Voodoo is an African religion brought to the New World, which originated in the slave and maroon communities of Haiti and spread throughout South America and the Caribbean. The practice of voodoo, like most religions, gives followers a way to understand the inexplicable, such as death and what happens to the body and soul after death. In Jamaica, delusions, evil spirits that inhabit people and torment them after death, are one of the predominant beliefs that explain inexplicable voodoo practices, such as sudden illnesses and bad deeds done while alive. In Haitian voodoo, zombies are “the dead soul of an exsanguinated person that is used for magical purposes, or an actual corpse that has been raised from the grave and is then said to perform certain “less automaton voluntary” tasks.” (“Voudou”, 1137). Zombie corpses use poison. special, but poison is also used in voodoo to protect bodies from becoming undead.
Duppies in Jamaica
Dupylus is believed to be an evil spirit residing in the body. As long as a person lives, their brain and heart are controlled. When a man dies, he becomes delusional free from the power of his brain and heart, thus he becomes capable of committing the greatest evils; Because they are afraid of what the duppy can do, Jamaicans practicing voodoo “take extraordinary steps […] to prevent the duppy from returning from the underworld and harming the living” (Tell My Horse, 10).
It is believed that the duppy is buried in the grave after the death of a person and “God gives the duppy” until the ninth day “after death he can do and take with him what he wants” (Tell My Horse 47). During this period Duppy revisited places he had once visited when he was alive. On the ninth night the duplicate returns to his house, to take with him the shadow of all that he desires. That night the whole community gathers outside Duppy’s former home to welcome Duppy and soothe him with a song. Inside Duppy’s last room, the community elders gather and present a feast to please Duppy and entertain him with Anansi stories, Jamaican folklore. At the end of the night, the captain tells Duppy to return to the grave and not to return.
Duppies are believed to remain in the grave in most cases after the ninth night of the appeasement ceremony. But the two principal ways out of the grave are called from the underworld in a ceremony which is called a staff of rum, coins, and a calabash. A man who makes a double call from the grave will send it after one of his enemies. Rarely in the examples of Koo-min-ah, the ceremony takes place on another ninth night, a year and a half after death, because the duppy, who was not called from the underworld, “settled in a new house” (Say My Horse 52). At the new house, a cement grave is built for the duppy ceremony and drums used to sound the new house.
I died in Haiti
Zombie typically means a body that has been “raised from the dead” (Tell My Horse 182). A zombie is created when a bocor, a devil worshiping a priest, gives a living person poison, which makes the person suddenly fall ill and seem to die, when nothing else function There are certain parts of the brain. Bocor, therefore, gives the body an antidote, which restores the poisoned body, except that it does not remember its former self, it cannot speak, it lacks power. Immortals are usually used for agricultural work, but are sometimes stolen.
Haitians, who believe in the undead, fear that the body of their loved ones will be returned to “the stimulation of labor in the banana fields, working like a beast, stripping like a beast, and lying like a brute in some disgusting lake, given a few hours; rest and food” (Tell My Horse 181). In order to ensure that this does not happen to the loved ones who have died, sometimes care is taken to ensure that the body cannot be brought back to life before the body is buried. Sometimes they “set a vigil in the cemetery for thirty-six hours” (Say to the Horse 191), after which time there can be no revival. Other options to ensure real death are to cut off the body or poison the body.
Venom
The use of poison in voodoo is closely related to the undead. A secret poison is used to kill a person to create a zombie. Poison is also used to poison the dead body and thus protect it from becoming a zombie. Some of the poisonous plants used in Haiti are dogwood, black sage, and bamboo dust; all the plants without a note of sanitation. They also use poisons from horse hair and poisonous lizards, spiders, worms and insects. Despite the much less common use of poison in voodoo, poisons are also created to kill enemies. Voodoo priests in Jamaica know how to use nightshade, red, and bitter cassava plants to kill, and how to heal using these poisons kola nuts or mixed with clay and water.
conclusion
Death is an important aspect of voodoo religion. In Jamaican Voodoo, the belief is explained about the double what happens to the human soul, as well as unknown evils, especially illnesses. In Haitian voodoo the aspect of death relates mainly to the undead. Bokers, voodoo devil-worshipping priests, are responsible for creating a curable poison for zombies, which is often used for field work. Because of the fear of a loved one’s body becoming a zombie, Haitian voodoo burial practices often involve the actual killing of the dead before burial. A common method of treating a dead body is the careless administration of poison.
Bibliography
Beckwith, Martha Warren. Jamaican Anansi Stories November 2001. American Folk-lore Society. on December 2, 2005.
Cosentino, Donald. “Vodou, Material Culture.” The Encyclopedia of African and African-American Religion. Ed. Mr. Stephen Glazier. New York: Routledge, 2001. 364-368.
Desmangles, Leslie G. “Vodou.” The Encyclopedia of African and African-American Religion. Ed. Mr. Stephen Glazier. New York: Routledge, 2001. 361-364.
Zora Neale. Mules and men. New York: Harper & Rowe, 1990.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Say My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica. New York: Harper & Rowe, 1990.
“Voudou.” Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions. Ed. Wendy Doniger Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 1999. 1136-1137.
