. She undergoes an extensive initiation into the Rada-Dahomey cult, and her work is

centered on the ethnographical engagement with elements of dance, movement, and possession

in Haitian Vodou. In this case, Dunham as an African-American with no lineage in Haiti or the

Caribbean functions as an exemplar of both the role of transnational spiritual transformation and

engagement, but also, explores the connection between African-Americans and the island of

Haiti.

In one of her observations, she noted how Vodouisants still embody the power invoked in

the iron associated with Ogun: “one of the village boys stood fingering the ogan, the iron bell,

which must have been handmade, and very old, from slavery times. He struck it from time to

time with a long iron nail tied to his wrist. I wonder by what means the slaves carried these

sacred objects from Nan Guineé.”35 Guineeé also spelled as Ginen has a profound meaning for

voudisants in that it represents their origins as African people. Haitian-American artist Margaret

34
Cosentino, 200.
35
Dunham, Katherine. Island Possessed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, 125

19
Mitchell Armand describes Ginen as “a sacred ancestral force, a sacred place as Haitians proudly

locate themselves when they acknowledge, ‘Mwen se vré Ginen’ meaning I am grounded in the

knowledge of the ancestors.”36 Here, Armand unpacks the imagined Africa in the Haitian

worldview. As the origin of the Haitian people, the cosmologies, beliefs on ancestors, and the

spirit, returning to Africa is the ultimate destination to the Voudousaint. Upon entering the

ancestral world, all rituals are curated carefully to ensure a safe passage of the gwo-bon-anj back

to their imagined African homeland.

Dunham’s findings from her fieldwork in Island Possessed reveal a transnational

dialectic on Blackness and spirituality in the Caribbean. Dunham’s first visit to Haiti as a field

researcher in 1939 began her love affair with the island and desire to return and conduct

ethnographic research on Vodou. In her observations of various houngans, vèvè drawings and

possessions, she found many rites as restorative places of healing for both vodouisants and

herself. In her field notes, she mentioned the growing spiritual connection she finds with other

initiates: “I was beginning to feel at home with them, to sense the tie of kinship that must hold

together secret societies the world over. We were associated in things not common to all

men…”37Despite her growing kinship, Dunham’s identity as a Black American, at times made

others in the houngan hesitant to fully embrace her. Yet, Dunham’s observations of religious

items and the constructions of meaning making in Vodou, locate her in a sort of historical re-

enactment of how enslaved peoples may have felt during the Middle Passage across the Atlantic.

Dunham notes in the course of her final day of the confinement period all initiates undergo until

they are fully embraced into the houngan [religious community]:

36
Armand, Margaret Mitchell. Healing in the Homeland: Haitian Vodou Tradition. Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, 2013, 74
37
Dunham, 79

20
 “Here, three thousand miles from my center of learning, either for my own awakened and undefined needs,

or under pretext of fulfilling a mission, or a mixture of both, I was deep in the most banal and, at the same time,

most esoteric of secret society inductions, that into ceremony, ritual, secret pact, blood sacrifice, into the vaudun or

voodoo of Haiti. There we lay, scarcely breathing, waiting, listening, sense alert, packed like sardines much as the

slaves who crossed the Atlantic, motionless as though chained, some of us afraid.” 38

In this passage, Dunham emotively articulates the historical assemblage of enslaved peoples, and

in doing so experiences an intimate historical religious moment. The juxtaposition of Dunham’s

academic learning ‘center’ which at this time was under renowned social anthropologist,

Mehlville Herskovits, was the University of Chicago. It is notable that Dunham includes her

geographical distance in what equates with her core beliefs on learning. Much of Dunham’s

commentary and narrative throughout this ethnography question both her role as an

anthropologist and the meaning and significance of race and psychology in understanding

Blackness. Dunham’s discussion of a perceived mission could be either academic, which in this

time was the completion of her fieldwork, but specifically it is significant that Dunham herself

cannot specifically name what her possible ‘needs’ at this time may have been. In this case, her

field observations and second-hand proximity to multiple spiritual possessions through her

initiation process served a dual function; to help Dunham name parts of her own being which

were spiritually deprived, and further, to connect Dunham to the fellow initiatives whose

national identities varied from her own.

Despite Dunham’s American identity, she encounters the divine in her initiation in a

profoundly moving series of spiritual encounters. Cultural Anthropologist Aisha De Jesus

discusses the impact of spiritual presences among transnational Africana religious practitioners.

While De Jesus focuses on the Yorùbá, the possibility that Dunham in fact experienced a deep

38
Dunham, 79

21
spiritual experience during her first visit to the island is likely a result of what DeJesus calls: “co-

presences: “Co-presences do not distinguish between an African in Trinidad, Benin, or Chicago,

but instead describes: ‘practitioners regardless of ethnic or racial designation, are remade through

complex rituals of making santo [priesthood] that hail blackened epistemologies.’39 In this way,

Dunham in despite her relatively privileged position in Haiti, would not have barred her from her

initiation nor fully embracing the lwas based on her nationality. Dunham encounters an

affirmation of the clairvoyance of one priest, Antoine, which both piques her interest in the

community and grants her access to explore the funeral rites and spirits related to the “Congo”

gods. In her encounter with Antoine she notes: “Antoine told me all about my family, delivered

messages from my brother and dead mother who bore me, predicted by marriage to Damballa

and cautioned me about the jealousies that would result from this union, and the jealousies that

would pursue my adult life, personally and professionally.”40 Prior to this encounter, the

residents in Thomazeau had no forewarning of Dunham’s arrival nor the details of her

upbringing. As a result, Dunham feels deeply connected to the houngan and her subsequent

observations reveal a growing sense of connection to houngan. Dunham recalls: “Now the spirit

would have to be fed, food brought before the bed, and feasts eaten by the acolytes and family.

There would be a long recitation of the vitae of the bocor and his most outstanding

achievements, then ancestral prayers, and the group would return to the silence of the room to

untie the kerchief which bound the jaws of the old man, thus freeing the spirit to speak and give

further instructions to the new priest.” 41 At the end of the ritual, Dunham returns to the

39
Beliso-De Jesús, Aisha M. Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational
Religion. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015, 4
40
Dunham, 34
41
Dunham, 37

22
compound but notes specifically how impactful the encounter was and she distinguishes this

particular encounter of the bocor’s spirit leaving his physical body from prior spiritual

experiences. Island Possessed as an ethnographic narrative is essential in establishing the early

transnational dialogue between descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States and in the

Caribbean. Dunham’s invocation of her esoteric experiences in the Haitian context both

countered the ignorance surrounding Haitian Vodou and affirmed the religion’s essentiality to

Haiti’s national identity.

Haiti at the Crossroads:

French Saint-Domingue rebranded itself as Hayti to honor the indigenous Taino but also

proclaimed its independence from France and reclaimed their African heritage. As the first Black

republic in the New World, the Haitian Revolution was heralded as the only successful slave

revolution which resulted in the creation of a newly independent state. The Haitian in the post-

revolutionary period (post 1804) was tasked with undoing French colonial structures, creating a

multi-racial, multi-linguistic nation-state, while concurrently grappling with the economic burden

of war debts.

Oungan and religious history scholar Patrick Bellegarde-Smith notes the economic and

social context of Haiti in the wake of the revolutionary period:

“One notes the extremely difficult relationship that existed between Haiti and the world powers at the time

soon after independence. And then we have added to this the connection between Latin America and Haiti in terms of

the former’s independence, as with the great powers of the day: England, France, and later the United States. We have

the onerous, punitive, 113,000,000 francs owed to France, which imposed severe limitations on the infrastructural

development in Haiti.”42

42
Bellegarde-Smith, Patrick, Alex Dupuy, Robert Fatton, Mary Renda, Ermitte St. Jacques, and
Jeffrey Sommers. "Haiti and Its Occupation by the United States in 1915: Antecedents and

23
The symbolism of the Haitian state at a crossroads accurately defines the political context of the

republic in the period following its independence from France in 1804. The country’s founders

L’Overture and Dessalines had to contend with the nascent republic’s political identity and

establish an official state religion. Later, as the country transitioned from L’Overture’s to

Dessalines, a reexamination of the republic’s relationship to the Catholic Church emerged. The

semiotics of the Christian cross and the political crossroads of a nascent republic are both powerful

summations of the post-revolutionary period. This image of a political, social, and economic

crossroads translates directly into identifiable elements from the BaKongo derived Petro rites of

Vodou. In the staking of the poto miteau [center post] which comprises the visual representation

of the lwa and a connection to the material world, the voudouisant stakes their connection and

relationship to both the earth and also to Africa. As the connection, both to the material world and

the imagined world of Guinee is established, and the creolized deity of Lord Simbi are prioritized

in the sketching of the cosmogram.43

The first line drawn in the earth is a representation of the Kongo derived Lord Simbi who

is seen as the highest lord of the death realm. Simbi himself as a deity is an embodiment of Haitian

creolization of its Kongo and now Haitian identities. Simbi Andezo in the Vodou pantheon is

known as the highest lord of the death realm and is largely derived from vodousaints with no direct

BaKongo counterpart. In the BaKongo cosmological order, simbi are generally known as spirits.

According to their interaction with the living, simbi often embody different names and forms.

Notably, the simbi in Haitian Vodou, is an extension and intermediary between the living and the

Outcomes." Journal of Haitian Studies 21, no. 2 (2015): 10-43. Accessed April 14, 2021.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/43741120, 13
43
Simbi act as an intermediary to connecting Vodou practitioners to the next life cycle, being the
reunion with ancestors in Ginen.

24
dead. As such, simbi are primary linkages between Vodou practitioners, the next life cycle, and

the reunion with ancestors in Ginen. This creation of Simbi Andezo as a new deity demonstrates

gendered and relational dynamics within Vodou. Nonetheless, in both Haitian Vodou and the

BaKongo traditions, simbi are essential for a soul in order to pass from the land of the living and

the dead. The traditional BaKongo context posits that there is a passage across water which

connects these two worlds, known as n’langu, m’bu or kalunga. However, in Vodou this passage

is reimagined as the reunion of ancestors in the imagined Ginen which is derived from Guinea. 44

Therefore, elements of traditional BaKongo cosmologies manifested in the retention of specific

KiKongo names of deities, but, the ultimate spiritual reunion between the two worlds in its

reimagining of Ginen as a place of origin reflects the social-political context of post-revolutionary

Haiti.

Flag in Spirit

Haiti was at a political crossroads in the wake of the Revolution which ended in 1804. The

new republic faced the task of establishing the Haitian state in the Atlantic World while attempting

to preserve elements from the country’s origins. The symbol of the drapo emerges as a

materialization of spirit, nationality, and the legacy of African history in the new world. The

process of flag-making of the Haitian drapo is comparable to traditional Kongo flag presentations.

This continuation of embodied spirit in a material form is indicative of the prevalence of the

BaKongo worldview that Haitians now adapted for their new republic. Art historian Robert Farris

Thompson’s work in “Flash of the Spirit” unpacks the significance of flags in the Haitian context.

Farris discusses the S-shaped cross-guards found near the staves of Haitian flags to the crossroad

44
Robert Farris Thompson, Africanizing Haitian Art: in Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou:
Consentino, Donald Los Angeles, Calif: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 102

25
image in Kongo cosmologies: “crossroads pose—right hand up to heaven, left hand parallel to the

horizon line.”45 In this case, the parallel horizontal line refers to the kalunga demarcating the land

of the living from the land of the dead. As with simbi, Haitians adopted their Kongo beliefs to the

American realities in the use of flags in social culture. In Haitian Vodou the flag staff is different

from its use in the traditional Kongo informal gesturing to military and religious associations;

Thompson explains: “the S on the Vodou flagstaff reverse that of the handguard on the saber held

by St. James, identified as Sen Jak the chief of the Haitian Ogun.”46 There is a spiritual significance

in the drapo that if it has not been spiritually ordained and deemed sacred, it is then rendered

invalid to the voudoizant: “unbaptized flags do not have soul or energy, unlike consecrated drapo

which can acquire even plis nanm (more soul) fos (force) and kouraj (courage).47 In this case, a

piece of cloth is meaningless without the embodiment of fos breathed into it from the Vodouizant.

In addition to drapo the use drawing of vèvè in Vodou ceremonies in order to invite the

lwa into communication with its devotees, another retention of BaKongo cosmology is

presented. Each individual lwa has its own unique drawing which encompasses their personality

and imagery related to their own personal histories the process of drawing the vèvè is discussed

in Robert Farris Thompson’s Africanizing Vodou Art: “the Vodou king traces a grand circle (on

the earth) in a blackish substance [carbon black] and positions within it the person to be initiated.

In the hand of same he places a packet composed of herbs, horse hair, pieces of animal horn, and

45
Wexler, Anna, Yon Moso Twal Nan Bwa (A Piece of Cloth on Wood): The Drapo Vodou in
Myths of Origin in Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture: Invisible Powers. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006, 68
46
Wexler, 66
47
Wexler 66

26
other objects.” 48 This packet composed of herbs, horse hair, and other objects is known in

Vodou as a kongo paket which serves the same functional and religious purpose as the BaKongo

nkisi (singular, or minkisi plural). Nkisi are the physical embodiment of simbi and in the

traditional BaKongo social-religious context, only a specified group of people were endowed the

spiritual authority to oversee nkisi. This same nganga [healer] role is not completely replicated

within the Vodou context, but, what is notable is that the physical embodiment of spirit through

kongo paket highlights the profundity of the BaKongo cosmological system in the making of

Vodou.

The preeminence of a Kongo-derived deity reimagined as Simbi Andezo in the staking of

the poto miteau, definitively reveals despite the overwhelming presence of both Yorùbá and

Dahomean deities, the BaKongo worldview and imagery were, indeed transferred to the New

World with the thousands of BaKongo were enslaved in Haiti. Further, the retention of

cosmographical meaning making in the form of vèvès and their demarcation of a line separating

the land of the living to that of the dead were also comparable to BaKongo kalunga which draws

out the meaning of the spiritual world. In a religious ceremony where devotees aim to ‘bring

down the lwa.’ BaKongo primacy is evidence from the first drawing of the vèvè. The first line of

the vèvè symbolizes: “the line guides the spirit from the island beneath the sea even as in Kongo,

Lord Simbi highest class of the dead.”49 This ancestral linkage to the Kongo land vis-à-vis the

fluidity of water and the embodiment of the Lord Simbi as the highest deity representative of the

land of the dead further reinforces the Bakongo worldview in Haitian Vodou. Though Bakongo

land was reimagined as Guinea, the role of Simbi Andezo as a prominent creolized deity

48
Thompson, 102
49
Thompson, 102

27
reimagines a Haiti which remains linked to the Kongo. The reimagining of Kongo as Guinea but

linked by Simbi Andezo’s divinity effectively transported the BaKongo cosmological order to

the new social-political context of the Haitian state.

Conclusion

The connection to humanity and the creation of meaning-making explored in the

cosmology of the Vodou are not unique to Haiti. Across the African Diaspora, African people

have created and re-created meaning in their new worldview as they adjusted to the New World.

The legacies of these systems of religious and spiritual meaning-making are mostly reflected

through the creation of written and material expressions. This section explores the meaning and

expression of the vèvè and nkisi as sites of knowledge, healing, and liberation for both

practitioners of Vodou and non-practitioners. Moreover, the desire for Africans in the diaspora to

connect and engage with their heritage either biologically affirmed or imagined has resulted in

the production of art which seeks to legitimize African traditional religion and authenticate the

lived experiences of African people. Thus, I argue that the Petwo rite of Vodou with its close

association to Bakongo cosmological elements such as nkisi, continue to act as a place of healing

for Africans in the diaspora.

In her discussion of her experiences living as a Haitian child, the late artist and scholar

Margaret Mitchell Armand explores the traditional narratives and the significance of storytelling

as a reclamation of power and personhood. In Healing in the Homeland: Haitian Vodou

Tradition: Armand reflects on the role of storytelling in decolonizing former colonial subjects:

“storytelling emphasizes meaning and experience from an introspective view of self as well

offering insights into the enemy within—that is, the mental colonization experienced by the

28
bourgeois, elite Haitian society.” 50 Armand’s text is a weaving together of vèvès alongside

stories from Haitians on the island and in the diaspora. She carefully curates specific vèvè and

lwa which reflect the historical issues of the participants but further, she uses vèvè as a narrative

to tie ancestor veneration and the embrace of Haitian Vodou as the antidote to the colonial

mindset plaguing the Haitian people.

Along with the embrace of Haitian Vodou, Armand prescribes that for Haiti to move

forward and continue to detach itself from French colonialism it must return to Vodou. Notably,

Armand ties social progress with an African worldview and communication style, she points to a

vèvè [graphic drawings] of one lwa with roots in the Igbo language which unites the Haitian

people: “One vèvè of the stanzas of the milokan incantation states: “United we are in the

ancestors’ realms, honor to all the saints and the ancestors.”51 This union between the saints and

ancestors reflects the impact of the living dead on those in the land of the living. During the

transition and dissolution of the physical body, many African ethnic groups maintain a belief that

the ancestors and those who are living must remember their ancestors and include them in

prayers. Mbiti explains: “it is custom in some parts of Africa to mention the names of departed

relatives when one is praying to God. These departed members of the family are believed to

relay the prayers to God, since it is considered rude in those societies to approach God directly

unless it is absolutely necessary.”52 The distance between the living and the Supreme Being in

many traditional African religions is bridged with ancestors who act as intermediaries. In this

case, the ancestor bridges the living practitioners to the supreme being, Bondye.

50
Armand, Margaret Mitchell. Healing in the Homeland: Haitian Vodou Tradition. Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, 2013, xix
51
Armand, 107
52
Mbiti, 143

29
 In the Haitian Diaspora to the United States, connections to Haiti and Vodou are

profoundly instrumental in retaining national identity and a sense of pride despite the historical

legacy of tense Haitian-American political relations. The 2010 earthquake which devastated the

island and claimed the lives of over 200,000 people has impacted the diaspora as well. As a sort

of fractioning, many Haitians in the diaspora turned to Africa and art as a way to begin healing.

As Art Historian Kantara Souffrant explains in “Circling the Cosmogram: Vodou Aesthetics,

Feminism, and Queer Art in the Second-Generation Haitian Dyaspora” her art reflects

specifically how the earthquake shocked those in the diaspora, but moreover how returning to

Kongo and Yorùbá methods of healing would bring the nation together. Souffrant explained: “I

use my own work to mark the ways that reclaiming African Diasporic-derived rituals and

reclaiming African Diasporic-derived aesthetics are mutually constituting-actions; that one

cannot take up aesthetics without attending to rituals of healing and art creation, and that one

cannot take up rituals of healing without engaging with the aesthetics of the African Diaspora.”53

In this way, despite geographical location, Haitians are bound in their collective identity and thus

any return to these rituals would facilitate healing for those in the diaspora.

The magnitude of an overt connection with the African continent is further expressed in

contemporary art in the diaspora. The value and historical significance of the healing power of

materializations of spirit such as nkisi or kongo paquet are replicated despite geographical location.

In her piece Splitting, Souffrant explains the disembodiment that Haitians feel as a result of their

attempts to distance themselves from their African identity in attempt to gain Western approval.

This disembodiment as demonstrated in the Kongo cosmology engraved in a vèvè serves as the

53
Kantara Souffrant Circling the Cosmogram: Vodou Aesthetics, Feminism, and Queer Art in
the Second-Generation Haitian Dyaspora in Vodou in the Haitian Experience: A Black Atlantic
Perspective. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2016, 52

30
key to Haitian people tracing their lineage and ultimately their healing back to the African origins.

Notably, as Souffrant embodies the spiritual practices and significances of the materiality of nkisi

she sees her art as a transformative and deeply healing process for her country in the wake of a

natural devastation but also in reverence to her ancestors. For Souffrant, the experience of the

earthquake physically split the country due to the seismic shifts, but, imaginatively , Souffrant in

the diaspora was also split from experiencing the event from afar: ‘The split body is

representational of my splitting as I witnessed and experienced the earthquake and its subsequent

events.’54 Souffrant’s use of nkisi to demonstrate the living and spiritual elements of the material

world review the Bakongo cosmologies which determine that in their function nkisi are the

embodiment of simbi and are tools for healing regardless of one’s physical location.

Resilience is merely insufficient to describe for the lives and histories of African peoples

in the Americas, so too, is resistance. Here, a return to an African traditional theological lens is

particularly useful; “Africans are notoriously religious,” has been a frame to explore the spiritual

and religious traditions of the African people and the essentiality of religion to the African

person.55 We see that regardless of national origin, African people forged paths to connect and

reconnect to their spiritual identities, but specifically in Haitian Vodou, their identities as

BaKongo peoples. Dunham’s religious encounters in the course of her fieldwork, further reveal

national identities do not inhibit one’s spiritual encounters with the BaKongo or other

Dahomean/ Yoruban derived cosmologies. Finally, the power of a spiritual connection to a deity

or place is one which has sustained African peoples throughout their histories of enslavement,

54
Souffrant, 56
55 Mbiti, 27

31
colonization, and oppression. As a result, the African spirit which dwells in all African people

both on the continent and in the diaspora, remains a source of healing and an embodiment of the

immortality of their liberation.

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