The ghede loa is a spirit of the dead who is commanded by the Voodoo Priest or Priestess (art by Ricardo Pustanio).
The Macumba religion (also known as Spiritism, Candomblé, and Umbanda) is practiced by a large number of Brazilians who cherish the age-old relationship between a shaman and his or her people. In its outward appearances and in some of its practices, Macumba resembles Voodoo. Trance states among the practitioners are encouraged by dancing and drumming, and the evening ceremony is climaxed with an animal sacrifice.
Macumba was born in the 1550s when the West African tribal priests who sought to serve their people with their old religion were forced to give token obeisance to an array of Christian saints and the God of their masters. As in the cases of Santeria, Voodoo, and other adaptations of original religious expression, the native priests soon realized how complementary the two faiths could be. The African god, Exu, became St. Anthony; Iemanja became Our Lady of the Glory; Oba became St. Joan of Arc; Oxala became Jesus Christ; Oxum became Our Lady of the Conception; and so on. The Africans summoned their the Orishas with the sound of their drums and the rhythm of their dancing. In that regard, the West Africans were more fortunate than those slaves in the States, whose masters forbade them to keep their drums.
During this same period, Roman Catholic missionaries were attempting to convince the aboriginal tribes in Brazil to forsake their old religion and embrace Christianity. In many instances, Macumba provided the same kind of bridge between faiths for the native people as it had for the Africans imported to the country by the slave trade. While they gave lip service to the religious practices of the Europeans, they found that they also could worship their nature spirits and totems in the guise of paying homage to the Christian saints.
The ancient role of the shaman remains central to Macumba. The priest enters into a trancelike state and talks to the spirits in order to gain advice or aid for the supplicant. Before anyone can participate in a Macumba ceremony, he or she must undergo an initiation. The aspirants themselves must enter a trance during the dancing and the drumming and allow a god to possess them. As in Haitian and New Orleans Vodou and Santeria, once the dancer has been taken by the spirit, he or she often dances to a state of exhaustion.
Once the possession has taken place, the shaman must determine which gods are in which initiate so the correct rituals may be performed. The process is empowered by the sacrifice of an animal, whose blood is then smeared over the initiates by the shaman. Once the initiates have been blooded, they take an oath of loyalty to the cult. Later, when the trance state and the possessing god has left them, the initiates, now members of the Macumba cult, usually have no memory of the ritual proceedings.
From the melding of the two religious faiths and the Africans’ passion for drumming and dancing, the samba, the rhythm of the saints, was created. The samba became a popular dance, and even today is recognized in Brazil as a symbol of national identity. The dance, synonymous to many as a symbol of Brazil and Carnival, has also become widely accepted throughout the world. One of the samba’s derivations is the Bossa Nova.
VOUDON: HOW TO MAKE A ZOMBIE
Shortly after dictator Manuel Noriega’s fall from power in 1989, U.S. intelligence sources revealed that the real ruler of Panama had been a Voodoo practitioner named Maria daSilva Oliveira, a 60-year-old priestess from Brazil who practiced Candomble and Palo Mayombe.
Witnesses stated that Noriega relied blindly on his Voodoo necklace, a pouch of herbs, and a spell written on a piece of paper to protect him. Journalist John South, writing from Panama City, Panama, said that those close to the dictator were aware that he did not make a single move without first consulting Maria.
When U.S. soldiers searched the house that Noriega had provided for his Voodoo priestess, they found evidence of spells attempted on former Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Maria had written out special ritual chants for Noriega to repeat over photographs of his enemies as he burned Voodoo candles and magic powders.
According to U.S. intelligence, Noriega’s own spy network had informed him that U.S. forces would invade Panama on December 20, 1989. The dictator ordered Maria to conduct an immediate sacrifice to determine the validity of such intelligence reports.
During a ritual ceremony, Maria sliced open the bellies of frogs in order to study their entrails. Her interpretation of the entrails caused her to predict a U.S. invasion on December 21.
Placing more confidence in his Voodoo Priestess than in his intelligence network, Noriega believed Maria. Consequently, he had not yet moved his troops into position when the U.S. military forces attacked on December 20, a day earlier than Maria’s sacrifice had prophesied. Even worse, from the dictator’s perspective, he also missed the opportunity to escape in advance of the invading army.
According to some of its more passionate adherents, Vodun/Vodoun is not a magical tradition, not an animistic tradition, not a spiritistic tradition—neither should it be a pagan religion. The deities of Voodoo are not simply spiritual energies and the path of Voodoo should not be followed for the sake of power over another. Although the Voodoo religion does not demand members proselytize, anyone may join. However, 99 percent of its priesthoods are passed from generation to generation.
The same individuals who esteem their Voodoo religion so highly, insist that it is neither dogmatic nor apocalyptic. Whatever outsiders may make of their faith, the sincere Voodoo follower declares that it has no apocalyptic tradition that prophesizes a doomsday or end-of-the-world scenario.
Although one might suspect that these same true believers are a bit dogmatic when they emphasize that Voodoo was not created as a result of captive West Africans being transported to Roman Catholic countries as slaves, a closer look reveals that Voodoo is not really a blend of African religions and Catholicism, but a clever mask that disguised the ancient deities of the Old Religion.
One point the believers in Voodoo make that cannot be disputed is that the religion did not originate in Haiti. Vodun/Voodoo definitely emerged out of Africa.
Voodoo means “spirit” in the language of the West African Yoruba, and the religion is an assortment of African beliefs and rites that may go back as many as 6,000 to 10,000 years. Slaves, who were snatched from their homes and families on Africa’s West Coast, brought their gods with them. Plantation owners in Haiti and other West Indian islands purchased the slaves for rigorous labor and had no interest in their religious beliefs—if they even had any at all. In the minds of their owners, the African slaves were simple savages from the jungle who probably were not even at the level of a culture in which a kind of worship of God would even be comprehended.
Some traditional Voodoo Priests and Priestesses will sew closed the eyes and the mouth of the zombie whom they have enslaved (art by Ricardo Pustanio).
In spite of their indifference to any possible theologies that their slaves might hold, the plantation owners in Haiti were compelled by order of the lieutenant-general to baptize them in the Catholic religion. The slaves were in no position to protest their forced conversion, but by the time the West Africans submitted to mass baptism, the wise priests among them had already discovered simple segues from worshipping the old jungle family of gods and goddesses into bowing and praying to their newly acquired Catholic saints.