Samedi: Desounen

The end has come and the spirits we met over the last two Saturdays have left the loved one for the stars or the sea, the earth or the sky. Or have they? In Voudon practice, one can never be too careful when dealing with the dead. Time to call on the local priest or priestess and make sure things are done properly.

The ritual of Desounen, which comes from the French verb disunir meaning to separate, is performed as close to a person’s death as possible. Minutes ticking away only add to the anxiety of the living and the confusion on the gros bon ange. This spirit doesn’t necessarily know how to – or even that it should – separate from its corps cadavre. It is believed that the gros bon ange will hover about its body and possibly even move around its house like a ghost. It is dangerous to the living in the same way that contagious disease is. The spirit now carries death with it and it needs to be ushered off to Ginen with all haste.

Desounen is a complex ritual that includes saluting the deceased and honoring his or her spirits, including the met tet which is akin to the person’s “guardian lwa”. Both the gros bon ange and the met tet must be appeased and sent on their way or there will be repercussions for the living. Careless family members – wives/husbands and children in particular – will be visited with ill luck and sickness until the ritual is properly taken care of. Very few voudonists would even consider skipping this step so you can imagine the anxiety that a major disaster or epidemic could potentially engender. What if the local priest/priestess is otherwise engaged or injured or dead themselves? This pressure on the deceased’s family makes a very bad situation even worse.

If done in a timely and correct manner, however, Desounen will put the minds of the living at rest and signal readiness for the funeral and the wake thereafter. As with all cultures, but particularly those that live close to the Earth, death is cause for concern and mourning, ritual and gathering. And a chance for renewal as well.

Header: St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans

Samedi: Les Anges

Last Saturday we met the corpse cadavre and the nanm, two of the four components that make up the human being in the world view of Voudon. Today, a look at the Angels, the other two pieces of the puzzle.

The ti bon ange, or the little good angel, is probably an off shoot – at least in part – of Voudon’s contact with the Catholic Church. On the one hand, this angel is a guiding force common to all moralities through out the world. The ti bon ange is what we might call the conscience. It makes a person feel good or guilty about their interactions with others and it tells a person what to embrace and what to avoid. On the other, it is the portion of a person that can be attacked by unseen forces. Unknown and mysterious illnesses are often said to be caused by spirits or even a boko (or bokor – a person who practices magick “with the left hand”) working spells against the ti bon ange.

Of the four animating spirits, the ti bon ange is probably the least feared by the living after death. It escapes the body with the last breath and rises past the stars to greet Bon Dieu or Bondye. Here, in the home of God, the ti bon ange will account for its life on Earth and then drift off into the ether, never to touch the mortal realm again. It is this little twist of a reckoning before God that makes the ti bon ange somewhat similar to the Jewish/Christian/Islamic concept of a soul but only, in all fairness, very vaguely.

The gros bon ange, or the big good angel, is the little piece of Bon Dieu inside us all. It imparts personality, emotions, creativity and the ability to think. It is the part of a person that collects a lifetime worth of experience and knowledge and holds on to that individuality for eternity. It is also the portion of a person that is displaced during possession by a lwa and the part of us that wanders in dreams. The gros bon ange is each person’s portion of immortality.

This angel must be expelled from the body at death through appropriate ritual and burial. Otherwise, it can cause trouble for the living. Ideally the gros bon ange will make its way back to Ginen, which is generally thought to be somewhere under the ocean. This is where the lwa live and where the gros bon ange will reside as an ancestral spirit who, if properly called up, will help its living descendants and, in some cases, become a lwa in its own right.

The spirit world of Voudon is more complex and varied than that of most modern religions, even in reference to a single individual. But that, to my mind, is what makes it so fascinating. Surely each of us is more than one simple soul. Benedictions a vous ~

Header: Ti bon ange card from the New Orleans Voodoo Tarot by Sallie Ann Glassman

Samedi: La Corps et Le Nanm

Every metaphysical discipline (I like to call them that because I think of the phrase as more inclusive than the word “religion”) has its own mythology of the soul. What happens to a person or animal or both after death is an important part of human thought, and must have given our ancestors a lot to debate about. Some animating force leaves a person when they die. But what is it and what happens next. Voudon, of course, has an answer that satisfies its world view and this Samedi and next we will meet the four components that make up the body and spirit of a voudonist.

The belief that all things, rocks, trees, water, bugs, animals, humans and so much more are part of the great God known as the Bon Dieu or Bondye is central to Voudon. There is nothing and no one left out. Bon Dieu animates us all but is so far from us, so busy with an entire Universe of worries and joys, that it (God is not thought of as male or female in Voudon) cannot do more than simply give us a bit of its energy and then let the intercession of both good and bad spirits help us along through life.

There are four components to the human creature, most of which are shared by other life on Earth with the important exception of just one. We will talk about the spiritual components next week. For today let us look at the mortal/physical portions of all things.

First is the body in which we abide known as the corps cadavre. It is not hard to imagine that this refers to the physical body which begins to deteriorate almost immediately after death. Corps cadavre literally translated means “body corpse” and at that point the meaning is clear. We are walking around in an animated shell, beautiful, strong, capable and intricate, but destined to rot from the inside out. Though not pretty, the concept is certainly honest.

The nanm is usually translated from Creole/kreyol as “soul” but this is deceptive. In fact, the nanm is an Earth-bound, animating force shared by all creatures on our planet. It allows us to move, talk and function while alive. When we die it quickly and without encouragement returns to the Earth from which it came. The idea of the nanm is not necessarily from either African or European spiritual traditions and could very well have come from the native Arawak and Taino people that originally inhabited Hispaniola.

And so we will end for today. Bon Samedi ~

Header: Photograph by the amazing Conrad Louis-Charles; visit his website here