Kongo in Haiti: A New Approach to Religious Syncretism

Author(s): Luc de Heusch

Source: Man, New Series, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Jun., 1989), pp. 290-303
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
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 KONGO IN HAITI:

A NEW APPROACH TO RELIGIOUS SYNCRETISM*

LUC DE HEUSCH

Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Christian syncretism is but a surface aspect of voodoo, the Haitian folk religion that has
two major African sources. The rada cult comes from Dahomey whereas the petro cult,
which is usually said to be Creole, has its roots among the Kongo. This twofold contribution
is analysed from structural and historical viewpoints. The petro divinities are associated with
fire and magic, even witchcraft; their rites sometimes require that the most dreadful of them
be 'attached' or 'chained' to pieces of wood. Certain rada divinities, beneficial and peaceful,
have violent congeners in the petro pantheon. Each cult has distinct altars in the temple.
Near Gonaives in northern Haiti is a temple devoted to the worship of purely Kongo
divinities, who are placed under the authority of a king and queen that remind us of the
Kingo kingdom. Both structural and historical perspectives are needed for a full under-
standing of syncretism.

Steadfast faith in the ancestral divinities enabled the slaves of the French
colony of Saint-Domingue to survive in the most dreadful conditions, and
it inspired them to take up arms under the leadership of Toussaint Louver-
ture in the first successful revolt of non-European peoples against the
colonial powers. The complex syncretic religious system known as voodoo
is still one of the strongest factors of social cohesion among the Haitian
peasantry. The many temples (houmfort) with their priests and priestesses
(houngan and mambo respectively) have provided the only sanctuary that a
people living in utter poverty could find. This religion is not an opium of
the people, cynically administered by sorcerers in league with the tontons
macoutes thugs of the Duvalier period, even though such a version of events
is murmured-when it is not loudly proclaimed-by the Catholic and Baptist
churches, thus fuelling yet one more religious war on our planet.
In Haiti, a deep cleavage separates the culture of the urban, Westernised
elite-most of whom are mulattoes and Roman Catholics-from that of
the illiterate black peasantry. Franqois Duvalier knew how to take advantage
of this longstanding social, economic and cultural antagonism, the foun-
dation of the Haitian tragedy. A simple country doctor, Duvalier presented
himself as the representative of the black petite bourgeoisie that had been
kept out of political and economic power. While laying claim to Western
models, he proclaimed himself the spiritual father, even the messiah, of the
traditional peasantry. He skilfully played a double, social and religious, role.
On the one hand, he partly controlled voodoo priests through secret

Translated from the French by NOAL MELLOTT

Man (N. S.) 24,290 -302

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 LUC DE HEUSCH 291

societies and claimed to be able to use witchcraft. On the other, he in-

gratiated himself with the Catholic clergy by appointing black bishops who
proved to be as hostile to voodoo as the whites had been. He thus looked
like a hero who had decolonised the Church, which had been dominated
by foreign priests since the hundred-year-old Concordat. Duvalier's in-
volvement with black magic has, unfortunately, resulted in the discrediting
of a folk religion that is in itself a peaceful possession cult.
When Jeanl-Claude Duvalier lost the backing of these two antagonistic
spiritual forces, his power collapsed. After a long period during which it
had been compromised by association with the government, the Catholic
Church began using its radio network to oppose the regime. By contrast,
the opposition of voodoo priests took place in the shadow of secret societies.
One of them was active in the incidents at Gonaives, which were crucial
to the fall of the dictator. During my trip to Haiti in the summer of 1985,
the Catholic Church had already entered into political opposition. When
the dictator was overthrown in February 1986, and the tonton macoutes were
pursued, the Catholic Church profited from its apparent victory and re-
launched its merciless, century-old campaign-which had been suspended
under Duvalier-against a religion that it still judges to be Satanic. By also
applying the term 'satanic' to the abolished but not yet extirpated regime,
some preachers confused listeners by associating the former political system
with the folk religion. The revolutionary language of the more radical
sections of the Church, regardless of the latter's real intentions, has thus
become a call for religious persecution. This conflict has cost the lives of
hundreds of priests and priestesses (houngan and mambo) during the recent
political turmoil. The ancestral gods have come under attack.
But who are these divinities (loa), these forces which have sustained the
Haitian peasantry over the centuries? Historians and ethnologists quite
rightly take Dahomey to be the first of the many places of origin from
which these gods and goddesses have come. Practised in secret during the
era of bondage, this cult of possession-which bears a Fon name (vodun)-
has indeed kept alive the memory of many Dahomean divinities. However,
this fact should not prevent us from exploring the meanders of ritual and
ceremonies, from searching through the profusion of divinities in the
voodoo pantheon, from discovering the stream of religious thought that,
as we travel back through history, might lead us to other sources. Our
question is how do contributions from two major African sources coexist
within a single religion, voodoo? What relations of opposition and com-
plementarity bring them together?
But at the outset, we must do away with the fake problem of Christian
syncretism in voodoo. Throughout Haiti, the temples are decorated with
colour reproductions of Catholic saints that evoke the loa through what
Michel Leiris (1953: 207) has referred to as a pun based upon objects instead
of words (un calembour d'objets). For example, Ogun, the Yoruba war god,
is likened to St James portrayed as a victorious knight wielding a sword.
Ogun belongs to the nago family of gods, the Fon term for their Yoruba
enemies. An especially well-qualified informant stated that the nago spend

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 292 LUC DE HEUSCH

their time making war on horseback. Hence Ogun, whenever he enters the
bodies of his followers, is like a knight on horseback wielding a sword.
Thus is explained the iconographic equivalence between the African god
and the Catholic saint. In such a case, the saint is but a front, a mask that
hides the god, and we cannot rightly talk about syncretism, since African
signs and emblems prevail. Believers in voodoo are baptised and participate
without any contradiction in Catholic masses. Metraux (1958: 287) notes a
peasant's comment: 'You have to be Catholic to serve the loa'. Two distinct
religions coexist without merging. Catholic influences are superficial in
voodoo, whose reality is African. For voodoo worshippers, Catholicism is
a parallel, complementary religion. Major voodoo ceremonies open with
the Guinin prayer, a long litany that is punctuated by the ringing of bells
and calls on the saints before calling up the loa. But only the loa come to
possess participants. In ritual terms, these two categories-loa and saints-
are not at all mixed up; they are juxtaposed. According to Metraux (1958:
291), praying and kneeling are acts inspired by Christianity that precede the
voodoo service and 'make the loa begin to move'.
This movement is the dance of possession, the perfect identification of
initiates (hounsi) with the loa, the direct communication between human
beings and divinities. The latter ride their human mounts who become
passive objects, having lost their own personality. Introducing the saints
into the voodoo pantheon was structurally impossible, for Catholicism has
radically refused any such dealings because possession comes from the devil
(Lucifer has become a loa in certain black magic ceremonies!). The religions
of masters and of their slaves could not syncretise. In fact, the masters
strove, in vain, to forbid this folk religion: the last violent campaign against
voodoo was led by the Catholic Church with the government's help in
1942.
I have elsewhere proposed the term 'adorcism' to refer to the ritual
attitude in the voodoo trance. In this, possession is a means of calling up
the gods. From a structural viewpoint, I contrasted this attitude with 'ex-
orcism' whereby some religions, in various ways and to varying degrees,
consider the possessing force to be an evil that must be driven out of the
victim's body. The latter attitude is typical in the Catholic Church, as well
as among the Thonga in South Africa (de Heusch 1981: 158). I now admit,
however, that this contrast is too stark since there are dangerous loa who
must be warded off. My aim here is to situate these loa within the pantheon
and to show that syncretism is itself a structural process. Let us pursue this
aim with the cavalry of the nago gods.
Any religion, including Christianity, is ultimately a syncretic phenome-
non. Historical and structural interpretations have to be brought together
within the scope of the anthropology of religion. Instead of choosing
between two opposed explanations, we need to show how both work
together. The challenge of research into Haitian voodoo is to do just this.
Meeting this challenge is particularly difficult since there are so many
regional variations. Voodoo is by no means a unified religion; there is no
central authority, and the houngan and mambo (priests and priestesses) are

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 LUC DE HEUSCH 293

very individualistic. Some of them claim to be guardians of a purer tradition.

It would be necessary to draw an ethnographic atlas of ceremonies and
beliefs in order to shed light upon the relationships between the teachings
of various priests.
In 1937 Melville Herskovits, who carried out fieldwork in the Mirebalais
Valley, noticed that the classification of the gods varied from one informant
to another. This holds true for other areas of the country too. Nonetheless,
a single, constant concern runs through these various classifications: the
gods are grouped into families or 'nations' as a function of their geographi-
cal or tribal origins. Two major groupings are discernible: the rada, a kind
of dominant aristocracy, are the major cosmic gods of the Fon of ancient
Dahomey, whereas the worship of the petro has always been said to be of
Creole origin.
Referring to the works of Moreau de Saint-Mery (1797: 1, 210-11), a late
eighteenth-century Haitian historian, Metraux, like Herskovits, believed
that the petro cult was introduced in 1768 by Don Pedro, a black man who
came from the Spanish part of the island and settled in Petit Goave, in
southern Haiti. For Herskovits (1937: 150), the petro loa are mighty ancestors
who were divinised after death. Metraux's opinion (1958: 31-2) is more
nuanced: the name Don Pedro was put 'for obscure reasons in place of
some African nanchon (nation) whose ceremonies he promoted'. He added
that the many spirits belonging to minority nations such as the Ibo and the
Kongo fit, to varying degrees, within two major groupings, rada and petro.
Herskovits noticed that some temples had a distinct room reserved for the
Kongo loa.
During my first field-trip to the Port-au-Prince area in 1970, I was
surprised to find many loa of Kongo origin in the supposedly Creole petro
pantheon. Simbi, Nkita and Mbumba are well-known in the Kongo religion
of lower Zaire. The Simbi and Nkita are nature spirits, aquatic or terrestrial
depending on the region. Among the Mpangu, a Kongo tribe south of the
Congo river, the Nkita are the protective spirits and forefathers of clans-
forefathers who experienced violent deaths. They dwell in streams and
forests whereas the Simbi, pure nature spirits, like to stay near water (Van
Wing 1938: 18-19). This Kongo contribution to voodoo has been recognised
by a new generation of researchers Janzen 1982; Thompson 1982).
Nonetheless two major problems have been overlooked. How can we
explain the coexistence of so many spirits with Haitian names alongside
the Kongo spirits in the petro pantheon? And the fact that the Kongo spirits
have managed to keep their identity in spite of the dominant rada cult? Why
have these Kongo and Fon divinities not been syncretised? This question
is all the more important in that the possession cults in Africa welcome
new divinities.
This is the crux of the historical and structural problem. Let us begin by
looking at Don Pedro himself. Far from being a Spaniard as has been
believed, his eponym brings to mind the name of the four kings (Pedro I,
II, III and IV) who reigned over the Kongo Kingdom from the mid-sixteenth
to the late eighteenth centuries (Cuvelier 1931). Don and Dona were

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 294 LUC DE HEUSCH

honorary titles used by the Kongo in imitation of the Portuguese. Further-

more, several apparently Creole petro loa can be likened to major symbolic
figures among the Kongo. For example, the chief of the Congo Savannah
(or Zandor) loa, an awesome nation to which the kita belong (Menesson-
Rigaud & Lorimer 1947: 13) is Ti Jean Pie S6che ('Little John with the Dry
Foot'-he was maimed or lame), a dangerous spirit who violently possesses
people. In this respect, he can be compared to the baka, the loa who are
dreaded witches. In the traditional Kongo religion, mbaka refers to dwarfs.
Herskovits (1937: 241) described the voodoo baka as small, bearded men
who can change themselves into animals; and according to Metraux (1958:
76), Ti Jean Petro is sometimes said to be a one-legged dwarf. What is
amazing is that dwarfs and the maimed have the important ritual role of
nature spirits in the kimpasi initiation ceremony, which the Mpangu ob-
served till recently in an attenuated form (Makenda 1971: 30). This
observance goes back far in time: in 1960, Cavazzi (French translation by
Labat 1732: 1, 296, quoted by Van Wing 1938: 229) wrote, 'The ndembola,
those born with crooked feet, have an appreciable rank among the nquiti
(nkita spirits) as do pygmies or dwarfs, who are called mbaka (or ngudi a
mbaka)'. Dwarfs and the lame, the family of Ti Jean Petro and the baka,
are thus symbolically equivalent.
Among the Mpangu, young people (both male and female) from several
lineages used to be initiated into the nkita cult during the kimpasi ceremony.
An old woman, as hideous as possible, presided over this ceremony; she
had been possessed by an nkita spirit; her only child, who was misshapen,
had died very young (Van Wing 1938: 183). We may ask whether the
awesome Marinette in the petro pantheon is not based on a memory of this
woman. In Haiti, Marinette is the wife of Ti Jean Pi6 Seche. During trances,
she appears with up-turned eyes and a twisted mouth (Menesson-Rigaud
& Denis 1947: 14), features that bring to mind the legendary ugliness of the
kimpasi mother. Marinette is believed to carry out murders for the kita spirits.
During the kimpasi, the nkita were said to devour novices, whose corpses
were laid before the initiatory mother (Van Wing 1938: 195-6). A famous
priest reluctantly admitted that the Savannah Congo loa demand human
sacrifices; this can be taken to be a transformation of the Kongo belief that
novices died, albeit symbolically, at the hands of the nkita. Marinette's colour
is red (Menesson-Rigaud & Denis 1947: 16). The mother of the kimpasi,
who gave birth to initiates as nkita spirits after their ritual death, was called
Ngwa Ndundu ('albino mother') and said to be bwaka, red (Van Wing 1938:
183). Her head was covered with a red scarf (Makenda 1971: 14), like that
of Marinette whose element is fire (Menesson-Rigaud & Denis 1947: 14).
Inside the kimpasi lodge in Kongoland, a ritual fire-in fact, a funeral
pyre-was kept burning by dwarfs, the maimed, and young girls or old
women. After the novices' symbolic death, this fire was fed with a ritual
wood that was normally used to smoke corpses and was handled only by
the ugly albino mother and female twins (Makenda 1971: 6 and 30). Dwarfs
and the maimed, albinos and twins, are associated with nature spirits in
Kongo traditional beliefs. Let us leave aside this triangle of sacred monsters

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 LUC DE HEUSCH 295

after having remarked that in Haiti, the marassa name of a special category
of twin loa comes from Kongo mapasa or mahasa (Swartenbroeckx 1973:
303).
Let us look at another aspect of the Kongo nkita cult. These spirits
possess their followers during healing ceremonies (Mata Makala 1973:
72-109) held around a fireplace. The ancestors speak through the possessed
men and women whom they have chosen. These intermediaries lead the
sick person and the crowd to the river where, still in trance, they look for
stones to be used as props for the nkita water spirits. Some of them will
learn the art of healing through dreams and trances, whereas others will
serve only as mounts for these spirits. Only the first become fully-fledged
priests and priestesses to the nkita; their duty is to combat sorcery directed
against their lineages.
Thus the traditional Kongo religion, south of the Congo river, practises
trance as does the Fon religion of Dahomey. But healing services under
the auspices of the kita are not held in Haiti, for these spirits are too dreadful.
Far from combatting sorcery kita, the Haitian nkita are thought to be
sorcerers. After the epoch of slavery and the consequent collapse of all
familial ties, these protective lineage spirits have, it seems, deliberately
changed roles by entering the realm of magic and/or sorcery like the other
petro loa. It is worth noting that north of the Congo river, among the Yombe,
the nkita, dangerous and aggressive, are not associated with benevolent
ancestors as among the Mpangu, but are taken to be earth spirits who cause
paralysis in the legs and blindness (Bittremieux 1936: 55). They thus stand
opposite the kindly simbi water spirits who heal the one-eyed, the lame, the
misshapen (Doutreloux 1967: 217). Clearly, Yombe myths are a structural
transformation of the forementioned Mpangu system. For the time being,
let us be satisfied with the conclusion that Ti Jean Petro the Lame, a Creole
spirit, bears the marks of the nkita of lower Zaire, as does his wife Marinette.
Before turning to the ambiguous role of the simbi spirits in Haitian
voodoo, let us consider the structural position of the bumba loa in the petro
pantheon. They too are of Kongo origin. They play an important role at
the end of the principal petro ceremony held at Christmas. In order to
understand this ceremony better, we must recall that, among the Yombe
in Zaire, Mbumba is the major earth spirit: the rainbow serpent who presides
over many rites of passage (Doutreloux 1967: 217; Bittremieux 1936: 244-65).
He is the master of the khimba, the Yombe equivalent of the Mpangu
kimpasi. For Haitians, the many bumba loa belong, like the kita, to the vast,
powerful and dreadful family of Savannah Congo loa.
Although there is no doubt about the Kongo origin of simbi, kita and
bumba, their incorporation in voodoo raises a major problem. In central
Africa, the aquatic aspect of these nature spirits is clearly marked whereas,
in Haiti, they are ass'ociated with fire in the petro ritual. Among the Mpangu,
the favourite abode of both the simbi and nkita is water, even though they
are all associated with the forest or savannah. Mbumba, the Yombe earth
spirit who has given his name to the Haitian family, is also a water being
according to a myth (Bittremieux 1936: 244-65). We have seen that the fire

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 296 LUC DE HEUSCH

burning in the kimpasi hut during nkita initiation was associated with death.
During the healing ceremony, the nkita spirits indwell the stones fetched
from the river. Sand from the river, after being placed in boiling water, is
poured out onto the ground, and initiates lie down there to die symbolically.
They are then placed in a large ditch, and their fathers make payments so
that they can come back to life. The initiates are likened to catfish (Mata
Makala 1973: 107). During the kimpasi ceremony too, the same association
exists between this fish and the nkita water spirits (Van Wing 1938: 216).
What is the explanation for almost all the Haitian petro loa and, in
particular, the so-called Congo Savannah gods, being said to be hot and
associated with fire? This crucial question has to do with the structural
nature of syncretism. Indeed, the petro pantheon and rites contrast with the
rada ones, which, of Dahomean origin, are mainly associated with water.
In most rada temples, there is a cement basin in honour of Damballah-Wedo,
the principal fresh-water divinity (as opposed to Agoue who rules the sea).
The kita ahid bumba figure only in petro rituals associated with fire like the
simbi. But there are simbi in the rada pantheon who have kept their original
attributes as water beings. Hymns clearly relate the rada simbi to springs.
According to Metraux (1958: 2), a woman 'mounted' by Simbi-Yan-Kita
'never stopped repeating "Water! Water!"; then opening and closing her
mouth like a fish out of water, she would now and then jump fully clothed
into a fountain'.
During fieldwork, I noticed that believers do not agree on the names of
these aquatic rada simbi. Even Simbi-Yan-Kita is sometimes classified among
the petro simbi. The same happens to Simbi Dlo (Simbi of the Water), the
aquatic rada simbi par excellence. I was told that, in Leogane area, Simbi
Dlo is the only petro simbi who likes to abide in water. This authentically
aquatic simbi figured in a petro ceremony organised at Christmastide and
described by Menesson-Rigaud (1951: 49). When he made his presence
known, the chorus sang 'Simbi, ask for water to bathe in; Simbi, call for
water in water'. However, this water simbi belongs to the category of 'mystery
leaves', associated with the heat of magic and the power of 'medicine',
namely the powders made by pounding plants in a mortar, that were set
ablaze with rum. 'The loa rush up, take fire in their hands and ecstatically
pass it over their faces, arms and bodies, and also over the houngan and the
men holding the pestles' (Menesson-Rigaud 1951: 50). Along with the author
of these lines, I saw such a ceremony in the Leogane area some twenty
years later. I saw a simbi brandishing a burning faggot alongside Bumba
and Grand Bois, the master of medicine leaves. The name of Bumba Maza,
who was invoked by the houngan, bears the marks of this spirit's water
origins: maza or masa means water in Kikongo (Swartenbroeckx 1972: 303),
but participants no longer understand the meaning of the word. At the end
of the ceremony, bumba, who were dressed like corpses (Bumba Cimetiere),
rolled in the bonfire lit in the courtyard. In 1951, 0. Menesson-Rigaud (54)
described a water simbi 'using pieces of burning wood like steps' to climb
up a huge pyre.

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 LUC DE HEUSCH 297

Fire is the favourite element of' both the simbi petro and the bumba.
Obviously we may wonder why Simbi Dlo (Simbi of the Water) is still
aquatic within the petro pantheon. History has undoubtedly left deep marks
here. This loa is in a mediating position between the rada and petro rituals.
Owing to his name, he could be transferred into the rada pantheon where
he takes an almost natural place. In the petro pantheon, however, he is a
drunk, the husband of fearsome Red-Eyed Erzilie (Herskovits 1937: 316).
Another simbi petro is qualified as makaya, a term meaning leaves in Kikongo
(Swartenbroeckx 1973: 291). These simbi, far from being gentle like the rada
ones, are sometimes thought to be criminals, for the borderline between
magic and sorcery is not very clear. Simbi en Deux Zo is the god of poisons
(Davis 1985: 152). Some of Herskovits's informants (1937: 241) simply placed
the petro simbi in the baka squad of bad loa with whom sorcerers make deals
(Herskovits 1937: 240). Nonetheless it would be misleading to make a major
distinction between the petro and rada divinities on this ethical basis, for
there are also 'white' (beneficial) petro loa: the don pedro proper (Menesson-
Rigaud & Denis 1947: 13). In the petro pantheon, the simbi hold a middle
position between the good and bad uses of leaves and powders. Unaware
of the Kongo origin of the simbi, M6traux (1958: 78) mistakenly wrote that
they belong 'by their very nature' to the rada and are served during petro
ceremonies, only whenever 'neglected by their followers and cramped with
hunger pangs, they tend to be cruel'.
Haitian syncretism also tolerates a symmetrical, reverse phenomenon:
some rada loa who are beneficial and peaceful have fiery, violent counterparts
in the petro pantheon. Damballah, for instance, is often called the 'Torch'
(flambeau) in petro ceremonies. Opposite the voluptuous Erzilie Freda
Dahomey, the paragon of a woman in love, is the brutal Erzilie Mapyang
who, appearing in the petro cult with a very bad reputation (Metraux 1958:
78), is sometimes called Erzilie Zyeux Rouge (Red-Eyed Erzilie), an attribute
that likens her to Marinette.
We would be mistaken to suppose that all the rada loa are water gods
opposite the petro loa who are fire gods. However, the former are 'soft' and
'gentle' whereas the latter are 'bitter', 'salty' or 'harsh' (M6traux 1958: 77).
A petro service may consist of 'fencing in', 'binding' to a piece of wood
(bornez) or even 'chaining' certain dreaded loa every 7, 14 or 21 years. I
witnessed such a ceremony in the garden of a temple not far from Petionville
during the summer of 1970. Nails were pounded into four roughly squared-
off pieces of wood, which were then wrapped with knotted strings. The
petro divinities were firmly fastened to these knots by coiling a wire around
them 'so that the other loa can eat and work in peace' as my informant
said. This defensive magic was interpreted in military terms; these knots
'were fixed in order to arrest the petro escort'. The two priests who performed
this rite next stuck the four pieces of wood and two wooden crosses into
a hole around which were placed bottles of rum, a vial of perfume and
four plates with food offerings. The four 'bound' divinities were Ti Jean
Petro, Bumba, Simbi en Deux Zo and Erzilie Dantor, who is also called
Queen Petro. A nearby fire was fuelled with gasoline and salt. Several

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 298 LUC DE HEUSCH

animals were sacrificed. The sacrificer, who organised the ceremony in

order to 'feed' his own petro loa, was possessed by Ti Jean. His behaviour
was especially brutal.
During this ceremony, the petro loa were warded off (in contrast to the
rada loa whose benediction is sought). But some petro loa are welcomed
within the sanctuaries, just like the rada loa (Menesson-Rigaud 1953). In this
case, offerings and sacrifices take place near the altar dedicated to the petro
loa in the houmfort. The inside of the home contrasts with the outside where
the loa, thought to be dangerous or hostile, are deliberately kept at a distance
after having been appeased by offerings and sacrifices. In the Leogane area
where much of my fieldwork has been carried out, the most awesome petro
divinities-the Savannah Congo or Zandor nation-are worshipped in the
woods, at a wild spot far from the domestic realm. They are borne's (bound
to a piece of wood) or 'chained' there. Herskovits (1937: ch.9) described a
petro ceremony in the Mirebalais area during which Lemba and Simbi Nan
Dlo (in the Water) were bound whereas Ti Kita, Ti Jean Pie Seche and
two other petro loa (Red-Eyed Erzilie and Three-Horned Bossou) were 'sent
back'.
The petro are treated differently depending on how fearsome they are.
Dangerous loa cannot be eliminated from the pantheon for they are usually,
like friendly ones, part of a family's heritage, which generally comprises
both petro and rada divinities. When an initiate dies, as when a houngan or
mambo dies, a family member inherits his ritual duties; the person selected
by the divinities cannot avoid these duties lest he fall seriously ill or become
mad.
In all the temples where the petro and rada loa are served together, as is
usually done, the altars of these two pantheons are located in two distinct
rooms that do not communicate with each other or even in two separate
buildings (cailles). Certain divinities may, like Erzilie, have their own private
rooms.
Drums and other ritual objects are different in rada and petro ceremonies.
During rada services, the houngan or mambo shakes a calabash (Lagnaria
vulgaris) covered with snake vertebrae or with a net of glass beads whereas,
during petro services, he or she shakes a calabash of a different variety
(Crescentia linearifolio) containing small seeds or pebbles (Menesson-Rigaud
1953: 236). The sound is produced from things on the outside or, alterna-
tively, on the inside of the calabash. During petro services, at least one pig
has to be sacrificed. M6traux (1958: 75) noticed other signs of the loa petro,
signs that manifest their violence: they are welcomed to the crack of whips,
and small quantities of gunpowder are fired in their honour.
Voodoo should be taken to be a bicephalous religion; the structural
arrangement of its components has to do with history. There are, however,
linkages between the two pantheons. The nago nation-in fact of Yoruba
origin-and especially the Ogun family of war gods have an intermediate
position that is the reverse of the Simbi's, these originally water spirits of
Kongo origin. The nago are the only gods of fire who are tolerated as such
among the rada loa whilst being incorporated into the petro pantheon. Of

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 LUC DE HEUSCH 299

course, when Ogun possesses an initiate during petro ceremonies, he

manifests himself more violently than during rada ceremonies. Even his
name changes: he is qualified as being 'red-eyed' like Marinette.
Fire is not missing from the rada ritual. During the boulin zin ('burning
the pots') ceremony, which is held on various occasions, different foodstuffs
are prepared in pots (zin). These pots are then emptied and filled with olive
oil. Once their outsides are greased, they are set on fire. There is much
excitement, and many people are possessed. The fire warms up the loa and
increases their power (Metraux 1958: 181-7). All ritual objects are passed
through the fire in order to recharge them with force.

The independent kingdom of the Kongo gods

In 1973, Odette Menesson-Rigaud, a remarkable French ethnographer to
whom Metraux was much beholden, told me that at Nansoukry near
Gonaives in northern Haiti there was a temple where the Kongo loa were
fully independent, related to neither the rada nor the petro pantheon. I went
to Nansoukry ten years later. A famous houngan sent me to see the 'Emperor'
of the Kongo society, Simon Herard, a fascinating person whose tempera-
ment ranges from sudden bursts of gusty laughter to a sense of reserve and
authority. He was wary of 'intellectuals' of my sort who write books and
think they know everything. Nonetheless, he welcomed me warmly and
told me surprising things that largely confirmed unpublished observations
recorded by Menesson-Rigaud twenty or thirty years earlier. Herard heads
the small committee that is charged with the administration of the cult. He
is not its priest. The religious leader is not called houngan ('priest') but
simply 'servant'. He is the chamberlain of an invisible royal court over
which a loa called Bazou reigns. This king undoubtedly came from Angola
since he is also called 'King Wangol' or 'Kongo chief. With Mambo Inan,
his wife, said to be a Kongo queen, Bazou begat 101 children, grouped in
'escorts' that are part of an army specialised in magically warding off
misfortunes of all sorts.
Nansoukry is an unassuming village isolated in the countryside. This
high place of the Kongo gods is laid out like a fort. At the entrance to the
village is an arch. The bumba and lemba escorts-who form the vanguard
of the army of loa-are stationed near the big mapou tree along the path.
The bumba loa are great warriors whom people in dire straits call upon; I
might add that, among the Yombe of Lower Zaire, Mbumba not only
presided over initiation rites but also protected warriors (Doutreloux 1967:
217). The phrase Escalier Bumba ('Bumba staircase') means that these mighty
loa help overcome hardships. A few years ago, a large temple in masonry
was built not far from the arch. Dances, trances, prayers and sacrifices take
place in this temple. Towards the south, a rather steep slope leads to a
hilltop where the rearguard, the ganga loa, are posted. This term brings to
mind nganga, a word that still denotes the masters of ceremonies and
especially medicine-men among the Kongo of lower Zaire. The ganga escort
is accompanied by many and various simbi.

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 300 LUC DE HEUSCH

The vanguard and rearguard demarcate a ritual territory with its centre
at the foot of the ganga hill. This centre is the preferred abode of Jatibwa,
a son to whom King Bazou entrusted all the secrets of magic. Bazou himself
dwells in a dry well located to the west, towards the road leading to the
stream where his wife, Mambo Inan, likes to abide. People bathe in this
stream on her feast day, August 15. The actual ruler is Bazou's elder brother,
Nounk Lufiatu Ganga, whom all the other loa call 'my uncle' (nonk. He is
a discreet chief who has chosen as his exclusive human vehicle a small,
silent old woman, whom he makes fall into trance from time to time.
Though lacking authority, this woman may lay hold of whatever she wants
in the village.
The full genealogy of the Kongo loa cannot be analysed herein. According
to Empress Helene H6rard, Simon's wife, it covers four generations. I would
like to point out only that Grandmother (Gran) Nkenge, Bazou's mother,
is called Gran Matundu Tedi during ceremonies. Matundu was the name
of the first person to be initiated during a nkimba or kimpasi session in Zaire;
and tedi is a Kikongo verb meaning 'has said' (Swartenbroeckx 1973: 662
and 624). Nkenge is, by the way, the name of a heroine carried off by water
spirits in a well-known Kongo legend (Struyf 1936). Grandmother Nkenge
never appears through possession, for she stayed back-in the sea- when
the Kongo loa migrated to Haiti.
In the realm of myth, Bazou and his wife represent the divine kingship
of the Kongo. Simon Herard declared, 'Nansoukry is a kingdom from father
to son'. Bazou, King Wangol, is likened to Gaspard, the Negro king among
the three Wise Men; and for this reason, his feast day is January 6, whereas
that of Mambo Inan, the Kongo queen, is Assumption Day, the feast of
the Holy Virgin, the celestial queen. Bazou and Mambo Inan bore triplets,
Jatibwa, Laoka and Ganga, three brothers.
Laoka slept with his sister, Madam Lawe (who, according to Simon
Herard, acts like a whore during possession). A baby was born whom
Madam Lawe abandoned in the woods. Jatibwa found and baptised him.
Named Zinga Bwa after his godfather (bwa means forest), this child was
raised by his second uncle, Ganga, for whom he picked the leaves necessary
for making medicine. Zinga Bwa is said to be a perpetual child. Capricious
and mischievous like a naughty boy, he makes faces at people. Born of an
incestuous couple and abandoned in the woods, he belongs to nature. This
loa personifies disorder and assumes an important role in magic, whose
elements come from wild nature.
Ganga was a great magician who, according to Simon Herard, also
practised sorcery; his father, Bazou, had to chain him. I might add that
Ganga Doki is a member of the ganga escort and that, in Kikongo, ndoki
denotes the evil sorcerer in opposition to nganga, the good medicine-man.
Jatibwa is the only spirit whom Bazou has authorised to free Ganga so that
he may appear through trances. When he thus appears, he is violent, for
he is a hard loa. Recall that Jatibwa holds a central place-between the
entrance and Mount Ganga-in this mystical territory; he mediates between
his brother's unchained magic and Bazou's royal magic. Simon Herard,

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 LUC DE HEUSCH 301

who is 'mounted' by a ganga spirit during ceremonies, summed up the

situation by saying that all the Kongo divinities are great magicians.
Among Bazou's other sons, Lemba-sometimes said to be one of the
triplets instead of Laoka-stole part of Ganga's magical knowledge (which
is incomplete). For this reason, these two brothers do not gct along well.
In fact, lemba was the name of a major magic-religious institution of the
Yombe from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries Janzen 1982).
Lemba ceremionies, like nkimba initiation, took place under the auspices of
the earth spirit, Mbumba (Doutreloux 1967: 217). Thus it is no surprise to
find the lemba and bumba escorts guarding together the entrance of Nan-
soukry.
In some areas of Haiti, the term lemba is used to refer to petro rites, and
Simon Herard stated that these are derived directly from Kongo ones. To
my surprise, he corroborated the argument that I had been striving to prove
for over ten years! He is deeply convinced that 'people from the south'-as
he calls them with a hint of scorn in his voice-laid hold of the Kongo
gods who were worshipped at Nansoukry, changed their names and at-
tributes, and made them into loa maluk-wicked loa. Whether this
explanation holds or not, we may presume that the Kongo spirits arrived
by various means in Saint-Domingue. Nansoukry is the high place of the
Kongo cult, but it may not be the only source of petro rites. For instance,
the kita, though commonly placed among the petro loa, are unknown in
Nansoukry. But we must not forget that the religion of the Kikongo-speak-
ing peoples-from the realm of Loango in the north to the kingdom of
Kongo in the south-was not unified. Nowadays, the Woyo of former
Ngoyo kingdom, who had close ties with Loango, know nothing about the
nkita (Mulinda 1985). In contrast, the simbi are worshipped as nature spirits
throughout the Kikongo-speaking zone, and we are not surprised to find
that they play a major role in the Kongo ritual at Nansoukry as well as in
all petro ceremonies.
This mythology seems to be a bricolage of old Kongo elements; spirits
(Simbi, Bumba), along with magicians (Ganga), are part of a mythical army.
This army is at the service of a king whose name does not figure in the
historical chronicles of the Kongo kingdom. This original restructuring
was carried out following a warlike scheme, visibly inspired by the long
resistance of escaped slaves (marrons) living in hiding. The role of these
marrons in the making of voodoo has, no doubt, been underestimated by
historians. Oral tradition relates that a fugitive slave named Figaro founded
the first sanctuary at Nansoukry.
Figaro Pangodin Bazou me'nin lukwenda. This esoteric formula is a serious
explanation of the origin of the Kongo cult. Simon Herard commented
upon it as follows. Figaro Pangodin came from Africa and brought Bazou
with him. Me'nin is a Creole word derived from the French mener, 'to lead'.
In Kikongo, the verb kwenda means 'to leave for' (Swartenbroeckx 1973:
225). It is redundant given the Creole term. Figaro [Pangodin] was a fugitive
slave from Limbe in the north. He had run away from a sugar plantation
and, after passing through Pangodin near Gonaives, founded the sanctuary

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 302 LUC DE HEUSCH

in Nansoukry which, at that time, was a wild place surrounded by forests

and swamps. He is often called simply Figaro or even Gao. Recall that this
name was coined by Beaumarchais for the hero of The Barber of Seville
(1775) and of Marriage (1784), two plays which, after Paris, were performed
several times at Cap-Haitien, the capital of the French Colony (Fouchard
1955). An owner probably named one of his slaves Figaro. If so, he would
not have been the only one to do so, for this name figures on a list of slaves
datingi from 1796 (Debien & Houdaille 1964: 200).
We may conclude that the Kongo cult was brought to Nansoukry before
the end of the colonial period. During the second half of the eighteenth
century, more and more 'Congo' slaves were bcing imported. Moreau de
Saint-Mery (quoted by Debien 1961: 370) wrote at that time 'The most
common Negros and those who are much appreciated are those from the
coast of the Congo and Angola in the colony, they go under the generic
name "Congos". According to the books of an indigo plantation factory from
1777, the 'Congos' are, after Creoles, the largest ethnic group (Debien 1961:
369). In any case, the priest called Don Pedro would have introduced the
petro cult in 1768, apparently before Figaro settled in Nansoukry. But Don
Pedro and Figaro were not the only persons who diffused the Kongo loa.
According to the tradition of the Celixte family in the Leongane area, Tony
Congo introduced these loa. Tony (the diminutive of Antoine) was the
name of a Kongo king who lived during the second half of the seventeenth
century, and there were many Antoines called Tony on eighteenth-century
slave lists (Debien & Houdaille 1964: 192).
What is amazing is that the place where Figaro chose to install a purely
Kongo but thoroughly original cult is located a few kilometres from the
important temple of Souvenance, which is dedicated to the purest
Dahomean cult on the island! Not far from there, in Nanbadjo, another
temple has been built for the nago divinities alone. Side by side but at distinct
sites in this area are the three fundamental components of voodoo. The
triangle delimited by these three temples in the Gonaives countryside covers
three cultural zones, each of which, in spite of syncretism, has kept its
identity. This fact should prompt us to bring historical and structural
approaches together rather than to set them at odds.
Syncretism is a dynamic social phenomenon. In Haiti, as in African
possession cults, new *divinities, often with strange names, appear. But
syncretism is also a structural process. I have tried to show that it can be
approached by adopting two different but complementary perspectives: the
one synchronic, the other diachronic. As I have endeavoured to show here,
all aspects of anthropology cannot be reduced to meaningless, historical
phenomena.

NOTES

This article was first presented as the Henry Myers Lecture, Royal Anthropological In-
stitute, London, 7 May 1986. I am grateful to the FNRS (Belgium), the University of Brus-
sels and the CNRS (France) for their support of the fieldwork in Haiti, which has been
carried out at various times since 1970.

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 LUC DE HEUSCH 303

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& J. Houdaille 1964. Les origines des esclaves aux Antilles. Bull. Inst. franc. Afr. noire
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Kongo 'a Haiti: une approche nouvelle du syncretisme religieux

Resume
Le syncretisme chretien n'est qu'un aspect superficiel du voodoo, la religion populaire
haftienne, qui poss&de deux sources africaines principales. Le culte rada est originaire du
Dahomey, alors que le culte petro, generalement considere comme creole, prend racine
chez les Kongo. Ce double apport est analyse a la fois des points de vue structurel et
historique. Les divinites petro sont associees au feu et a la magie, voire a la sorcellerie; les
plus redoutables d'entre elles doivent parfois etre 'attachees' ou 'enchainees'. Quelques
divinit6s rada, pacifiques et bienveillantes, ont un homologue violent dans le pantheon
petro. A chacun des deux cultes est affecte un autel distinct dans les temples. Dans le nord
de Haiti, pres de Gonaives, un sanctualre est consacre ,au culte de divinites purement kongo,
place sous l'autorite d'un roi et d'une reine qui rappellent l'ancien royaume florissant qui
se developpa a l'embouchure du fleuve Zaire.

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