Voodoo in Haiti

  Like loa, the marassa belong to different nanchon (nations). Hence there are ‘Guinin’ marassa—and also Dahomey, Nago, Ibo, Congo and Anmine marassa etc. Those born in Haiti are called ‘Creole marassa’. Among the different categories of marassa some enjoy a special prestige by virtue of their close association with the petro spirits who confer on them a certain power for ill: these are the marassa-bois. Their cult differs from that of other marassa: food set aside for them is taken into the woods and placed in the branches of a tree. To this already extended list we must add, according to Odette Mennesson-Rigaud, the White marassa and the marassa giro who are dead twins, unbaptized.

  Possessions attributed to marassa are rare. Those whom they do seize become like little children, ‘tyrannical and capricious’. They roll on the ground, get up, walk uncertainly and ask for food. A manuscript note which M. Milo Marcelin was kind enough to give me describes a mambo possessed by the marassa:

  ‘She had gone back to being a child. She asked for sweets in childish tones and for a bit of stuff to make a dress for her doll. To tease her, people refused what she asked; so she began to cry. She was comforted and offered a large basin full of sugar: “There—help yourself. You can eat as much as you like.” She put her head on one side and rocking gently from side to side said, “No. If I eat any I’ll be smacked.” She was reassured; and ran to the basin, jumping with joy, and took a little cake. Someone interrupted her sharply: “Who said you could take the cake?” Terrified she put it back and falling to her knees implored: “Don’t beat me. It’s not my fault. I was told I could take as much as I like. Please don’t beat me.” Tears ran down the cheek of the possessed. Once again she was comforted and invited to stuff herself with sweets. Then she asked for a lesson book to show how advanced she was, and she began to read—humming and hawing like a very young scholar.’

  The child who follows twins immediately in order of birth (the dosu if it is a boy, dosa if it is a girl) unites in its person the power of both twins and therefore can dispose of greater powers than they. ‘The dosu is stronger than the marassa and stronger than the loa.’ Hence he is treated with the greatest respect and in the event of offerings being made, he has precedence over the twins. On the other hand, the child born before twins—the chuket or dosu avant—has no great standing, though it is said of him that he ‘dragged the twins after him’.

  The presence of twins in a family involves its members in constant attentions and a thousand precautions. It takes very little to make a twin turn against his parents and, as is his wont, ‘grip’ them in the stomach—that is to say inflict serious trouble upon their intestines. It is true that twins are prepared to be punished for some fault which they have really committed, but they take cruel revenge if they think they have been unjustly treated.

  The mambo Florémize, one of my informants, fell foul of her daughter Ti-so (little-sister) aged twelve, who was both marassa and dosa and by virtue of this combination possessed quite illness is the result of what the dosa holds against you. Tomorrow morning ask Ti-so to make you an infusion and promise her a pretty dress and a cake. You’ll get better straight away.’ Florémize told her dream to her husband who called Ti-so and said: ‘My child, is it you who are doing this to your mother?’ Florémize chimed in, imploring: ‘Ti-so, fetch me an infusion. Let me off, Ti-so. I’ll go to Léogane and bring you back a lovely dress.’ The father began to sob: ‘Ti-so, you can’t “hold” your mother, it’s she who gave you life. Let her go for my sake, I beg you, Ti-so.’ The child smiled and said: ‘I’m going to prepare an infusion. If mother Mimize doesn’t get up when she has drunk it then there’s nothing that can make her get up.’ She went off and did in fact boil some leaves and draw off a tisane which she gave her mother to drink. During the afternoon Florémize felt better but next day she was not absolutely herself. Ti-so said to her: ‘What’s the matter? It’s time mother Mimize was able to give us something to eat.’ The following day Florémize was quite better and resumed her household duties.

  A worker employed at Marbial told us that he and his twin sister almost killed their mother for refusing them a dish of crabs and gomboes which their father, out of concern for their health, had advised her not to give them. The boy placed a stick in the moist earth beside a tree and each day he went and pushed it in a little further. His mother fell dangerously ill and would have died if the twins, as the result of family entreaties, had not acknowledged the wrong they were doing. They were offered a feast and a pig was killed. The two children did themselves proud—and then consented to break the spell.

  On another occasion our informant made use of the same magical method, this time without his sister, against a woman who had jilted him. He only alleviated the sufferings of his victim when she offered him a kid, some syrup and bread.

  More energetic action is taken against marassa who merely make their parents ill out of jealousy. Two twins who had cast a spell on their mother for having given a coconut to the dosu and none to them, were beaten with a strap until their bodies were ‘pink and blue’. It was only then they owned up to their wicked intention and agreed to remove the charm.

  It is normal for twins to hate each other: ‘Marassa yo raisab’ (twins don’t get on) is a proverbial saying. At Marbial I knew a boy Andreno and a little girl Andreni, who were twins in a large and poor family. Each of them grew with difficulty for want of adequate food; but the little girl was bigger and stronger than her brother. The parents said she was ‘eating’ her brother and explained that the two children had dedicated themselves to mutual hatred before they even saw the light of day. The moment she was born Andreni had tried to strangle Andreno by looping the umbilical cord round his neck—to such good effect that as he came into the world Andreno found himself ‘hanged like a young goat’. Usually when twins are of different sex it is the boy who prospers, at the expense of the girl.

  Twins can hardly be too carefully supervised if they are to be prevented from harming each other. As soon as one of them shows signs of failing, the other is implored to give up his criminal intention. At meals, when they are not looking, parents seize the opportunity of switching round their plates so that each eats the food of the other—which has the effect of restoring a good relationship. They also get given a dose which has the power of changing the hatred they feel for each other into affection. Such is the power of twins that no one will take any steps against one twin who causes the death of the other; indeed, people will even take care not to show him the slightest resentment.

  Twins must be treated exactly alike if jealousy is to be avoided. Their clothes must be identical, their share of food equal and any praise exactly divided between them. As to twin sisters, they must be married as far as possible at the same time. If a woman with a twin brother marries, she and her husband will load him with presents to obliterate any possible resentment he may secretly feel. Even death does not break the ties which link twins together. The survivor puts to one side, for the deceased, a symbolic portion of whatever he eats or receives by way of presents. Herskovits{66} traced these practices to that belief, so widespread in West Africa, which attributes but one, shared soul to twins.

  The power of marassa is not entirely negative. Certainly their ill-will is all the more to be dreaded for being sometimes involuntary. But provided they are happy and satisfied, they turn the strength which is in them to good account. Their intervention is often sought on behalf of the sick; in serious cases recourse may be had to ancestral marassa who, either by dream or by medium, will prescribe appropriate remedies.

  Once a year, on the day of Kings, on the Saturday before Easter or on Christmas Day, whoever is connected with marassa, living or dead, must offer them under pain of ‘chastisement’ a manger-marassa. This sacrifice is the usual kind so we will only touch on its main peculiarities. When a humfo of some importance pays homage to all the twins worshipped in it, there may well be as many as fifty marassa dishes, grouped by nanchon, beneath the peristyle. Eatables and the blood
of the sacrificial victims are laid out. A usual sacrifice for the marassa is a brown-skinned kid and a speckled hen. The task of distributing offerings is entrusted to a mambo and must be done with great fairness so there may be no jealousy. Taboos peculiar to each category of twins are scrupulously observed. These are of many kinds: some will not eat such-and-such a dish, others require their food to be put on a banana leaf, others on a mat. They cannot stand the sight of knives, forks or spoons. Any mistake runs the risk of offending them and in their childish susceptibility they take cruel and sometimes quite disproportionate vengeance. Vegetables are forbidden them, it seems, in case they ‘dissipate their powers’. Food offerings are buried in three holes dug near the sanctuary or family house, if that is where the fête has been celebrated.

  The meal of twins ends with the same rite which sometimes terminates fetes for the dead. The remnants of the offerings are mixed in a huge calabash or wooden basin. With this on her head a hunsi does the round of the peristyle three times, then, having shown it three times to the children present and asked if they are pleased with it, she abandons it to their greed. The children hurl themselves on it like so many seagulls and fight for the contents. They are warned however not to break any bones with their teeth.

  If the meal prepared is for living twins, then naturally the latter are the first to eat and it is only when they are satisfied that they offer the remainder to the guests; they are saluted and people continually inquire if they have had enough. This concern for the feeling of twins is apparent in a song which is sung on such occasions:

  Marassa m’apé mâde m.’apé made

  Sa u wé la si u kôta

  Agoé

  Twins, I ask you

  Look around and say: are you satisfied

  Agoé.

  Among the songs you hear in the course of this ceremony there is one which seems to reach from across the centuries like an echo of the slave lamenting his African homeland.

  Marassa élo, m’pa gêñê mâmâ isit pu palé pu mwê

  Marassa élo

  Mwé kité mâmâ mwé lâ péi Géléfré

  Marassa élo

  Mwé kitê fâmi lâ péi Géléfré

  M’pa gêñê fâmi pu palé pu mwé

  Marassa élo

  Mwé pa gêñê parâ sak palé pu mwé

  Marassa élo

  Marassa élo, I have no mother here who can peak for me

  Marassa élo

  I have left my mother in Africa

  Marassa élo

  I have left my family in Africa

  I have no family to speak for me

  I have no relations to speak for me

  Marassa élo.

  VIII.—ANIMIST BELIEFS

  A number of rather vague animist beliefs are to be found floating, so to speak, in the margin of Voodoo. They seem adapted to small, very primitive tribes and do not fit into the main pattern of the Voodoo religious system. In fact they are of minor importance and give rise only to very rough and elementary rituals. The idea of a ‘soul’ existing in any object that moves or has life, seems an over-simple and too convenient explanation of the interplay of supernatural forces.

  However, care must be taken not to confuse the word nanm with âme. The meaning which the former word has taken in Creole is much vaguer than that of the latter; nanm corresponds with the idea of ‘spiritual essence’ or ‘power’, or simply of ‘what is sacred’. Any object that has been ritualistically consecrated possesses a nanm.

  A soul is attributed to the sun, to the earth and to plants because they all influence man and nature. It is the nanm in foodstuffs which makes children grow, and nanm, too, which gives plants their medicinal powers. The nanm of plants is understood in a more personal sense than the nanm of other things. When the herb-doctors go to gather them, they choose a time when they think of them as being overwhelmed with sleep, and then go up to them gently so as not to aggravate the nanm. As they pull them up they murmur ‘Get up, get up, go and cure someone who is sick. I know you’re asleep but I need you.’ They are careful to put a few pennies beside the main stem—to pay the soul for the effort which will be required of it. In placing this pittance the picker must say: ‘I take you so you may cure so-and-so. Go and cure him immediately, for you have been paid.’ When a plant dies, its soul leaves it in search of residence in something else that grows.

  A woodcutter about to chop down a tree will give the trunk a few taps with the reverse of his axe, so as to warn the resident soul and give it time to get out. To be on the safe side he will even recite a prayer and invoke the Holy Ghost.

  The souls of the big mapous (Ceiba pentendra L.) wander along roads at night, and their monstrous forms strike terror into the hearts of travellers. On certain nights of the year, the souls of the ‘wicked plants’ gather at the foot of a giant tree and hold a sort of sabbath there and discuss the crimes which they propose to commit.

  In addition to the ‘great soul of the earth’ every field has its own spirit which assures it fertility, through action on all that grows there. The soul of the earth is not unmaterial. A worker in the fields, under the midday sun, can feel its presence in the form of a breeze stroking his face, and can see its shadow outlined behind it. Anyone who owns a piece of land expects its soul to increase the crop; expects also, and above all, that it should know how to resist anyone who wants to acquire it. In fact there are magic procedures which enable the envious to steal the soul of a person’s garden, either for their own use or simply to cause the ruin of someone they hate. People protect themselves against these underhand dealings by digging four empty dibble-holes at each corner of a field when sowing is finished: thus any soul upon whom pressure is brought to bear, has a ready excuse, for, says he to his would-be seducers, ‘How could I follow you? You can see perfectly well that sowing is not over: some dibble-holes are still empty.’ Sometimes small fish are buried in a field. To the thief who tantalizes the soul with the hope of a good meal, it replies: ‘I have already eaten, my father has come.’

  It is the soul of rain which strengthens the soul of the soil; and this, in turn, works upon the soul of the crops. Rivers, lagoons and springs all have souls which seem to be clearly anthropomorphic: these are ‘the mistresses of the water’ who are represented as beautiful, clear-skinned women with long hair.

  The nanm of a star can be so worked upon as to make it go into a plate, but it must be replaced in the sky or your life may be forfeit. This sort of activity is ‘big magic’ and lies within the scope of only a few hungan.

  The auspicious and inauspicious nature of certain days and months was explained to me as the manifestation of the soul, good or bad, inherent in the nature of any division of time. There would seem to be a difference in sex in souls connected with days: the auspicious days (Monday, Tuesday and Thursday) being feminine, the inauspicious (Wednesday, Friday, Saturday) masculine. Sunday, devoted to rest, is the only day without a soul. Friday is the day chosen by sorcerers to bring their evil designs to fruition and the day preferred by evil spirits for their sabbath.

  January, March, May, July, August and October each have a ‘good soul’, which is not the case with the other months. December is regarded as particularly dangerous because the ‘evil soul’ associated with it has power of rendering amulets less efficacious. Many sorcerers pick on this period for their spells, knowing these will be more effective through having less resistance to contend with. Hence December is looked upon as the month with the highest rate of deaths due to magic causes.

  From the examples cited it can be seen that the soul may either be conceived of as a spirit scarcely different in kind from a loa, or as an impersonal power, an active essence which belongs to the domain of magic. What the peasants understand by nanm is something very vague and ill-defined. We are entitled to wonder whether the word may not have been adopted by my informants as a subterfuge which always enabled them to give an answer to my questions about the causes of natural phenomena. I do not think so. Once the an
imist explanation is admitted in certain cases, it subsequently suggests itself whenever a need is felt to understand the properties, not only of natural objects, but also of abstract concepts such as the division of time.

  No connection is made between the soul of things and the spiritual essence which every human being carries within himself. The latter is conceived of in the form of two spirits usually designated under the name of Big Good Angel (gros-bon-ange)—and Little Good Angel (ti-bon-ange). They are visible in the shadow cast by the body which in certain lights is edged with a lighter margin. A guardian rôle is attributed by some to ‘ti-bon-ange’, by others to ‘gros-bon-ange’. The latter is sometimes identified with the main dark shadow, sometimes with the paler marginal shadow which surrounds it. This double shadow is not to be confused with an ordinary shadow which is called ‘corpse shadow’. A person’s general condition reflects that of his ti-bon-ange. Even the sleepiness which comes over you on a hot after-noon reveals that your ti-bon-ange is in need of a siesta. Serious illnesses only take hold when your ‘protector’ has been overwhelmed by spirits stronger than himself or when, through weariness or any other reason, he finds himself unable to cope with an evil spell.

  He is not allowed to lie. It is even very unwise to doubt his word. If having said the same thing three times he then says solemnly: ‘Verily three times I’ve said this is true,’ anyone who still remains incredulous can count on not having very long to live. Knowing the sincerity of ti-bon-ange some hungan invoke him just to find out whether the person he is protecting is telling the truth, or not. A woman who refused to give her lover any money, under the pretext that she had none, was obliged to admit that she had lied when a hungan summoned her ti-bon-ange. The latter announced straight-away that she was hiding the true state of her finances.