Misconceptions and Misrepresentations

From its earliest presence in the Caribbean, Vodoun has been misunderstood by almost everyone encountering it. Stemming from the very Christian viewpoint of the European colonial powers, furthered by purposeful slander, and promoted by sensationalist media, the modern concept of Voodoo bears only a slight resemblance to the actual religion of Vodoun.

In modern Western society, when most people hear “Voodoo” they think of voodoo dolls, hexes, potions, and zombies, as well as something dark and bloody. In short, what they think of is the black magic that is rejected by the practitioners of Vodoun itself. This small and unrepresentative practice, not even a true part of Vodoun, is a major source of the modern misconceptions and media sensationalism that surrounds the religion. Why has this image of Vodoun been propagated?

Modern society bears the unconscious biases of its past incarnations. In contrast with the austere Christian spirituality with which the European colonial powers were familiar, the intimate nature of Vodoun worship and possession seemed in utter contradiction with their own religious teachings. Practitioners feeding the loa, who required physical sustenance to survive, with products of their own land as they would feed their family was misunderstood as bloody animal sacrifice. Ritual possession, union of a people with their holy spirits, was seen as simply possession, which meant something dark and evil to Christians. These misperceptions are products of the religious and cultural bias of European colonialists.

Throughout the history of Western Vodoun, the religion has been defamed and exploited for political motives as well. Whether it was to prove the “savagery” of the country to excuse military occupation by a foreign power or to draw attention away from the economic exploitation of its practitioners, Vodoun has been portrayed in a negative light as a justification for such events. This can be attested by the turbulent history of Haiti. Aspects of Vodoun were even used by dictators like Duvalier, who modelled his image after that of Baron Samedi, making himself death personified for the Haitians. All of these abuses of the religion contributed to the erroneous depiction of it that filtered through to rest of the world.

Public hunger for the exotic and shocking that pervades modern media has also contributed to the current popular image of Vodoun, the mysterious Voodoo. The sensational and darker perspective on Vodoun is promoted to feed this hunger, focusing on peripheral aspects of it, such as the dark magic of the bokor and the zombie, for the sake of popular demand. It may be that even the occasional Vodoun practitioner would promote the more sensational accounts of their religion for the sake of tourists or public attention.¹² Marie Laveau herself was said to offer public Vodoun ceremonies as the religion became popularised in New Orleans for its exoticism.