Ritual Performance and Religious Experience: A Service for the Gods in Southern Haiti

Abstract

Offertory ritual in Haitian voodoo is examined from the point of view of the participants. The implications of the structure and the organization of worship for the subjective experience of the devotes is explored. Such a view highlights spirit possession and acoustic/kinetic performance as the most salient features of ritual within this religious system. The design and the success of ritual are predicated on the articulation of basic theological tenets with an aesthetic principle for collective participation in song and dance. It is argued that previous analyses of voodoo tend to fragment and/ or objectify this fundamental ritual process. A perspective which confronts the act of worship on its own terms, as a coherent and meaningful event in the religious lives of the faithful, leads to a reformulation of some traditional anthropological questions concerning the culture-history, function, and psychological significance of Haitian voodoo.

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