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mysteries |
Voodoo Sorcery |
Other Information |
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| To the outsider, Voodoo is an exotic mixture of spells, hexes
and zombie curses. But does its power lie in the occult or is there a more
rational explanation?
On September 2nd 1989, Wilfred Doricent, aged 17, was reunited with his family in his home village in southern Haiti. Here teenagers often rebel and leave home, but Wilfred’s case was different. He had been dead for 18 months. His family had witnessed his burial and had the death certificate to prove it. Wilfred had been a promising student, and was adored by his family. But, in march 1988 he grew ill and died. His body quickly became hideously swollen and it smelled rotten, it smelled so bad that his father had to hurry up the burial arrangements. But Wilfred was not dead. Unbeknown to his father, he had been turned into a zombie - a ‘living corpse’. Acting on behalf of enemies of Wilfred’s father in a bitter land dispute, a bokor (a voodoo priest who practises black magic) had administered a powerful coup poudre, a poisonous powder spell, which sent Wilfred into a coma. Shortly afterwards he was declared dead. The night following the funeral, Wilfred’s tomb was broken into and his body removed. The bokor gave Wilfred a drug made from the hallucinogenic plant that Haitians call conconbre Zombi (Zombie’s Cucumber), and slapped him back into something approaching consciousness. Wilfred was then transported in chains, to a remote mountain farm to work as a slave. After 18 months - no one knows how - Wilfred made his way back to his astonished, but delighted family. Later, Wilfred told a family friend that he had been aware of everything that had happened to him as he was being prepared for burial, but that he could not speak or move a muscle. He recalled the lid being nailed to the coffin, and hearing his family crying as he was lowered into his Haitian-style grave, which is a concrete tomb above the ground. Wilfred was not like he was before the ordeal though, he was dull and sullen, and he would sometimes run away from home for no apparent reason. A doctor that was called in to examine Wilfred, claimed that the condition was due to his having suffered brain damage fro lack of oxygen while he was in the coffin awaiting the release. Wilfred’s story sounds like something out of a horror film, but it is just one of many cases that come out of Haiti, about people that have been turned into zombie slaves. So, what is the basis of the power that the Voodoo priest has, that allows him to make the healthy die and the dead to walk again? Voodoo, also known as Vodoun in Haiti, is dominated by the belief of the loa, they are the spirits of the land, air, fire and water, and also of dead ancestors. The followers of Voodoo believe that every aspect of life is influenced by these loa, they are the manifestations of God - Le Gran Maitre - and who act as his intermediaries in the affairs of humans. The thing that makes Voodoo unique among the Carribean religions, is that it owes a large part of the belief system to the dark side of human nature. This is reflected in the activities of the Petro loa- ill-tempered, menacing and vengeful spirits - who are extremely powerful. Petro loa will only help someone if a promise of service is made to them, and they usually take violent revenge if they someone who they have help does not fulfill their part of the bargain. Some of the Petro loa are called on to as partners in black magic, to carry out harmful services in exchange for a substantial sacrifice. This sacrifice most often takes the form of a pig, goat or calf, and on the odd occasion a corpse from the local graveyard. But there are some very rare occasions when the sacrifice has been alive at the time. As recently as 1994, shortly before the Americans invaded Haiti, a three day Voodoo ceremony was held in the ruling junta’s military headquarters to prevent the US invasion from going ahead. During this ceremony, the most violent Petro loa were invoked, and there were unconfirmed reports that there were as many as 13 live sacrifices, one of which was a pregnant girl. Perhaps it was coincidence but by mid October three American GI’s had killed themselves, and a fourth Geraldo Luciano, had blew his brains out while happily playing a game of cards. In a country where the priests are most often the local law-enforcers, and there are political and judicial murders all the while, no one can say whether or not the human sacrifice occurs or not. There is no doubt though that the dark magic also called the ‘work of the left hand’ is practised by a number of sects, that have splintered off from the main Voodoo communities. These sects operate under the strictest secrecy and are usually shunned by mainstream Voodoo practitioners. The two most famous sects the Bizango and the Cochon Gris, are renowned for making human sacrifices, calling up the dead for revenge or harm on others, and making zombies. Which they do allegedly for unadulterated behaviour, and land theft. In the remoter parts of Haiti, Voodoo is very powerful, for example the priest at Wilfred’s local church says that Haitian’s are 90% Catholic, 10% Protestant and 100% Voodoo, and that virtually everyone believes to some degree or another in zombies. It is not the fear of the zombies that scares people in Haiti though, it is the fear of being turned into one! There is no greater torment to a Voodoo faithful, than that person losing their soul, which is what happens, they say, when you become a zombie. After the resurrection by the bokor, which must be done within a few days of burial, to prevent death by suffocation, the zombies senses are numb, and he will have a loss of memory and personality. This makes them easy to manipulate, and they are often used by the bokor, on building sites and on farms as manual labour. Some zombies, do manage to escape however. It is claimed that the spell can be broken only if bokor that casts it dies, or if the zombie is fed salt. But, it must be said, that one of the main reasons that the zombie escapes is because it is allowed to, due to the brain damage being too severe because of the time spent in the coffin, and as such the zombie is of little use. It is not easy for the zombie to return to his old way of life. Unlike Wilfred’s case, the family often rejects the zombie that returns home. They are usually feared, because according to the beliefs of the Voodoo followers, they have special powers, which they may then use to seek revenge on those that harmed them. After they return home, they usually face a life as a social outcast. When some relatives die, the families leave nothing to chance, in addition to performing the rituals that send the spirit on its way, they also remove the head of the recently departed and pierce the heart with a steak. Just in case they turn into a zombie. The fear of being turned into a zombie, that is prevalent in Haiti shows how powerful Voodoo sorcery is. But how potent is it? Dr Wade Davis has done extensive research on this phenomenon. He believes that part of the answer lies in the poisonous potion that the bokor gives to his victims, to set the process of turning the person into a zombie started. The poison is made from a mixture of:
It is so potent that it only has to be touched, to be absorbed through the skin. In Wade’s opinion, the Voodoo bokor’s are skilled at poisoning, who know exactly how much of each substance to give to the person, so that it only slows the metabolism down and does not kill the person outright. After the person has been buried the bokor breaks into the grave and administers the antidote, the ‘zombie cucumber’, as it is called.
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Sources: The X Factor
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