BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Temple >

Good book on Vodoun?

  
 
LVX23
22:19 / 21.01.03
I am getting more interested in the vodoun system...It seems to be one of the oldest on the planet so the channel must run pretty deep.

Does anyone have recommendations for reading? I'm looking for something that really nails it, covers a lot of territory, more slanted towards magick than anthropology, basically you're favorite Vodoun book ever.

Thanks,
c23
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
23:14 / 21.01.03
While it was less of a how-to and more of a sociological work, Maya Deren's Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods Of Haiti was fantastic, I thought. The title's variant, depending on which printing you're reading.
 
 
The Monkey
23:22 / 21.01.03
"Go Tell My Horse" by Zora Neale Hurston. The novelist's participant observation in Haitian ritual.

For a more historical, and dust-dry, presentation, Alfred Metraux's "Voodoo in Haiti" is a seminal work...if somewhat dated in its passive condescension and wool-gathering towards "superstition." Nonetheless worth thumbing through.

I don't have any more recent titles in my library that specifically address Voduoun, just general Caribbean anthropology. You'd probably also enjoy studying the Yoruba (and a few other West African) religious systems that are the bedrock of most of the Afro-Caribbean syncretic religion.
 
 
cusm
00:05 / 22.01.03
If you want Voodoo from the Magick perspective, The New Orleans Voodoo Tarot (Louis Martine) is excellent for this. Its a mapping of Voodoo to Tarot correspondences ala the Golden Dawn / Thelemic work in that area. It reads like an instruction manual. Good stuff.
 
 
hialto
05:50 / 22.01.03
the style of the authors, s. jason black and christopher s. hyatt may or may not be to your liking, but their book 'urban voodoo' published by new falcon is an introduction to the subject from a western/modern perspective.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
08:27 / 22.01.03
There's not many books available on the subject, not many written in English at any rate. If you're serious about studying Les Mysteres then its basically worth reading whatever you can find on the subject. As reccomended above, Maya Deren's 'Divine Horsemen' gives an excellent overview of Vodou in Haiti in the 1940's, as does W.B Seabrook's 'Magic Island' which is an account of the authors experiences in Haiti in the 1920's.

I'd second getting ahold of The New Orleans Voodoo Tarot, which does an interesting job of relating some of the concepts of New Orleans Voodoo in terms of western occultism, relating the Lwa to Sephiroth on the Tree of Life, etc.. I don't think that it's entirely successful though, and some of the correspondences seem a bit forced, but it's an interesting experiment and wirth taking a look at. I'm not entirely comfortable using it as a divination system either, but the pictures are very expressive, and I think it can be a good starting point if you come from a Western Mysteries background.

The Hyatt and Black 'Urban Voodoo' book is fairly poor, and reads as if the authors were commissioned to write a book on Afro-Caribbean magic, did a couple of weeks research and then put together their beginners guide. About 10% of the book focusses on Afro-Caribbean magic, with the rest consisting of the authors personal opinions on subjects such as Christianity and the OTO, and a collection of non-Voudon related ghost stories. It's a bizarre collection of stuff.

Then, of course, there's Michael Bertiaux's 'Voudon Gnostic Workbook' which is extremely rare these day with copies going for about £150. I've only leafed through a copy, and read the first chapter. It's very much Bertiaux's own system, and incorporates aspects of Voudon, as it does aspects of Tantra, Thelema, etc.. It's fairly similar to Kenneth Grant in tone, and he writes about Bertiaux's order 'Le Coulevre Noir' in a few of his books. If you have trouble with Mr Grant you probably shouldn't go anywhere near this. It's mad as a bag of spiders.

Read whatever you can find on the subject, but keep in mind that a comparison can probably be drawn between reading books about Voudon, and trying to learn martial arts from those books you used to get in libraries in the early 80's, with pictures of blokes in white outfits standing in funny positions.
 
 
illmatic
08:59 / 22.01.03
The Bertiaux thing is completely insane and I would feel utterly robbed if I paid £150 for it (though if you see it for a fiver, pick it up. And sell it to me). It's completely fucking mental, the size of a phone book and reads like channeled/schizod writing in places.

Has anyone read about Mama Lola? I'm aware there's a book or two - and a documentary on her - voudoun priestess in contempoary New York. Yup, Amazon have got it.
I thought this might be interesting to see how practices weaves it's way into the life of a practioner.

Also, does anyone here have any familarity with the litreature on Candomle/Santeria? Probably some overlap. Seem to be a lot of books out on it, but I know nothing about them or this area at all.
 
 
illmatic
09:00 / 22.01.03
And there's a thread here:
http://www.barbelith.com/underground/topic.php?id=2197
 
 
Ma'at
10:11 / 22.01.03
Sacred Possessions: Vodou, Santeria, Obeah, and the Caribbean edited by Margarite Fernéndez Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert. Very very good book, slightly academic in tone but gives a good overview of the different belief systems as well as some interesting background.

I'd also recommend this link for online resources you might find useful.
http://www.hermetics.org/afro.html

Baba Raul Canizares is also doing a series of books concentrating on each of the various Orishas in Santeria. They are a bit noddy style but they do provide good basic grounding for anyone starting out. Anything by Carlos Montenegro is usually okay as well.

Santeria:The Religion by Migene Gonzalez-Wippler and other books by the same author are well written and interesting. Each has a different focus with some overlap but I found Santeria: The Religion the most useful.
 
 
cusm
12:38 / 22.01.03
a comparison can probably be drawn between reading books about Voudon, and trying to learn martial arts from those books you used to get in libraries in the early 80's, with pictures of blokes in white outfits standing in funny positions.

Aye. Books are good background, but there's just no substitute for meething them in person.
 
 
grant
14:20 / 22.01.03
Some of the best material is on the web.
There are links at the above-referenced thread - and do searches for "racine" and "voudou", and for "moonweb" and "santeria".
(too harried to do them for you and post links).

agreeing with above commentary on Hyatt&Black's book - they mix-n-match standard "black magic" stuff with candomble, regla lucumi & vodun sort of indiscriminately. Sort of as if a bunch of Odinists decided that Hermes was the same as the Angel Gabriel was the same as Heimdall, and used the three names interchangably. The spells and stuff might do something for you nonetheless, but don't mistake it for the actual original thing - it's an additional layer of syncretism over the source material.
 
 
LVX23
17:12 / 22.01.03
Great, thanks folks. I'm basically looking for some background on the practice, as well as an intro to the pantheon. I'm curious about the possibility of integrating some of these entities into my own mythology and workings. I'll check out a few of the ref's you've provided, and Grants suggestion to crawl the web is a great one (silly I overlooked it).

Cheers.
 
 
Anathema
00:01 / 24.01.03
We have a decent selection of voodoo books listed here. We've tried to include only the good stuff while leaving out the fluff! Hope this helps...
 
 
illmatic
07:38 / 24.01.03
Here's a link to an interview with Michael Bertiaux.
 
  
Add Your Reply