postcard-type reproductions of saints, for sale at a Port-au-Prince market	sewing sequins on a drapo	Erzilie Frieda on a drapo made in 1994 by Yves Telemark

Erzilie Frieda, one of the manifestations of the female deities named Erzilie, is the urban and Creole incarnation. She enters a vodou ceremony exuding perfumed fragrance, with slices of cake, possibly weeping; she embodies dreams of wealth and wears fantastic costumes and jewels and expects precious gifts at her altar.  She is also somewhat sardonic since she makes fun of excessive accumulation and consumption, so she would seem to serve two needs at once: the desire to have more and the need to think that it is better to have less.  She is associated with the image of the Mater Dolorosa, the weeping Mary.  Does Frieda weep for her lost homeland? But exult in the visual pleasures and fragrances of her new homeland?  Sometimes she is shown without her face, just by her symbols, one of which is the heart with a cross (or sword) in it.
 

Erzilie Danto is represented as a black woman, with scars on her face, and usually with her daughter, Anais.  She is a warrior and she is Frieda's rival.  Frieda is a Rada goddess (one of the "cool" or tranquil gods); Danto is a Petwo goddess-a goddess of passion and emotion, a woman who will fight for what she wants and who will fight to protect her family.
 

bottle with Erzulie Danto chromolith reproduction	Erzulie Danto doll, with 3 children (made by Pierrot Barra in 1992)	drapo made in 1998 by Yves Telemark

Danto usually wears a crown.  Many of the drapos contain circles with diamond-crosses and geometric asterisks representing the symbol for calling on the gods.  The cross within a circle represents the "soul in flight."  It is a Kongo symbol of the relationship of the person to the cosmological universe.   The more geometric patterns usually found around the perimeter of the flags suggest an abstract, aerial view of people dancing the dance of possession.
 

Petwo altar, made for a museum exhibition (1995)	Rada altar, made for a museum exhibition (1995)

Altars are found in temples as well as in individual homes.  The temple is the home for the deities; the altar is the place where offereings are made.  Haitian altars are generally profusely filled with gifts of objects, food, trinkets, and anything which someone thinks the gods would like to have.  They are very colorful places, but the dominant color scheme reflects the family to which the god belongs: red for the Petwo family and blue for the Rada family.
 

La Sirena	Danballa (also spelled Dambalah) (with the artist's name on the bottom)	Danballa (shown by hissymbols)

La Sirena: a mermaid spirit, associated with seduction and wealth; her entry is marked by the sound of the conch shell; her symbols are the comb and mirror. Water is central to vodou imagery, and La Sirena can be contacted through water.  All the female deities are associated with water.
Danballa: the most powerful spirit; compared to a snake coiled around the world; his shape and movements reflect the movements of the sun and the rotation of the earth; eggs are his ritual food; because of the snakes, he is associated with St. Patrick who is believed to represent Danballa in human form. He is also associated with Moses, who, according to African stories of Moses, carried a serpent as his staff.
 

altar for Baron Samedi, museum installation, 1995	drapo for Bosou	drapo for Bosou

Baron Samedi, chief of the Guede spirits (the spirits of the cemetery), is seen wearing a hat with a skull and crossbones, and his body often takes the form of the cross-the intersection of the world of the spirits and the world of the living.  The altar for Baron Samedi shows Sen Jak suspended from the ceiling and the Baron taking the form of the cross on the table.
Bosou is a powerful Petwo spirit who is shown as horned bull.

The gods of Haitian Vodou can have many manifestations, and any vodoun initiate can be turned into a god after death; their origins are diverse: some are from Dahomey while others are from Kongo, or other regions. Although the loua can be grouped into families or tribes (Petwo gods are passionate and fight, the Rada gods are more tranquil, cool and collected), they often wander from one family to another.

The human head unassociated with a saint or god has special meaning because it is the medium for the spirits, and it therefore represents a harmony of inner and outer, visible and invisible "angels." The initiation ceremony for novices into vodou involves an elaborate head washing ceremony in which the heads are wrapped with ingredients that are left on the head during the novice's confinement, perhaps a week.  When the poultice is removed, it is placed in a receptacle which also is a container for the new self of the initiate---large decorated pots with beads and ribbons and ingredients which symbolize the union of the spirit and human being.  The novitiates speak to their pots which seem to become an intermediary between them and their gods; they dance with the pots balanced on their heads, and finally, the pots are placed in an altar.  Women play important roles in most Caribbean religions---not only as priestesses but as the gender more likely to be possessed by the gods.

As you can see, each flag is dedicated to a particular spirit and either contains emblems of that spirit, the face of the spirit, or both.  They are either embroidered, covered with sequins, or made using chromolithographs of a saint. The fusion of Catholic saint with African deity creates an image with double meaning, since the viewer "sees" one image through the other.  In symbolic terms, this reading of one through another can be a metaphor for how much of the religion functions, since the person who is possessed by a god is simultaneously two beings, just as the image on the flag has a dual identity.

Many of the flags, especially the older ones, have geometric patterned backgrounds, while the newer ones are more elaborately designed with the patterns and accompanying symbols of the gods. The geometric backgrounds may be representations of some of the simpler "veve" patterns (symbolic drawings which represent the act of callling on the gods-drawings which seem to replicate the movement of people who are dancing the dance of possession) or they may be representations of the floor patterns of many of the temples and churches used by the Haitians.
 

Gerard Valcin: Ceremony in a Vodun Temple (oil painting, 1963)

In the painting, note the veve drawing on the floor and the creation of a three-dimensional cross with the sword going through the center of the circle and the veve drawing.  Also note how the patterns of the devotees' arms in movement as they dance could be the inspiration for the curling lines and patterns around the borders of many of the drapos.

The borders of some of the drapos may also represent the visual sense of military flags blowing behind a soldier charging into battle, or the heads of devotees dancing at a ritual ceremony. Vodou was always linked to the liberation movement so it is a religion which served revolutionary and political goals for the Haitians.  Some of the patterns of Haitian drapo are actually very explicit re-creations of French military patterns used by Napoleonic troops (the Danballa drapo above may be one example); the use of flags by military regiments was continued by the Haitian military, often for public holidays. The multiple meanings are part of the larger meaning which suggests the union of interior temple settings, people, spiritual and human worlds.  In other words, the drapo is a kaleidoscope of sacred space and ritual space in movement.
 

Drapo for Sen Jak, with a chromolithograph covered in plastic, and a border that resembles a French regimental flag

The older flags were embroidered; the newer ones are usually made with sequins which seem to infuse the flags with spirituality, evoking stained glass windows of churches, and the light of the gods, stars, the flames of candles decorating the altars.  Frieda's flag, for example, conveys the shimmering lights of the church, the regimented flags of the military, swinging arms of the bodies of people at a ceremony, and the flags which might be hanging along the edges of a larger altar.
 

The flags are danced in ceremonies which call the spirits, an act symbolized by the veve on the flags and images of saints symbolizing the gods. The sequins are used because "spirits love light" and they love light because the "spirit is light."  They may also be a transformation of the Kongo tendency to cover the surface of the nkisi and fetish statues with nails and raffia.
More recently, flagmakers have begun to make flags specifically to sell, and one result of this is that American artists have designed veve flags which are made by Haitian workshops; the houngan or priest makes the flags whether they are for spiritual purposes or for sale.

Bottles are another significant form of visual expression in vodou.  They are thought to have their origins in Kongo arts, especially in the nkisi.
 

Wanga, containing zombie, or spirits of the dead	bottle decorated with images of Erzilie Danto

The wanga is a magical object, in this case a "wrapped" bottle with scissors and mirrors. Wrapping on the bottle enhances the sense of secrecy in this case, because whatever is contained within it cannot be seen. The secret is not the question of whether there is something inside; the secret is only that we can't see it.
the magnets at the top of the wanga give it weight, and in this case, the weight of elemental forces.  The scissors cut things so they are tools for creating things but they can also inflict pain.  Scissors are anthropomorphic objects: they seem to have legs and arms especially when they are spread open.
The mirrors on the wanga perform several functions.  They reflect and refract surfaces, and they are circular, the geometric form used to represent the cosmos.  These mirrors are tied with thread which prevents the person who is staring at the bottle from being reflected in it.  But as reflective surfaces they signify water, a sacred symbol in vodou because the spirits live in the world beneath the water.
The colors of this particular bottle---white, red, and black---are central symbolic colors to Kongo religions and to Haiti.  Red signifies the Petwo gods, sexual desire, power, and compromise; white symbolizes reason and truth, health and clarity of vision, and the land of the dead; and black symbolizes guilt and evil, social disorder, rebellion and the intent to kill.  On one level, the colors appear to symbolize different modes of thinking and acting; on another level, they are part of the cosmology: black, or the world of the living, and white, the world of the dead, with the red standing for the sun which orbits between black and white. The position of the scissor fits with this cosmological symbolism of the colors, since the body standing with arms spread out in Kongo symbolism signifies the soul in orbit and it also signifies the person contained within the community.

The sorcerer who made the bottle, before giving it to the person he made it for, performed a ceremony which involved scraping some bone fragments from skulls, mixing them with alcohol and perfume and leaves, burning the mixture, singing and chanting, and pouring it into the bottle. The bottle, containing fragments of a skull, contained death or spirits, but heated up, and heat brings life to death. The bottle is a Haitian version of the Kongo nkisi, many of which also contain mirrors in their stomach, eyes in their "souls."  The skulls, representing the spirits of a dead person, can also be thought of as zombi, and zombi can be thought of as vengeful sprits or protective spirits.

Why has Vodou been able to survive in a changing world? Although Vodou loua are identified with particular Catholic saints, vodou did not survive because of this connection. It survived because the population in Haiti, after the French were expelled, was almost completely of African descent; it survived because Catholicism, unlike Protestantism, encourages or allows the type of synthetic unities seen in vodou between the loa and the saints; it also survived because many Haitian political leaders had close ties to Vodou, in some cases claiming to be houngans; it survived, rather than Christianity, because it is a more comprehensive system of social, spiritual, and cultural life, more family-centered than Christianity, more oriented towards divergent aspects of life and divergent forms of celebration. It survived because of politics: the connection between politics and religion connection can be very strong, providing religion with the sanction of politics and politics with the morality of religion.

Vodou is a religion about family and community, a family and community for people who have throughout their history been forced to leave their homes and create new communities. These new communities may be represented more fully by ritual practices than by place or blood ties between people.

Sources:
Margarite Fernandez Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, eds. Sacred Possessions: Vodou, Santeria, Obeah, and the Caribbean. Rutgers UP: 1997.
Harold Courlander and Remy Bastien. Religion and Politics and Haiti. Institute for Cross-Cultural Research, Wash. D.C., 1966.
Donald J. Cosentino, ed. The Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou.UCLA Fowler Museum, 1995.
Written materials and slides from the Tarble Arts Center exhibition: The Sacred Arts of Haiti, fall 1998.