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[I know this is getting a little thread-rotty, but bear with me a sec?]
Cat Yronwode also thinks very highly of Haskins's "Voodoo and Hoodoo," and even if he doesn't cite his sources she knows the original material well enough to cite for him:
[from an old Usenet post]
"Oh, and by the way, i left out the earliest published sources of information on hoodoo -- although Haskins mines them so thoroughly that one may need not go back to the originals unless one is a scholar. These are, in chronological order of publication:
"Negro Folk-Lore and Witchcraft in the South" by Louis Pendleton, Journal of American Folk-Lore Vol. 3, 1890.
"Superstitions of Georgia" by Ruby Andrews Moore, Journal of American Folk-Lore Vol. 5, 1892.
"Superstitions of Georgia" by Ruby Andrews Moore, Journal of American Folk-Lore Vol. 9, 1896.
"Conjuring and Conjure-Doctors in the Southern United States by [Miss]Herron and Miss A. M. Bacon, Journal of American Folk-Lore Vol. 9, 1896. [originally published in a lengthier form in Southern Workman and Hampton School Record, Nov. and Dec. 1895]
"Negro Conjuring and Tricking" by Julien A. Hall, Journal of American Folk-Lore Vol. 10, 1897. [note: "tricking" in African-American hoodoo parlance means casting a spell on someone; it does not mean fooling them -cat]
and finally, the work that was edited to become the 2nd half of the previously-mentioned 1935 book, "Mules and Men":
"Hoodoo in America" by Zora Neale Hurston, Journal of American Folk-Lore Vol. 44, 1931."
Seems like he has a slightly more stable base then we might expect.
(And back to the meat of the thread, sort of...) But it is important to note that Haskins is writing about hoodoo, not Vodou -- despite the title.
"Vodou" and "hoodoo" share some common lineage, and are unfortunately nearly identical phonetically, but they are definitely not interchangeable -- nor is hoodoo a "debased" form of Vodou, as is sometimes claimed.
As for Ross Heaven, I haven't read the book, but I know that he is not held in very high esteem (understatement) by the Haitian Vodou community, because his book allegedly reveals information that he was sworn to secrecy about (essentially, he broke his initiatory oaths to the Roots Without End Society, and the buzz is that he's in a lot of trouble with the lwa).
Just to add a little to the list of resources already mentioned, the Yahoo discussion group Vodou Arts is a good place to speak with international Vodouisants and it's run by Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout, the head of the Roots Without End Society in Haiti. It's a pretty friendly group as long as you stay civil, and it's given me a much better look at the day-to-day practice of Vodou and service to the lwa than I got from the books.
Have fun!
~L |
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