The heritage requirements and determination by the lwa, can limit the claims-making options available to practitioners. Non-Haitians can claim some level of belonging
through spiritual rebirth on Haitian soil, but they will never fully be Haitian. Both Haitian and non-Haitian Vodouisants can only initiate into the levels determined by the lwa, meaning ambition is constrained by decisions outside of the individual. However, reputation, konesans, and gossip afford tools for social mobility within the faith
community. By leveraging horizontal networks and vertical claims to authority through knowledge, practitioners can have agency over what is otherwise discussed as a pathway that is deterministic. These networks and knowledge access may include the possibility for non-Haitians to find alternate ways to claim and prove belonging.
Negotiating position through network building, knowledge, and discourse can create leverage to negotiate power and positionality even among people of the same rank. Social positioning and mobility can have real world impacts on financial and social realities of practitioners. Individuals with strong reputations and networks can support themselves financially through client work and rely upon a safety net of support when they fall on hard times. Gossip can, as Peter Wilson suggests, push others down while pulling up the speaker (1974). In Vodou, this is particularly important because gossip can cause spiritual harm if not deflected and redirected. It does not merely impact social positioning – it can impact health, financial status, personal relationships, and other important elements that impact the lives of both individuals and their communities. Someone who is a victim of gossip cannot be apathetic. They must work to counter it for their own protection and that
of the community. Therefore, this is a dynamic process of reaching outwards, upwards, and pushing and pulling within systems where everyone else is doing the same.
This dynamism may provide some tools for staking claims upon renegotiated moral geographies of belonging. Building reputations and networks can mean support for claims-making and shifts in practice. However, the more public a performance of belonging is the more it is exposed to the potential for gossip. Americans, Haitian Americans, and Haitians may also vary in their abilities to leverage the same networks given cultural, geographic, and linguistic barriers. Therefore, while the last chapter focused on external markers of belonging related to heritage, this chapter focuses on the distinctions within as expressed through knowledge and practice.
Authority and Reputation in Haiti
Once kanzo initiation ceremonies are underway they are exhausting marathons of dancing, singing, ritual offerings, and prayers. However, there are lulls in the action in the early afternoons and the oppressive heat invites locals to rest in the peristyle. The temple is used for a variety of purposes aside from sacred rituals. It is where we slept but it was also a space for cooking, midday naps, gossip, and playing. One such afternoon I found myself enjoying the relatively cooler air of a peristyle in the outskirts of Jacmel, Haiti. The next stage of the initiation services did not happen until late that night, so those of us without assignments were enjoying the opportunity to be idle. One of the children was napping on a banana mat in the corner. Two other children and an adult had
me settle into a chair to read. My attempts to read thwarted, I was chatting with some of the house members who were relaxing and listening to the radio. One of the houngan asked me if I wanted to see something. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “sure.”
The houngan winked at me and pulled out his ritual rattle – the asson - with a flourish. He nodded his head towards another houngan motioning him to pay attention. Then he walked slowly towards him as he shook the asson first to his left, then his right, and then flicked it upright. The other houngan mimicked this movement. The battle had begun. They stood facing one another with one hand clenched behind their back to
prevent anyone touching their palms, which could take away some of their power. In their other hand they held the asson with its attached tiny silvery bell. They circled one another and shook the rattle at their side. The beads strung along the gourd made a Chuh Chuh
Chuh sound as the bell tinkled high and demanding with each shake. Quickly the
challenger houngan stopped, rolled the asson along his arm from shoulder to the tips of his fingers and then looked expectantly at his opponent. His foe smirked. This was an easy one – everyone knew the proper response. He rolled his asson along his thigh starting at the hip and pulling off at the knee. The challenger houngan nodded and once again they were circling and shaking their rattles.
They went back and forth testing one another’s sacred knowledge – konesans – trying to find a prompt that the other would not get. The foe stopped, touched his asson to his head and waited. The challenger motioned to his heart. They each nodded and resumed. The challenger motioned towards the poto mitan – the central post, which holds up the temple and connects the earth and spiritual realm. The movement was a new one for me
and I held my breath as I awaited the response. The foe hesitated a moment and then pointed towards the devo – the private altar space connected to the temple where only members of the house are allowed. The challenger accepted this response and they returned to circling. After challenging one another for a few more minutes they found themselves equally matched and ended the battle in a good natured way.
At most of the fetes I attended these battles happened in cramped Boston basements and I had to peek through walls of bodies and arms to get glimpses. I knew they were important but I was missing a lot of information about how they were evaluated and what they were communicating. During fetes, these battles can go on for lengthy periods of time. If someone cannot formulate a response or responds incorrectly they get a chance to try another prompt. Yet, each mistake harms their reputation because it shows they do not have the konesans, which is at the heart of a spiritual expert’s power. Konesans is learned through intense study with their spiritual father or mother as well as given directly from the lwa in dreams, signs, gut feelings, and readings. The houngan or manbo who wins the battle proves their konesans runs deeper and their reputation within the community grows while the loser’s may diminish. Battles are opportunities to gain reputation but they are risky if the houngan or manbo are not ready.
When I had observed these battles before, I knew which direction the battle was going by watching the faces of the participants and listening to the responses of the crowd. However, I was still struggling to understand the meaning of the movements. As I watched the houngan circle and test one another I suddenly thought of Turner’s work with myth and structuralism where he argues that, “in binary opposition on each plane
each symbol becomes univocal” (1969, 42). Turner, building upon French structuralists such as Levi-Strauss, claims that symbols are meaningless unless placed in opposition to one another. The different layers of the ritual and myth give the symbols a multitude of meanings, but through separating out the layers and looking at each motif and its
opposite, their significance becomes clear. One can see their purpose for the tradition and how they relate back to the social structure.
My fault had been in trying to understand the pieces separately rather than examining their meanings in opposition. They were not merely proving knowledge about separate pieces of information. Together they were mapping the edges of knowledge and in doing so were speaking about the whole. When presented with one piece, the appropriate response was to find the other side of that dimension of spiritual and cultural knowledge. And then together they revealed the boundaries and relationships of those aspects. This is what allowed novelty. Savvy priests could introduce new challenges or responses that the community could immediately evaluate if they shared that knowledge base. They were not simply memorizing the dance – they were having a conversation. And like all
conversations, this language meant the ability to innovate and respond to novel prompts. While I was still trying to put this together, the houngan asked if I wanted to try. He showed me how to stand and told me to imitate holding an asson in my right hand. He invited me with a flick of his rattle and then we were circling one another. He shook his
asson and bell and I mimicked him silently with my hand keeping the rhythm. First, he
challenged me by rolling the rattle along his leg from hip to knee. This was the response in the previous battle so I tried the challenge. I brushed my hand along my left arm from
shoulder to fingertips. He laughed and then nodded his approval. As I had suspected, what was important was the relationship not the order. He repeated some of the call and responses I had seen earlier and I managed to reproduce them well enough to be
accepted. Then he challenged me by making short stabbing motions on his stomach. I paused. This was a new one and I did not know how to respond. I tried making the same motion on my mouth thinking it may have something to do with hunger and food. He shook his head. I’d gotten it wrong.
I shrugged off the mistake and we circled again. Then he threw another new one at me. He walked over to a candle and motioned to the flame. I thought about it for a moment. In Vodou, there is a relationship between fire and water. During the rada portion of the fetes, every lwa is presented with both water and candles. So I walked to the white enamel bowl by the poto mitan and motioned to the water it held. He threw his head back, laughed, and called the other houngan over to tell him what I had done. The other houngan widen his eyes in surprise and patted my shoulder in approval. They were both impressed that I had gotten it right. They told me most of the non-Haitians who came to visit had a hard time understanding. But perhaps I had some konesans. The lwa and the manbo I had studied with in Boston must have trained me well.
After this experience, the houngan were much more open to discussing the battles and their meanings. They explained that these battles pull upon proverbs, songs, and sacred Vodou knowledge to test whether the opponent understands them in a holistic way. It is not enough to know that the poto mitan and devo exist and how they are used in a service. A knowledgeable priest must know how they relate to one another and work together.
The poto mitan is the public ritual focus, the devo is the private house focus. The poto
mitan links the earthen floor of a temple in Haiti to the spiritual plane across the waters
where the lwa and ancestors reside. The devo is Ginen itself – Africa and the place where the lwa rest. The poto mitan is vertical while the devo is horizontal. When drawing most
veve, the cornmeal designs that represent and call the lwa, the artist begins with the
intersection of horizontal and vertical. Yet, they are also ritually set such that they become three-dimensional. They are embedded into the different planes of spiritual and earthly. And together the horizontal and vertical maps the borders of the really-real.
Practice requires all of these pieces working together. Vodou, it was explained to me, is about the relationship between humans and the mysteries and the obligations, healing, and respect that entails. These two pieces – the poto mitan and devo – hint at this larger intent and connection. Vodou is not merely the pieces but the ways in which those pieces intersect and construct the larger whole. Performing this konesans is vital for establishing religious authority and reputation.
Konesans was a fundamental way that individuals and houses claimed positioning.
Yet, it is also interesting to see how my performance of knowledge impacted my
interpersonal relationships with the houngan. Though as a white American woman I am very much an outsider and remain as such, this example suggests that evidence of
konesans may be able to rework existing ideas about positioning.
Later in the same fieldwork period, I had the opportunity to test this in a public
setting. During the public celebration for the end of initiation, I was challenged to another
responses. But with hundreds of eyes on me it was a daunting experience. The manbo was handed the asson and it became clear she was the one I would battle. As my sponsor, my performance would therefore speak not only for myself but her as well.
We circled one another as my heart pounded. I tried to ignore the sweat in my eyes as I ran through the different routines in my head. Abruptly, she stopped and rolled the
asson along her arm. I quietly sighed in relief and responded by rolling mine along my
leg. She nodded and we continued. We went back and forth with fairly easy challenges. But just as I started to feel confident, I messed up. I realized it halfway through my response but at that point it was too late to change anything. She looked at me in disappointment and shook her head.
We continued pacing. She stopped and in a short fast motion imitated slicing open her throat with the asson. I did not know this one. I pushed down the urge to panic. I could feel everyone staring at me waiting to see how I would respond. I recalled the houngan telling me that if ever someone symbolically threatens your spiritual mother or father during a ritual such as this that you should jump in. The appropriate response was to perform a particular dance that shows obedience to them. It was a way of saying you would protect and honor them. As my manbo teacher, she was also my manmi (mother.)
I walked up to her, bowed, and then stepped left, right, left, spun, and then knelt before her. She put her hands on her hips, smiled in slight surprise, and nodded. I could hear the audience murmuring and a few people exclaimed, “Oh oh!” which is a common Haitian phrase people utter when surprised. The manbo helped me up and gave me a ritual handshake used as a sign of respect among Vodouisants. I smiled and returned the