Mami Wata Loves You

This is one of my favorite syncretic images, the woman who has mastered the snakes. I've had this posctcard for years: Wikipedia's entry for Mami Wata says this image dates from pre-war Europe. That wikipedia entry is full of detail about the deity Mami Wata, but it could kind of be shortened to say "powerful archetypal image that means a lot of contradictory things to whoever sees it." Mami Wata can be connected to the Yoruba ocean orisha Yemaya, a true "mother of the waters." But she can also be connected to a host of other syncretic folk deities that have combined with the myths of Africa, Latin America and the U.S. suggesting some powerful symbolic resonance. If you go to Botanicas in New York City you can find this image transformed into a plaster statue; sometimes with a baby in its lap sometimes without. That's Santa Marta la Dominadora, St. Martha the Dominator, and she'll protect your family and help you get your man back or help you take control of an unruly life. And there's the connection to the loa of Haitian vodoun Damballah, the snake god who reveals the mysteries of the universe travelling deep underground and yet encircles the world above us to bind reality together. To me the image is suggestive of Marie Laveaux, the patroness of New Orleans voodoo. And yet all these identities snatched from disparate religions and traditions reveal something about the nature of religion itself: it's a doorway to perception, a way of explaining and categorizing the human experience of spirit. But the thing it explains and categorizes is universal, powerful beyond description. You can't really take a picture of God, and yet, meditate on a cheap prayercard image like this and, well, there it is.

Happy Damballah's Day!

Afro-Caribbean religions like Santeria and Vodoun are syncretic traditions. When European slave traders and colonialists imported millions of black Africans to the new world, they did their best to outlaw the original culture of the slaves, seeing in it a threat to the necessary dehumanization of their new human commodities. Yet people are resilient, and the slaves managed to keep their traditions alive inside the new traditions that were forced on them; in the end synthesizing something new, with deep African roots, but unique to the new world.

The nature spirits from west Africa, the loa of Dahomey and the orisha of Yorubaland/Nigeria, survived in the clothes of Catholic saints. St. Patrick is usually depicted standing with his staff, commanding the serpents who writhe at his feet to leave the island of Ireland. Thus St. Patrick was seen by the Haitians as a person with a relationship to serpents, those mysterious beings who manage to transcend the realms of earth and underworld. In vodoun, Damballah is the world serpent, a spirit of great power and mystery who encircles the world, bearing hidden mysteries and representing the unity between the spiritual and physical realms. So St. Patrick came to represent Damballah himself: a nonthreatening icon of the Catholic St. Patrick could represent to its devotee the actual presence of Damballah.

Today now that there are neither literal colonialists nor slaves in the new world, the open face of the original African deities are less likely to be hidden in Catholic clothing. Shown here is a Haitian vodoun beaded panel honoring Damballah. These beautiful panels decorate altars sacred to the spirits.

So if St. Patrick is meant to represent the Christians driving out of Ireland its original indigenous Pagans, let us reclaim the day by celebrating the rainbow serpent Damballah. What goes around comes around: My Irish ancestors will have to understand.

Haitian Earthquake Brings Conservatives Together in Orgy of Racism and Ignorance

"Why is Haiti so poor? ... Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile." -- David Brooks, OpEd column in The New York Times, Jan 14 2010.

"[Something] happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. [The Haitians] were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.' True story. And so, the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other." -- televangelist Pat Robertson, on TV, Jan 13 2010.

You know Pat Robertson. He's one of those long-running peddlers of hatred and intolerance masquerading as a spiritual leader on the television. He routinely blames people he hates for natural disasters. AIDS, Hurricane Katrina, you name it. So it's no big surprise that he would blame the Haitian earthquake on voodoo, repeating an old slander of racist Euro-American slaveholders against the world's first black republic.

You know David Brooks. He's the moderate, "thinking man's conservative," a self-styled intellectual who regularly publishes an OpEd column in the New York Times. And what do you know, here he's spewing the same racist filth about Haiti and voodoo as Pat Robertson. Oh, it's tidied up. Surely Brooks knows the history better than Robertson. Surely Brooks knows it was Napoleon Bonaparte himself not Napoleon III who the Haitian slaves displaced when they broke the chains of slaveholding colonialism more than two centuries ago.

"Voodoo" or "vodoun" is not some quaint socially regressive superstitious practice. It's an authentic religion, carried in the bellies of slave ships, from West Africa to the New World. Like its sister religion Santeria, Vodoun is a nature religion, combining ancestor reverence, channeling the spiritual powers of nature and respect for an all-powerful God. Can you imagine the scandal if a New York Times columnist blamed the catastrophic history of Europe on "the influence of Judaism which spreads the message of passivity and obedience"?

Vodoun is an uplifting path; it links its practitioners to the mysteries of the universe and transcends the tragedy of the middle passage. It will also, no doubt, help its believers to transcend the tragedy that has now befallen the island of Haiti with this powerful earthquake, and give them succor in rebuilding their lives and their nation. It should come as no surprise to any student of religion that among Haitian practitioners of Vodoun there have been both saints and rogues.

So now you know David Brooks and Pat Robertson: it turns out they are brothers under the skin, sharing the bond of intolerance and racism and white superiority. And sharing utter narcissicm in displaying their ignorant prejudices at the worst possible moment.

Ayibobo! Peace and blessings to the people and spirits of Haiti.