American Voudou: Journey Into a Hidden World (55 page)

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Authors: Rod Davis

Tags: #Body; Mind & Spirit, #General, #Religion, #Ethnic & Tribal, #Social Science, #Ethnic Studies, #African American Studies, #test

BOOK: American Voudou: Journey Into a Hidden World
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Page 342
voudouits magical content. "VoudouismCharms of Wonderful Efficacy Compounded of Snakes, Toads, Frogs, Cats Ears and Lizard Eyes," exclaimed the
Daily States
of August 26, 1881. The
States
also ran a piece October 15, 1899 under the headlines: "Sambo and Evil Spirits, Charms, Dreams and Birds of Ill-OmenSatan's Winged FriendsThe Rabbit's Foot a White Man's CharmCoon's Eyes Rather in FavorBirds That Are Feared, Hatched or Destroyed." The article recounts a number of alleged charms and spells, but first puts everything in context:
Of superstitions about human beings the most notable is the belief in the voodoo, which is a charm cast upon a person or animal, and the voodoo doctor, who is the person able to cast the charm. Some voodoo charms are cast by incantations and some by the evil eye, some by merely wishing harm to the objects intended to be injured. It is noteworthy that no voodoo, or voodoo doctor, is credited with power to do good. The working of the charm is always inimical. The voodoo man can do harm to an enemy, but no benefit to his employer, save such indirect benefit as may accrue from the enemy's hurt. In all the wide range of negro superstition there is nothing which will be productive of beneficient results, save only a few love charms and dreams which tell the dreamer how he may find money. Otherwise it is all gloomy and hurtful.
This level of reporting is unequivocal in its contempt and hostility towards voudou, but it was not hate that really undercut the religion as a valid theology. Many religions have existed amid mere hate. The fate of voudou in the South, and then the

 

Page 343
rest of the country, however, was to be reduced to a sham, an outright con game that no person of intelligence or character, black or white, would truck with except out of a Kiplingesque bemusement. And then, of course, to draw back from, withtimes being what they wereunflinching Victorian judgement. Even critics of the Jazz Age in the early twentieth century, as the Catholic writer Sir Richard R. Terry in
Voodooism in Music
, a 1934 polemic published under Vatican authority, were able to draw on this well of opprobrium:
My personal object[ion] to jazz is not that of the newspaper correspondent. It is of a more serious nature. I see its danger as an instrument in the service of the strange and subversive cults that are furtively feeling their way into the Europe of today. If I single out Voodoo it is because I lived for some years amongst Negroes; not the sophisticated Negro of the United States, but the more primitive type of the West Indies.... Music of a certain type (and jazz is now approximating to that type) is such an important adjunct to certain degenerate cults (Voodooism is only one of them) ... that it seems something of a duty to make a note of the direction in which the White races are driftingall unconsciously. [pp. 1617]
The
Sunday States
of October 7, 1900, though, perhaps best rounds out yellow journalism's encounter with black spirituality. "Voudouing in the CityVicious Practice Has Not Yet Died Out," warned the headline, this time augmented by a pencil drawing of two coffins, one opened to reveal a skeleton. The subheads continued: "Many Cases in CourtQueer Articles Used in Negro WitcheryRecent Case in PointCoffin and Acces-

 

Page 344
sories Found on a Step." The piece went on to summarize as well as any other single document, the attitudes of the day:
A gruesome practice, most prevalent in and almost entirely confined to the Crescent City and towns of Louisiana where the traditions of old time slavery among the negroes still prevail, is the art of "hoo-dooing," or more properly speaking, "voudouing," since the first is a corruption of the second expression.
.... It is an historical fact that the natives of the dark continent are wont to practice such weird incantations to dispel evil spirits (much as did the aborigines of America, the North American Indians), and to bring ill fortune to their enemies, or to bring upon them pestilence, famine and misfortune in armseven extermination.
During slavery times the slave owners of the South experienced incalculable difficulty with their charges through the fear engendered by the "vou-dou" artists' subtle, and to the ignorant minds of the blacks, terrifying practices. The legends of the "you-dou" have been passed down from generation to generation of the negro in this country, and naturally enough have found an easy lodging place in the minds of many of the more ignorant whites. It is by no means uncommon to hear of the arrest of white persons who are charged by others with attempting to ''hoo-doo" them, though fortunately for the latter race, the practice is confined entirely to the grossly ignorant classes.
.... All that is necessary to scare a negro half out of his wits is for another to mysteriously threaten to have him or her "hoo-dooed," then to

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