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

[feotakahari]

I don’t get the distinction between intellectual exercise and usefulness. My impression is that for a lot of people, the intellectual exercise IS what’s useful.

[talewisefellowship]

a friend of mine did a presentation on fairy belief in ireland just this week and said something that makes me think of this. Apparently when asked if they believe in fairies, irish people often answer that they don't, but then they say that their mother or neighbor or someone had an encounter with the fairies and that this is an honest person who would never tell a lie.

I'm not sure that it's the same thing but it makes me think of that.

EDIT: Also because fairies inhabit ancient monuments such as fort remains, if there's a plan to destroy a monument for construction then the entire community rallies to stop it because it would upset the fairies and bad things would happen, and at least in the case that my friend described are successful. So even though irish people tend to be ambivalent about whether or not they believe in the fairies, either way there's a deeply felt emotional sense that they share the world with them.

--Janusz

[starfallhaven]

Reminds me of a common sentiment I see in a lot of pagan communities. "The gods can fuck your shit up or knock on your door whether you believe in them or not". I don't know if even believe in the gods I worship, so much as I know what Helps, ritual-wise, and that there's something funky that happens when I do certain shit or pray to certain gods. Maybe it's all bullshit! Who knows! If so it's effective bullshit!

[monsterqueers]

"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."

That is exactly it!!

Its also how we conceptualize our own spirituality. We less 'believe' and more 'experience' and just have to live with that.

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>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.<<

It's heavy reading. I recommend Jambalaya by Luisah Teish for the family-feel of Voudoun.

>>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. <<

Well yeah. It's what was left after the Middle Passage stripped off everything that didn't work. This is "how to survive when the world is stacked against you" shit. It keeps people alive.

Also, there have been some hilarious incidents -- I saw one on a documentary once -- of archaeologists excavating former plantations. They keep finding these jars of junk buried under the master's old bedroom. White people be like, "What is this?"

Every black person instantly took a big step back. They already knew a hex when they saw it.

Because hey, if a man likes to beat and rape you, he deserves insomnia, nightmares, and whatever else someone decided to put in a hex jar.


>>The actions come first; the abstractions, the boxes humans make to put stuff in, come later.<<

Couple key things make African religions different than European ones:

1) They're family. It's as messy and loyal as any family. It's not like this system where the god is something totally different and above it all.

2) It's a big messy family because that's how it grows. You get good enough at something in this life, you get invited to do it in the next, and that's why there are dozens of loas in each group. The Ghedes are all folks who all worked with sex, death, and healing. And so on for the others.