RedHanded - ShortHand: Haitian Vodou

Episode Date: May 1, 2026

Zombies, incantations and dolls full of pins… the version of voodoo that most of us get has been suffused with decades of Hollywood magic, and a dusting of light xenophobia.But the reality of Haitian vodou is much more complex – and way more fascinating. So, how did slaves reconcile their own folklore and religions, with the Catholicism that colonisers were forcing down their throats? Who are the main lwa – or spirits – of vodou? And how can an offering of black coffee, rum and cigars help you to commune with the dead?Find out in this week’s ShortHand!--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

Hello. Hello. I'm Suruti. Do we say this? I don't know. And woof. I'm Mabel. We've got a very small dog in the studio with us. We do indeed. But she's asleep. She's very quiet, very well behaved. I mean, don't dig it. But I'm enjoying it. If my words do that, I am going to feel as powerful as the people we talk about in this particular episode. Queen of the Segway strikes again.

We do also have the soundboard in the studio today. So there you go. Right. Today, we are going to do an episode of shorthand that I'm very, very excited about. So as the saying goes, Haiti is 70% Catholic, 30% Protestant and 100% voodoo. I love that saying. I actually forgot to put it in the Papadok episode, so I had to start it here with that. But what is Haitian voodoo? Where did it originate?

And what do practitioners of this hugely misunderstood religion really believe? Because, of course, you lovely people don't need me to tell you. The voodoo is massively confusing in terms of how it's portrayed. Firstly, let's start with the word voodoo itself. How it's spelt depends on whether you're referring to Haitian voodoo, so that's V-O-D-O-U or Louisiana voodoo, which is the typical V-O-O-D-O-O that you're maybe more familiar with. But they are two different religions.

We've just kind of smashed random bits of these belief systems together, sensationalising and exploiting them for cheap horror movies, Halloween specials, and novelty pin your enemy at si voodoo dolls. What does you're the one say? It's like severe genital discomfort or something. I do have one that I got as part of a Secret Santa. And it is very funny. It's just like a white doll that you can,

it has like a plastic thing where you can like put someone's face into it, like a picture of their face. And it's covered in all these little pins and it just says like severe genital discomfort. and it's all like quite mild things. And it's like on the face, it's like pimple. It's just, it's great. But yes, that's wrong and not at all connected with the actual religion of voodoo, especially not Haitian voodoo.

So what do we really need to know about Haitian voodoo? Because that's what we're going to focus on today. We're not going to go near Louisiana voodoo. That's another story for another day. But let's get on with it because this is the short hand. Haitian voodoo is a creole. version of an ancient West African religion Vodun. And so, how Haitian Voodoo came to be is a fascinating story.

A story which to really understand, we have to start with the root religion itself, Vodun. The religion Vodun originated in the kingdom of Dahomey, which is modern day Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Ghana. This religion was practiced widely by the Aja, Awe and Fon people of this area for generations. I wonder if old Dallion Adopho is a aduna. Very, very possibly. Very possibly.

To find out who that is, go and listen to Filthy Ritual. We're available now on Global Player. So then, in the mid-17th century, us bloody Europeans travelled to Africa, attracted by the gold, the ivory, and the abundance of other natural resources that are all in your iPhones. And as demand for cheap labour increased rapidly

across various European empires and particularly in the US, the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade began. People from West Africa were abducted and transported as commodities to places like the Caribbean and the plantations of the US. And these enslaved Africans took with them, their belief systems, their folklore and their traditions to the new world. Once there, slaves were often forced to convert to Christianity by their captors.

So what happened was traditional African animistic religious, religions became fused and intertwined with Catholicism and also with indigenous Caribbean beliefs, forming these new sort of hybridized religions, of which Haitian voodoo is one, as is Louisiana voodoo, but again, we're not going near that today. So obviously we should make it clear that generalizing the religions brought to the new world by enslaved people is just that, a generalization. African religions, in air quotes, is a hugely vague term. and we understand why if you take that without a pinch of salt,

it suggests that all African cultures and religions are the same, which of course is not true. Africa is an enormous continent, and each of its countries has a very distinct set of cultures, languages, beliefs and traditions. But what we can say is that Haitian Vodou evolved very specifically in Haiti and is therefore very tied to the Haitian people and the country of Haiti itself.

You're not really going to find it anywhere else. what happens is like, yeah, the West African enslaved people are taken to Haiti, forcibly, and they bring with them voodoon because it was just the group of people that happened to be taken to this particular part of the island of Hispaniola. And what happened is then Haitian slaves were taken to Louisiana along with other West African slaves. So Haitian voodoo and Louisiana Voodoo aren't totally different, but they evolved in two separate places from what is probably a very similar or the same root religion. So what is Vodou?

Haitian Voodoo. It's essentially a monotheistic religion, which recognises a single and supreme spiritual entity or God, known in Haiti as Grand Mets or Bonjour. And Bonjour actually comes from the French, bonjour which means good god. So this created deity in Voodoo is somewhat aloof, I would say. it doesn't get involved with this world or communicate directly with humans.

But there is, we could say, a second tier, made up of powerful spirits and demigods, known as Luar. These Luar serve as intermediaries between man and Bonjour, whose existence is far beyond human comprehension, which is why we cannot communicate with Bonjour. So literally exactly like the disciples and the saints? Yes. Different luar have different roles and powers

and are prayed to for different things just like you pray to St Anthony if you lose your car keys we'll get into the examples of the lua in a moment but it's a good point here to pause and come back to the colonial roots of Haitian Vadoon when the enslaved people brought from West Africa were forcibly converted to Christianity they could see a connection between Vodun

and other African religions and Catholicism mainly the similarity is very obvious there is the one creator god but of course there's also the overlap between the lua and catholic saints and the enslaved people could see the connection and even started to link certain saints with specific lua which i think is so intrinsically human like we all want the same stuff you know yeah it literally was like okay this saint is related to this and is patron saint of x y z that kind of sounds like this particular luat oh maybe they're the same person and maybe they're the same spirit, same entity. These people are just using a different name for it. So it didn't feel that alien to them. I'm not saying it was a comfortable transition, but they could start to see connections. And that made the transition into Christianity

quite a bit easier for the enslaved people. They could still hold on to their traditional beliefs and practices whilst amalgamating in these Christian ideologies as well to keep their slave traders happy. Yeah, and some of them were like genuinely converted to Christianity. And a lot of them said, for us it was like, I could just pretend in my head that I was talking to this particular loire. So when I was forced to pray in a Catholic church or whatever, it felt like it was okay.

Like, kind of like I have my fingers crossed behind my pack. Like I could tell myself I knew who I was really speaking to. So in countries like Haiti, even the all-powerful Vatican had to make concessions. This is a story I had to leave out of our main feed episode on Papadoc. really glad I could include it here because this just shows you how far that man was willing to go and also the importance of voodoo in Haitian society and brings you back to that statement we started with. You might be 70% Catholic, 30% Protestant, but it is 100% voodoo because in 1959, which is when Papadoc Francois de Valle was ruling Haiti, the Tonton Makuts, who were his

terrifying secret police, basically stormed Porto-Prince Cathedral during Sunday, mass attacking both the priests and the worshippers. It was a really, really shocking thing that happened. Yes, absolutely. It was an enormous deal when this happened. And following this incident, Papadoc also kicked out of the country of Haiti all of the foreign priests who were stationed there. These priests were typically from France and from Canada, and he was just like, get the fuck out, kick them all out. And so, of course, the Pope kicked back by excommunicating Devalier from the Vatican. Not that Devalier cared too much because soon he handed power of these churches to voodoo priests to do with as they pleased. Because if you listen to this week's episode, you'll see Devalier doesn't really have too much of an ideology.

He just knows he needs to make voodoo the state religion because that's the one that he's using to control people. He can't use Christianity because there's a guy bigger than him, the Pope. He has to make himself the big boss, and Voodoo is the only way to do that. He can't do any of that while using a coloniser's religion. Precisely. So, yeah, he hands over the churches to his voodoo priests. And as with most religions, your headcount and the geographic spread that you cover across the earth matters quite a lot to the Catholics. So the Pope, keen not to lose Haiti from the Catholic ranks, said actually it was fine.

and the Haitian government could appoint its own bishops from then on. And while the Roman Catholic Church may not have liked what it saw in Haiti, which it definitely would have seen at the time at least as like a form of paganistic corruption of its own religion, because let's be real, if you're letting voodoo priests take over mass in Catholic church or even appointing your own, and we know Francois de Valleux wants it to be a more voodoo-led country, it is very paganistic, which flies directly in the face of what the Pope would want to be happening. And it probably would have been even more uncomfortable for them

to see crucifixes, rosaries, and like statues of the Virgin Mary sitting on voodoo shrines. But that is how it worked. That is how the two came together. And also, didn't matter if the Pope had an issue with it, because the Haitians didn't have an issue with it at all. Because for them, while many of them remained Catholic, they still believed in voodoo.

And this amalgamation of the two was completely fine and completely natural. And it's a reality that still exists in Haiti today. So let's come back to the misconceptions of Vodoo in the West, especially. We've been Hollywood brainwashed into believing that Vodoo is a dark religion filled with demon summoning and sacrifices. And that just isn't true. Vadoo is a religion of reciprocity.

Crucially, it's not good or bad. It's neutral. If you wish to do evil using Vodoo, you can. If you wish to do good using Vodoo, you can. Now, we don't really have the time to get into the extreme specific of this incredibly complex belief system, but essentially there are three major families of the Luar. The Gedé, the Petro and the Rada.

Gede Luar are associated with the dead and, sexy time. Petroluar are the evil luar and Radha luar are the good luar. So you pray to and make offerings for the luar depending on your situation, but crucially it's about giving to a luar and creating a personal relationship with them. And this plays a major role in the lives of voodoo devotees. Each loire has a different personality and different expectations.

And it's only once those demands have been met that the loire will provide blessings, protection and favours for the individual. And the way that that's done is by making offerings at an altar created specifically for a particular luat. These offerings can be in the form of food, drink, or yes, animal sacrifice. And it's important to note, though, on the kind of sacrificial front. I think often in the West we see that as like, oh my God, like this is so barbaric and crazy.

But I watched an interview with an expert in Haitian Voodoo, and I'll link that interview in the show notes because I think it is really worth watching. And she says clearly that the sacrifices are not gratuitous. The animal is killed as an offering to the Loire, yes. But its body is then eaten by the village. Right. So it's not a matter of bloodlust. It's a practical belief that still feeds the people,

just like the death of any animal would. And basically the way they kill it, whether you feel like that's okay or not, it's kind of similar to how like halal meat is butchered. So they're saying, what's the difference? We just happen to do it as part of a religious ceremony rather than in an abattoir, but the animal is eaten. Now, at these offering ceremonies,

is fidu practitioners participate in dancing, chanting and sometimes possession. There's no denying it, possession is a very important part of voodoo worship. But it's also probably the part of Haitian voodoo which is the most misunderstood. Firstly, possession by a luat is a desirable thing. Like speaking in tongues, it's the same thing. The act of possession unites the luar and the devotee and the community at large. The person being possessed, or should we say mounted, because in Haitian voodoo, the person being possessed is referred to as the chwal or horse.

And the act of possession itself is called mounting because the lua rides that person like a cavalier. And it's in that moment of mounting that humans transcend their materiality and become spirits. And it is during this time that the lua renews its figure by dancing and feasting in the human realm with an earthly body. And the community benefits because it's only when the lua are possessing humans that Luar can speak and deliver divine answers directly to those who have questions.

So it's kind of like exactly what you said. It's only during the act of possession or mounting that everybody benefits. Like the person being mounted transcends into a spiritual realm for the time that they are being possessed. The Loire gets to get a little kickstart to their battery by being here on earth and getting to eat and do that kind of like, I guess, what would you say, indulge in the earthly pleasures. and then the community, this is the only time they can question the loire. This is the only time they can speak to them. So it is that kind of bringing together of the community, the individual and the loire, and everybody is benefiting, which is why, like you said,

Vodoo is a religion of reciprocity. Everybody gives and everybody gets. So now that we have a very basic understanding of what we're talking about in terms of Haitian Vodou, let's now look at some of the most important Lua. There are way, way, way, way, way too many to do a huge deep dive on this. Honestly, I was reading about it yesterday and it just goes on and on and on. There is a luar for everything.

But we have definitely got time to give you a good old-fashioned red-handed rundown of the heavy hitters. And I thought it would only be right to start with the main man from our main episode that's out this week, Baron Samadie. You're going to have to listen to that episode to get a full understanding of what we're talking about, but basically, yes. Devalier, the topic of this week's main feed, who kicked out all the Catholic foreign priests from Haiti, and much else besides, as you will discover, during his time is Haiti's most brutal dictator. Duvalier claimed to be the incarnation of Baron Samadhi, the great Luar. So who is this Baron Samadhi character? He's the head of the Gede family of the Luar, making him the master of death. He's often represented as a tall figure wearing a black top hat

and long coat tails with a face painted like a skull. And I don't know what the connection is, but Samaddy means Saturday in French. So he's basically Lord Saturday. Interesting. I don't know. I couldn't find what the connection was there, but yeah. Together with his wife, Mammon Brigitte, another Luar,

Baron Samadie has the power to decide who should die and who can go on living. He ensures that the veil between the living and the dead is never disrupted, and so someone who wants to connect with the dead or get rid of some nasty ghosts, must evoke the help of the Baron. But he can also be called on for help conceiving, indicating the connection between sex, death and life.

His preferred offerings to those who want his blessings include black coffee, rum, and cigars. Yeah, he's pretty fun dude, actually. And I think he's not like Hades. People compare him to Hades quite a lot, like the Greek god of the underworld. Baron Samadhi is not a god. He is a Lua, which is a Lua, which he is. is a different thing. It's a spirit. It is more akin to a saint. And when you read more about him, you know, he is kind of considered to be the Haitian grim reaper, which obviously conjures up

lots of scary images. And he's also the bad guy in the Disney's Princess Frog. Frog Princess, whatever that movie is called. He's the bad guy in that. But actually what's important. He's got the best song, though. He does. But yeah, he's not actually this evil person. He is again, like the Lord of Death, which is neutral. It comes for a real. everybody at some point. And actually one of the key things they always say about Baron Samadhi is that he has a real soft spot for children and he doesn't like taking them until they've had a full life. So next up, we've got Papa Legba. Who is to life what Baron Samadhi is to death? Legba is known as the master communicator because he can apparently speak all human languages.

And he is the most powerful of all of the voodoo loire. He is the top dog. Now Papa Legba is commonly depicted as an old, poor man dressed in rags, smoking a pipe, typically accompanied by a dog and leaning on a walking cane. And it said that he walks with a limp, and I love this. It said that he walks with a limp because he walks in two worlds at one. Wow. The world of the living and the world of the spirits. And the cane that he carries is no ordinary cane.

It's actually the gateway between the human world and the heavens. And then we have my personal fave, whose symbol I almost got tattooed on my feet, Azuli, who is the luar of beauty and love. So if you want someone to fall in love with you, you go to her. She represents the cosmic womb in which divinity and humanity are conceived. She's the mother of the world, and as such, she has tremendous power, making her as feared as much as she is loved. Azuli has several different roles, as well as being the goddess of love,

help, goodwill, health, beauty and fortune. She's also the goddess of jealousy and vengeance. Very much two sides of the same coin. Yes, very much so. She is like the embodiment in many ways of the positives of femininity and then the perceived like toxic femininity ideals. Like that is what she is. Like she's beautiful. She's kind, compassionate. She's love, all of this, but she's also got a wrathful side to her. Yeah, she's also a bunny boy. And I know we're calling her the goddess of these things. That's how it described in some of these documents and papers that I read. Again, they're not gods, but it's weird to keep calling her like the spirit of these things.

But it's just to get you to understand, yeah. So women might go to Azuli for all matters concerning motherhood, conception, etc. And she is shown in many different forms, from a black Madonna to a beautiful, wealthy woman. Next up, we've got Dambala. And Dambala is one of the most important and also one of the most popular, Lua. He's actually the spirit who helped the great bon dieu make the cosmos itself. And he's also one of Azuli's lovers and is depicted as a giant serpent, his coils having shaped the heavens and the earth.

But don't let that snakey exterior for you, because Dambala is considered to be a benevolent and fatherly figure. He doesn't talk much, but he is ever present as a quiet paternal energy. Those wishing to a boat Dambala should know that he only likes white foods, particularly eggs. So we'd get on fine at a Brits Abroad All Inclusive. And finally, let's end with Aizan. She's the only one who is said to select and instruct novice Hunans,

which is a word for voodoo priest. Aizan is often represented as an old woman because she is one of the oldest Luar. She's called upon by devotees to exercise malevolent spirits from her followers. Aizan is very maternal in her presentation. She is a good and loving Luar, who, if you treat right, will take great care of you. But she also punishes those who take advantage of their power. If you want to summon her, you'll need to sacrifice a black and white goat or a russet oxen.

Because gingerballs are her faith. So there you go, guys. you know, again, there are so many luau that we could talk about, but we just picked some of the ones who were, you know, the top tier, the top tier of the second tier. Again, we know this is a massive generalization. It's as much as we can talk about in 20 minutes. But it is honestly so, so fascinating how this evolved. Haitian Vodoo, because it comes from West African Vodun, is basically the only African animistic religion to survive in the new world. and it survived because it evolved and kind of hid and amalgamated into Catholicism. And that's what allowed it to survive, which is completely fascinating. So yeah, go watch the interview that I will definitely remember to link in the show notes

and go read everything there is about it because it's really fascinating and definitely, definitely listen to our main feed episode on Papadoc. And we will see you next time. Goodbye. Bye.