Oops, we're also a religious system

[lb_lee]

Mori: Well, it took me a while, but I finished Maya Deren's Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. It didn't take me this long because I was bored by it; on the contrary, I took like twenty pages of notes, way more than the other stuff I've been reading lately. I still don't have the guts to take on Jung's The Red Book yet (the last time I tried to read Jung, it was a SLOG), so on to Leslie Desmangles's Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti! And Desmangles, quoting Deren, sums up a big part of why it took us so long to figure out we're also a religious-based system:

The concept of belief in Haiti does not have the same connotation that it does in English (Deren, 1972). The English word belief suggests an intellectual activity by which one may or may not choose to identify with a system of thought. Vodouisants never think of believing in something in the sense of identifying with a system of thought--or, by extension, with a community that affirms such a system [...].

Asked if they believe in the Vodou deities, notes Maya Deren, Vodouisants never reply that they believe in the gods; rather, they answer, 'I serve the lwas,' or 'I obey the Mysteries of the world' (1972, 73-74).The significance of their statements lies in their outlook on the nature of belief in general, for they do not think of religion in abstract terms, but in practical ones. [...] Vodouisants cannot afford the self-surrender of mysticism, nor can they permit themselves the luxury of an idealism that seeks to mask the miseries and frustrations of their existence. Their needs are too immediate for that. Their religion must satisfy actual needs rather than merely invite them to high-flown intellectual exercises of theology. Deren observes that they have neither the time, the energy, or the means for inconsequential activity. She notes that in Haiti, religion 'must do more than give moral sustenance; it must do more than rationalize [the Vodouisant's] instinct for survival when survival is no longer a reasonable activity. It must do more than provide a reason for living; it must provide the means of living. It must serve the organism as well as the psyche. It must serve as a practical methodology, not an individual hope. In consequences, the Haitian thinks of his religion in working terms.'

(Desmangles, pg. 4-5)

We were forever getting hung up on the hook of, "you don't BELIEVE this nonsense, do you?" and thus wasting time trying to figure out our beliefs when they were irrelevant. We were putting the cart before the horse. It is not our intellectual systems of thought that create our religious experiences; it is through living, working through, and understanding the experiences that we build appropriate actions surrounding them. The actions come first; the abstractions, the boxes humans make to put stuff in, come later.

So much for origins! Every time we ask, the answer is "yes and." "Yes, you're a soulbonder, AND you've got the DID/DDNOS/OSDD depending who's looking at you, AND you're gonna have to deal with that religion shit, which will conveniently fail to mesh with others' so you'll just have to make it up as you go along... good luck, kid!"

Comments

Re: Yes ...

[talewisefellowship]

Out of curiosity are you talking about minkisi bundles? my favorite archaeology professor who is now retired specialises in that stuff. He talked a lot about how enslaved people kept practicing their african spiritual traditions hidden in plain sight. A minkisi bundle contained 'flash' which was white or shiny material (glass, crystal, white ceramics, etc) that represented water and called the spirit, a piece of iron or steel, and something belonging to the target person to instruct the spirit what to do. They could be used to curse people or to protect them depending on the intent of the person who put them there.

Naming my professor comes at the risk of doxing the university I go to, but this article is about what I'm talking about:

Matthews, Christopher N. (2011) "The Archaeology of Race and African American Resistance," African Diaspora Archaeology
Newsletter: Vol. 4 : Iss. 1 , Article 16.
Available at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/adan/vol4/iss1/16

-- Janusz

Re: Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Similar concept but different vessel, variously called hex jars, curse jars, or witch jars. A glass jar or sometimes a ceramic jug, filled with sharp things (broken glass, bent nails, etc.), herbs or charms, and then a noxious liquid such as urine, vinegar, or blood. Very effective for causing insomnia, nightmares, impotence, and other mayhem in a bedroom (usually buried under the floorboards). They can also be buried under the front step or porch to curse the house in general with bad luck.

I mean really, if I was going to dig up a plantation, I'd want a houngan there for safety. You know, like a bomb squad.

Re: Yes ...

[talewisefellowship]

it does sound similar but different, very interesting stuff

my prof always asked permission from the ancestors and poured a libation for them before doing excavations, which i think is a really good thing to do. more archaeologists should do that imo

--janusz

Re: Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> it does sound similar but different, very interesting stuff <<

There are a lot of variations on how to make a little bundle of magic, overlapping among different traditions. Voudoun is one that uses a lot of curses for survival, and they're often combinations of nasty things in a container.

>>my prof always asked permission from the ancestors and poured a libation for them before doing excavations, which i think is a really good thing to do. more archaeologists should do that imo<<

Very sensible.