Vodou

Another interesting program, this one about Vodou, from Krista Tippett's On Being this morning.  I'm having a lot of trouble with my arm so I'll keep my commentary to a minimum.   Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, a Vodou priest and scholar gave a much more interesting look into the religion than you usually get.   His explanation of the series of deities and spirits and their relationship to God was especially interesting, a refutation of the idea that African religion is polytheistic.

Dr. Bellegarde-Smith: African religions have always been monotheistic, always. This is not true of ancient Greece. This is not true of ancient Rome. But this is certainly true of African systems.

Tippett: Hmm.

Dr. Bellegarde-Smith: And so they are monotheistic. However, god is immaterial in every sense of the word. God is an it. It's pure spirit that is so far removed from normal, from people in general, that one does not pray to It. In fact, in the African traditions, there are no prayers addressed to the supreme entity. No prayers.

Tippett: OK. What is your word for the supreme entity? What's your word for god?

Dr. Bellegarde-Smith: In Haitian, in Haitian Creole, we have adopted the French vocable, and that would be "Bon Dieu." Good god. "Bon Dieu."

Tippett: Ah, that's Bon Dieu. Because it looks on the page like, B-O-N D-I-E. I see.

Dr. Bellegarde-Smith: Yes.

Tippett: That goes — OK.

Dr. Bellegarde-Smith: Usually pronounced Bon Dieu if you're from the countryside.

Tippett: I see.

Dr. Bellegarde-Smith: There is another word for Him as well. Gran Met, the great master, the great architect. But there are no prayers addressed to Gran Met or to Bon Dieu.

Tippett: OK.

Dr. Bellegarde-Smith: What we do is to address our prayers to a number of spirits in the spirit world that are called lwa, L-W-A. And these are deities, but they are not God. They are deities and they have stories as fascinating as those gods in Greece or in Rome and elsewhere.

Which is interesting, as someone who has read the faddish, pop-Pagan-neo-atheist disdain of "monotheism".    This explanation would seem to make Vodou less related to the classical European religions than the quasi-Christian assertions of the Freemasons and the Catholic parctice of asking the saints to intercede with God on our behalf.  

Vodon's music has always appealed to me, there is something quite compelling about it on a musical but also on a deeper, dare I say, spiritual level.   I don't know the extent to which animal sacrifice really plays in the religion but I am entirely opposed to killing animals so that part, not so much.   A vegetarian's stand.  But I do respect the people who have endured centuries of slavery and then the active and intentional and undermining of their aspirations to self-government by American racists, something that began and is recorded in Thomas Jefferson's own words during his time on office.  

Anyway, the program is well worth listening to and the transcript worth reading.  It's especially interesting to find out that the Vodou doll, as so much of the middle-brow would-be erudition is an invention of Hollywood.  There's a long series of blog posts that could be written about what educated people believe is reliable knowledge is based on the scribbling of third rate Hollywood and Broadway hacks.   Maybe when I'm not typing one-handed.