Mysteries and Secrets of Voodoo, Santeria, and Obeah Read online
MYSTERIES AND SECRETS OF
VOODOO, SANTERIA,
AND OBEAH
LIONEL AND PATRICIA FANTHORPE
MYSTERIES AND SECRETS OF
VOODOO, SANTERIA,
AND OBEAH
Copyright © Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe, 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Fanthorpe, R. Lionel
Mysteries and secrets of Voodoo, Santeria and Obeah / Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe.
ISBN 978-1-55002-784-6
1. Voodooism. 2. Santeria. 3. Obeah (Cult). I. Fanthorpe, Patricia II. Title.
BL2565.F36 2008 299.6 C2008-900677-1
1 2 3 4 5 12 11 10 09 08
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This book is dedicated to all those whose religion inspires them to do their best to help and heal others, to alleviate poverty, loneliness, and sadness — and to make this mysterious old world a happier and better place for us all to share and enjoy.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD
BY CANON STANLEY MOGFORD, MA
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE:
THE ANCIENT ORIGINS OF AFRICAN MAGIC
CHAPTER TWO:
THE GODS OF PREHISTORIC AFRICA
CHAPTER THREE:
THE SLAVE TRADE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
CHAPTER FOUR:
CHRISTIANITY ENCOUNTERS THE OLD AFRICAN RELIGIONS
CHAPTER FIVE:
STRANGE RELIGIOUS HYBRIDIZATION
CHAPTER SIX:
THE PRINCIPLES OF SANTERIA, VOODOO, OBEAH, AND SIMILAR RELIGIONS
CHAPTER SEVEN:
HYPNOTIC LITURGIES AND RITUALS
CHAPTER EIGHT:
THE POWER OF RELIGIOUS MUSIC, DRUMMING, AND DANCING
CHAPTER NINE:
STRANGE CEREMONIES AND SACRIFICES
CHAPTER TEN:
THE POWERS OF THE PRIEST
CHAPTER ELEVEN:
THE POWERS OF THE PRIESTESS
CHAPTER TWELVE:
VOODOO DOLLS AND TALISMANS
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
SPELLS, INCANTATIONS, AND MAGICAL INGREDIENTS
CHAPTER FOURTEEN:
SEXUAL MAGIC
CHAPTER FIFTEEN:
CASE HISTORIES
CHAPTER SIXTEEN:
WHEN VOODOO WORKS, HOW DOES IT WORK?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
FOREWORD
One of the authors of this book is a priest of the Church in Wales and, as it happens, so am I, the writer of the foreword. We were both brought up in Christian homes and we have been part of all things Christian all our lives. By that faith we have lived and in that faith we shall die. We make no apology for it. Indeed, we are proud of it. Some of the authors’ earlier books were written to help others in or towards the faith of their birth.
Christianity claims to be a faith for the whole world. How could it be anything other with the words of Christ so clear and definite? “Go ye into all the world and make disciples of all nations.”
However, it’s not the only religion to claim the allegiance of large numbers of the now teeming millions of the world. Muslims are equally proud of what they believe, as are Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and the followers of other long-established faiths. The presence of so many churches, mosques, synagogues, pagodas, and shrines is witness to some universal longing to believe in a power greater than man himself. History records the names of many who preferred to die rather than surrender one iota of what they believed.
Sadly, it must be admitted, in the western world at least, that a growing number have now come to deplore the very existence of all such worldwide faiths, or, indeed, faith of any kind. They see them as harmful, divisive, and sources of conflict. Shakespeare’s pungent phrase “A plague on all your houses” would sum it up for them. Such loss of a faith, naturally, hurts those of us who continue to believe. We affirm, and always will, that the world we share would have been immeasurably retarded, and our lives impoverished, had not the great faiths been there to guide, to inspire, and, when needed, to correct us. All great religions have had something special to give and, in doing so, have shaped our destinies, transforming the laws we live by and the people we become. Christianity, for one, can claim to have inspired characters the world will never forget: Francis of Assisi, Kagawa of Japan, Schweitzer of Africa, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and a host of others. All faiths have their own honoured lists of martyrs and those who led dedicated lives.
In its long history, Christianity has shown itself at its noblest and at its most frail. It has produced the best in individuals and in society and also the worst. It has both glorified its Creator and shamed Him. The slave trade alone will forever stand as a betrayal of everything Christ taught us. But Christianity has repented and survived and it always will. St. Paul once wrote, “All things work together for good for those who love God.”
So it does and will ever do so. The main thrust of this book, the latest in a long series the Fanthorpes have researched for us, is to show what happened when, true to the words of its founders, the Christian religion moved into Africa and from Africa through the ships of the slavers to other far distant parts of the world. It met head-on already long established tribal religions, with their gods and goddesses of primitive beliefs and practices. The result was the birth of what the authors call a “hybridized” faith, the angels of the Christians blending with the Orishas of the Africans, the altar bearing the weight of pagan sacrifices, incense becoming incantations, Christian rituals in worship surrendering to drumming, spells, even mass hysteria. On the surface, the faiths collided and much that was basic to Christianity seems to have been overwhelmed. The powers of Voodoo, Santeria, and Obeah were too strongly entrenched. The Fanthorpes themselves never sit in judgement. They make no comments, no criticisms, no protestations. They are researchers, brilliant at what they do. They leave all judgements and conclusions to us.
Perhaps, if pressed, the authors might have considered a final chapter to this book. I would have loved to do it for them. Clearly, the story did not end there. Neither Santeria nor Obeah prevailed. The Orishas were not greater than the angels. The Christian religion is not so easily overwhelmed. The Church in Africa is now strong, the Christian religion well grounded. It feels itself strong enough to make its voice heard throughout the world. Where countries once turned to Africa for slaves, they now turn to Africa for missionaries. African Christians are well rooted in the faith and an influence in the world. Truly, all things work out well for those who love God.
Reverend Canon Stanley Mogford, MA
Cardiff, Wales, UK, 2007
(As always, the authors are deeply grateful to Canon Mogford, who is rightly regarded as one of the most profound scholars in Wales.)
INTRODUCTION
Shakespeare (1564–1616) wrote in Hamlet (act 1, scene 5), “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Forty and more years of researching, writing, lecturing, and broadcasting about every aspect of the paranormal have led us to much the same conclusion. As Sir Arthur Eddington (1882–1944) once warned humanity, “We live in a universe that is not only stranger than we imagine: it is stranger than we are able to imagine.”
So where do the syncretized mystery religions like Santeria, Obeah, and Voodoo fit into this mysterious universe? Our research began with the ancient origins of African magic and the gods of prehistoric Africa. In order to understand Santeria and the others it was necessary to go into the history of the slave trade, to try to discover what the African peoples had brought with them in the way of culture and ideas.
Theology and philosophy are like cocktails: the more they are mixed, the more potent they become. When traditional Christianity collided with the old African religions, something very powerful grew out of their meeting: the new, syncretized mystery religions of which Santeria was one example. Because the slave owners in the New World were mortally afraid that their prisoners would find strength and unity in their old African religions, everything possible was done to inhibit and suppress the old Yoruba faiths. But the slave owners failed, and the old African deities, the Loas and Orishas, became identified with the Christian saints!
Our research led us to examine the quasi-hypnotic processes that formed an essential part of these new, syncretized mystery religions. Drumming, music, and dancing were also among their vital components. Priests and priestesses with great knowledge of ancient African magic became charismatic leaders, healers, seers, and magicians. We researched the sources of their power. We investigated their spells, talismans, amulets, and Voodoo dolls. We also examined cases of zombiism and looked to see whether or not there were rational explanations for some of the darker and more sinister reports concerning it.
These syncretized mystery religions also include powerful sexual magic, and some of the Voodoo spells are based on it. Finally, we brought all our research together — including our own meeting with an Obeah man in Barbados — and looked at the main question: when Voodoo works, how does it work?
Chapter 1
THE ANCIENT ORIGINS OF AFRICAN MAGIC
THE SCOTTISH anthropologist Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941) first published The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion in 1890. He was primarily concerned with ancient religions that he thought of as fertility cults, such as those of the Canaanite Baal and Ashtoreth in the Old Testament. Frazer concentrated on the concept of a sacred, sacrificial king, whom he interpreted as the incarnation of a dying and reviving god. This linked with a solar deity, who died, revived, and mated with an earth goddess. Frazer took his title from an episode in the Aeniad in which Aeneas, advised by the Sybil of Cumae (to whom he had presented the sacred golden bough), is admitted by the gatekeeper of Hades in order to talk to the ghost of his father, Anchises.
Sex goddess Ashtoreth from Assyrian cylinder.
The famous golden bough grew in the sacred grove by the shores of Lake Nemi, which was ruled over by the Rex Nemorensis, the Priest of Diana at Aricia in Italy. The hazardous situation of the Rex Nemorensis can best be summed up in the words of the English poet Thomas Babington Macaulay:
Those trees in whose dim shadow
The ghastly priest doth reign —
The priest who slew the slayer,
And shall himself be slain.
You got the job by challenging the current holder and killing him in single combat — after presenting him with the golden bough.
Frazer walked into a storm of controversy when The Golden Bough was published because he included the idea of the dying and resurrected Christ among his examples, but modern scholarship accepts that he was largely on the right track when he investigated sympathetic magic along with magical symbolism.
One of Frazer’s most memorable quotations can be found in Chapter 4, which he entitled “Magic and Religion”: “If the test of truth lay in a show of hands or a counting of heads, the system of magic might appeal, with far more reason than the Catholic Church, to the proud motto, ‘Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus,’ as the sure and certain credential of its own infallibility.” (The Latin motto translates as “At all times, in all places, to all people.”)
Crucifix.
A second comes from Chapter 21, in which Frazer examines the subject of “Tabooed Things”: “The danger, however, is not less real because it is imaginary; imagination acts upon a man as really as does gravitation, and may kill him as certainly as a dose of prussic acid.”
Before magic and religion can be studied in the comprehensive way that Frazer did (his third edition of The Golden Bough ran to eleven volumes — plus a twelfth that was the index!), a working definition of both concepts is needed.
Magic may be regarded as the result of a magician’s attempt to control his or her environment and everything in it — including other human beings — by means of spells, enchantments, philtres, potions, charms, liturgies, and other rituals. These enactments may be thought to exert the magician’s power directly over nature: rain, clouds, storms, earthquakes, illnesses in animals or people, injuries, death, and the arousal of feelings of love. In other cases, the magician’s work is indirect: calls are made on powerful psychic entities, often demons, to do the job that the enchanter wants done — in return for some favour that the magician is doing the entity.
The nexus between magic and religion can be traced to this recognition by the worker of magic that he or she cannot control some aspects of nature directly — but that other more powerful beings can.
Religion may then be defined as an attempt to form a relationship with a god — or gods — to whom petitions and requests can be presented in prayer. Some religious enthusiasts believe that they can reinforce their prayers by offering sacrifices, fasting, maintaining all-night vigils, enduring various types of self-deprivation, abstaining from physical pleasure, or even self-inflicting pain and discomfort as in the wearing of a hair shirt.
Other religious theorists emphasize a self-emptying of the personality, so that the worshipper is absorbed by his or her gods and becomes a mere drop of water in some sort of divine ocean.
It may, however, be argued that the highest religious concept is of an infinitely loving god who cares for all creation and wills only their welfare and happiness. This god of love asks nothing of them other than to reflect that divine compassion onto one another and to work for the welfare and happiness of others. It is the nature of love to seek the happiness of the beloved — and to do so is the highest and most acceptable form of worship that can be achieved. It is also the nature of love to enhance, enrich, and reinforce the personality of the beloved — never to diminish it or seek to absorb it. A further aspect of this highest religious concept is that the worshipper’s own pleasure is very much a part of the divine will. As the brilliant C.S. Lewis expressed it, “When we have learnt to love our neighbours as ourselves, we are then permitted to love ourselves as much as we l
ove our neighbours.”
Having considered the basic nature and substance of magic and religion, it is possible to proceed to a consideration of their African origins.
Historically, the Olduvai Gorge is a truly awesome place. Situated in the Serengeti Plains in northern Tanzania, and forming part of the Great Rift Valley, it is frequently referred to as the Cradle of Civilization. The Olduvai Gorge contains human artifacts and other prehistoric remains dating back at least 2 million years — and perhaps considerably more. Fossilized traces of the earliest humanoid occupants of the area go back at least another half-million years.
The popular name Olduvai dates back to 1911, when Wilhelm Kattwinkel, a distinguished German entomologist searching for rare East African butterflies, came across the gorge. He asked one of his local Maasai friends what it was called, but because of translation difficulties his companion thought Wilhelm was asking about the name of the plants lining the gorge, rather than the name of the gorge itself. Accordingly, his guide told him that it was Oldupaai — actually the Maasai name for East African wild sisal plants, or Blue Sansevieria (Sansevieria ehrenbergii), which grew there in profusion.
Kattwinkel later pronounced it with a v instead of a p — hence its present form Olduvai.
The plant was well understood locally and was known to have significant healing properties. It was beneficial in controlling bleeding and helping wounds to heal. When Bill Montagne, the paleoanthropologist, was injured while working in the gorge in the 1970s, his Maasai friends treated his wounds with a Sansevieria bandage. Bill was so impressed with its antiseptic qualities that he initiated research into its potential pharmaceutical properties.
Traditional African medical knowledge of this kind forms an important part of the long history of the links connecting ancient magic, religion, herbalism, and healing with developments in our own twenty-first century.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Olduvai Gorge is one of the most important prehistoric sites on Earth, and the brilliant pioneering excavations carried out by Louis and Mary Leakey in the 1950s were of the greatest possible importance. Fortunately, their family members are still continuing with this extremely important work.