This essay decenters notions of centrality and periphery as we aim to delineate the metaphysical elements of Haitian Vodou, a Diasporic religion in the Americas, and the manner in which its metaphysics becomes a national ethos of sorts, rooted in time, both past and present. We aim to use Danbala and Ayida as motif to explore Vodou hierophanies and irruptions of the sacred; as motif of negotiated relationships with divine energies, of ritual lineage and human ancestry, of complex gender notions; and as meditations on the natural world. These themes reveal important notions of oneness of being, of equilibrium and balance, as well as konesans, the all-encompassing wisdom that merges with knowledge—all represented by the great cosmic egg of the rainbow-serpent entities Danbala and Ayida.

Invisible powers can be made visible. They can be made visible by action, acts by humans on the great stage of life. In Vodou, the sevitè, women and men who serve the spirits by literally embodying the divine Lwa, les invisibles, manifest themselves during sèvis, the ceremonies and rituals in which trances occur. During the sèvis, the invisible and visible interact with surprising intimacy. Invisible powers can also be illuminated through research. This volume presents the work of prominent scholars in the field of Vodou studies who offer their expansive views of a religious system which has generally been either unseen or misperceived.For most of the past five centuries, Western civilization has deliberately demonized peoples of African descent as an easy justification for their enslavement. Africans were considered to be less than human. Their physical features were declared repulsively ugly. Their cultures, denigrated. Their religions? Nonexistent, or a compendium of heteroclite, ill-conceived notions of noxious superstitions emanating from pre-literate and pre-scientific peoples who never quite rose from practicalities into the rarefied realms of abstract thinking. As logic, sophisticated science, languages, and religion became the apanage of the West, African religions were dismissed with terms such as polytheism, primitivism, paganism, heathenism, and animism, seen through European eyes as impediments to progress and material development. The patronization that informed the "white man's burden" became a liberal notion whereby the little brown brother might be educated and elevated beyond his primitive beliefs. And why not try? Many brown brothers and sisters fell into the trap, abandoning their genetic and cultural inheritances.This predjudice is still common currency in American discourse. "Voodoo economics" or "voodoo politics" are part of a political arsenal in which "black" magic defines the Other from American goodness and munificence. Today, Western powers continue to meddle in others' affairs via government, the private sector, and through missionary workers acting as "agents of civilization." Hollywood, the film industry, and the media perpetuate negative stereotypes. The United States and-by extensionother Caribbean and Latin American republics, justify the military occupation of Haiti using the same "white man's burden" principles. As slaves were denied their full humanity, Haiti is denied its sovereignty.Generations of educated Haitians, taught to speak and write in French, were also taught to embrace the ideals of their imperialist neighbors and the logic of colonial or neocolonial power relationships, individually and collectively deprecating Haiti, its citizens and its unique culture. The chapter by Carrol F. Coates is particularly significant in this regard. He studied a half dozen novelists who, though none admitted to practicing Vodou, have generally given a positive spin to Vodou. One author in particular proudly confessed to interviewing houngan, priests, in his effort at verisimilitude. ...

The earthquake of January 12, 2010, was not the first, nor will it be the last, to hit Haiti, a volcanic land traumatized by natural and man-made disasters from its beginning as a colony and sovereign nation. In the throes of rein-venting itself politically, socially, and culturally since the overthrow of the Duvalier dictatorship, 1957-1986, Haiti now has to reinvent itself physically. Are there bounds to the Haitians’ vaunted resilience? The author proposes to examine the aftermath of the “Goudougoudou,” as Haitians now call the event, relating it to other events that have taxed Haitian resolve over the course of two centuries.

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L'Idée, quand elle s'estcompletement incorporée à l'êtremoral, devient aussi impulsiveque le sentiment, se transformeon peut dire en sentiment.— D. Bellegarde.Louis-Dantès Bellegarde, (1877-1966), is acknowledged generally to have been the most significant and influential diplomat produced by the Republic of Haiti in this century. His first diplomatic assignment came fortuitously at age forty-four, when President Philippe-Sudre Dartiguenave appointed him on an impulse to the Paris legation, the Holy See, and to the League of Nations in 1921. In that period, he also served as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (The Hague), and was the Honorary President of the Second Pan-African Congress held under the aegis of W. E. B. DuBois. Previously, from age twenty-seven, he had occupied high governmental positions at the sub-cabinet and then cabinet level, primarily in the fields of education and agriculture. His formal training had been in law, banking, and commerce. That particular training was to serve him well, but color his perspective. The League's Council named him to the Commission of Slavery and Forced Labour in 1924. In 1927, he was a special guest at the Fourth Pan-African Congress held in New York. Later, in 1930, President Louis-Eugène Roy appointed him anew to France and the League of Nations where again he created a sensation.

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