Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica

It is a well-known folk tale that the island of Gonave is a whale who was tasked by Damballah to carry his wife to Haiti. The wife carries the formula for peace in her hand, but falls asleep before reaching Haiti. When she awakes, she’ll give the gift of peace to the Haitians, but until then the whale carries her to and from Haiti every day.

Hurston visits Gonave with a friend from the USA, marveling at the beauty of the night-time passage across the water. They stay awhile on the peaceful island and meet with locals. The islanders often find stone tools made by the aboriginals who once inhabited the Caribbean, which they take to be magic stones inhabited by loa. Finding one is considered extremely lucky, and once the finder saves up enough money to get them baptized, the stones are considered the holiest of objects. Baptized stones are placed on domestic shrines and considered absolutely priceless. One of the occupying marines once managed to procure a famous holy stone that was known to spontaneously produce water.

Hurston stays in Archahaie with the famous houngan Dieu Donnez. Donnez is wealthy and educated, and lives like a patriarchal African chief on a compound with his family, presiding over the local hounfort (a Voodoo temple). His wife, Madame Etienne, is a mambo who takes Hurston under her wing to guide her through ceremonies, celebrations, and dances. There are elaborate Voodoo ceremonies in the compound every day, sometimes multiple times a day, and Etienne presides over the daily preparations and chores. There are always sick people in the compound seeking healing, and it is rumored that Donnez is also a powerful bocor, or priest. There are many famous hougan and bocor in Archahaie, a region best known as a center of zombie activity.

One night Hurston attends the special “Courir Zinc” ceremony following the death of another nearby houngan. This ceremony aims to remove the loa from the dead man so that his spirit can rest peacefully, and his power can pass on to his successor. Offerings are made to the spirit and Donnez addresses the dead man in “langage,” a secret African jargon unique to each houngan. The corpse sits upright and drops the stone containing its loa to the ground, much to Hurston’s surprise. With the passing of a zinc hook through flames, the dead houngan’s power is passed on to his son, and the ceremony is complete.

During the celebratory music and dancing that follows, one of the men is possessed by an evil spirit, transforming his face frighteningly. Dieu Donnez manages to fight off the spirit so that it leaves the man unharmed. He explains later to Hurston that although the ceremony is not difficult, it is dangerous due to the risk of interruption by evil spirits.

Donnez presides over another ceremony for the establishment of a new hounfort, and the promotion of a new houngan. Becoming a mambo or houngan is the final stage of Voodoo priesthood, which very few practitioners attain. The role is usually inherited, although some simply find themselves called to the role by the loa. One must first be consecrated as a “hounci bosal” through a ceremony involving head washing, and possession by one’s loa of choice. The next stage is “canzo,” which Hurston herself has attained. The first day of ceremonies for the new houngan is dedicated to the Rada gods, and the second to the Petra.

Hurston describes the rituals during which multiple animals are tortured and sacrificed. There is a great difference between the two categories of god and their ceremonies; only birds are sacrificed to Rada gods, whose blessings are meted out slowly and with care. The Petra gods, often described as red-eyed versions of their Rada counterparts, require other domestic animals, such as dogs and goats, to be sacrificed to them, and are able to offer fast and powerful gifts to supplicants. The Petra gods always demand something in return for their services, and woe betide the beneficiary who fails to carry out his side of the bargain.

Zombies are spoken about all across Haiti. They exist in a state between the living and the dead, which are not such absolutely defined states in Haiti as they are considered in the USA. Zombies are accused of stealing, thought to sell goods in the early morning, and used as unpaid labor like beasts of burden. The fear is that one could be turned into a zombie and, regardless of the quality of lifestyle one enjoyed in life, spend one’s days thereafter soulless, toiling away with no memories or awareness. Embalming is not a common practice on Haiti, so other measures must be taken to protect the dead from this indignity.

Hurston relates several famous cases that occurred relatively recently, where individuals die suddenly and are then discovered seemingly alive but with neither mind nor memory. “Bocors,” Voodoo priests who do both good and evil works, are responsible for the creation of zombies. The bocor and his accomplices do this by calling the newly deceased from their tomb at midnight while holding their captive soul. They beat the body until it moves, then walk it past its former home to erase all memories of life before forcing it to drink a single drop of a secret potion. Thereafter, the person is a zombie, and unless they are given salt to eat, they are incapable of speech or independent thought.

Hurston has met an actual zombie, a woman named Felicia Felix-Mentor who died suddenly and was buried. Years later, after her loved ones had long since moved on, Felicia is discovered naked, seemingly alive, and all-but incoherent outside her family’s farm. Hurston met her at an asylum where Felicia has lived ever since, non-verbal and only semi-conscious, though capable of moving around. The doctors suspect that the liquid used by bocors to create zombies is actually some kind of drug which causes brain damage, though no one has ever discovered the secret of its composition.

Hurston also relates the manner in which a person can make a deal with evil spirits through the “give man” ceremony. This is the Haitian equivalent of a deal with the devil, done with a bocor as intermediary. In exchange for wealth or power, a person agrees to sacrifice his loved ones one after another to the bocor and the spirit until they have no one left and are taken themselves. The sacrificed loved ones die, disappear, and become zombies. This practice is forbidden and taboo, but there are nonetheless hougans who serve their communities by day and moonlight as bocor. The most famous region for zombies is in Trou Forban, where the legendary figure of the bocor Vixama is said to live.

There are secret societies in Haiti, but as their name suggests, they are kept very much secret. Hurston is only able to discover their existence sideways, through implications, omissions, and unexplained fears. Hurston first hears a hint about these societies through a servant who fears that they may kill his child, but the servant is chided by an upper-class Haitian for sharing such information with a foreigner, and thereafter refuses to elaborate. Another servant is threatened by oblique references, and a friend of Hurston’s warns her not to follow the sound of certain drums since the ceremonies they accompany are far from benign. The friend also warns her away from associating with Voodoo priests whom she does not know well.

The most significant of these secret societies is known as the “Secte Rouge,” also called “Cochon Gris” or “Vinbrindigue.” Although they pretend at being a Voodoo sect, this group actually deals in human sacrifice and cannibalism, which are absolute taboos in true Voodoo. Hurston speculates that the sect was brought to Haiti by enslaved peoples, but suppressed by the strictures of slavery. Now that its members are free, she believes that the cult is finally able to flourish in Haiti.

There is another secret society among upper-class Haitians dedicated solely to the elimination of the Secte Rouge, motivated by a desire to protect the Haitian people and to prevent the cult from giving Voodoo a bad name by association. The people of the Secte Rouge meet in cemeteries and hold fake Voodoo ceremonies. Hurston tells of a night when members of the sect commandeered a bridge for their rituals and sent out members to hunt down lone travelers to be sacrificed, divided among the members, and eaten. The identity of the sect’s members is of utmost secrecy, and any member suspected of talking is executed.