to Ginen and the tibonanj to Heaven (as a result
of the influence of Catholicism), and the body to
the navel of the Earth where, as an empty shell, it
will disintegrate and never rise again.
As in much of West Africa, ancestral spirits
exercise authority over the living. That authority
derives from a ritual of reclamation performed a
year after a person’s death, in which the soul of
the dead is reclaimed from Ginen and placed into
a govi (a clay jar or a bottle), where it is kept in
the temple. It is from this new shell that an ances-
tral spirit is believed to assist the living. The mem-
ory from past experiences, the wisdom gained
from their time spent in Ginen, is preserved as a
legacy for their progeny.
Private RitualsThe spirits do not merely manifest themselves in
public rituals, but in private ones as well. Many
Vodouists may keep pés, or altars, in their homes
for the Catholic saints and, by extension, for the
lwas. A pé may be a simple table covered with a
tablecloth and adorned with vases of flowers, the
chromolithographs of a saint, or the picture of a
deceased member of the family. Or these images
may simply be affixed onto a wall.
The spirits also manifest themselves in times of
misfortune in the ritual of divination. Divination
is the art of foretelling the future or ascertaining
certain truths as they are revealed by an object or
an event. Divination is one of the most important
aspects of life among Vodouists; they are prompt
to consult oracles, especially in circumstances over
which they have little or no control, such as a
chronic fever, a barren garden, life’s sporadic pri-
vations or its uncertainties, and so on. The person
in need may confer with a religious specialist who
is the conduit between the sacred and profane
worlds. For theoretical purposes, divination in
Vodou may be divided into two categories: intu-
itive and prognostic. The first may or may not
involve spirit possession, but the religious special-
ist receives his or her answer intuitively from
ancestral spirits by the manipulation of an oricu-
lar object. The second involves the drawing of
meaning from unanticipated natural phenomena,
such as an unexpected gust of wind, the sudden
appearance of an animal, the occurrence of an
unforeseen event, or an act such as sneezing.
These incidents are interpreted immediately as
suggesting certain outcomes of impending events.
Both types involve the application of interpretive
schemes based on observation and with which the
community is familiar. The difference between the
two, however, is that the intuitive divination
requires the assistance of a diviner, whereas the
prognostic type does not.Vodou in the Diaspora
Unfavorable political and economic circumstances
in Haiti since the 1970s have forced substantial
numbers of Haitians to emigrate into many parts
of the world. Living in many of the world’s largest
cities (namely, New York, Chicago, Miami,
Québec, Montréal, or Paris), they have established
communities where they continue to perform their
sacred rituals. Even the pilgrimages are repro-
duced in the diaspora.
In many parts of the United States, Haitians
have created communities, or lakous, that approx-
imate the African rural courtyard. In Haiti, a
lakou is an area in which an extended family is
gathered and where its members live in separate
dwellings. The lakou often includes matriarchs or
patriarchs who serve as spiritual leaders and who
are revered by the members of the lakou as the
links between the secular and sacred worlds.
The lakou as a social and religious phenome-
non has waned considerably in Haiti since the
1950s. Job opportunities and the prospects for a
good education have resulted in the emigration
of the lakous’ younger members to other areas
of the country and have engendered the gradual
disintegration of the lakou’s infrastructure. But
it has reemerged among Haitians in the dias-
pora. The house systems are analogous to the
lakous; they consist of an entire building in
which several families live in individual apart-
ments, but share domestic and financial
resources. They gather around a priest or priest-
ess whose apartment often functions as both
living quarters and a temple.
In the context of rituals, most of the parapher-
nalia used in the rituals are readily available in
large cities in the diaspora. Even the pilgrimages
are reproduced. For instance, All Souls’ Day in theVodou in Haiti 699