Incarnating Spirits, Composing Shrines, and Cooking Divine Power inVodún

Abstract

In this article I consider the ways in which shrine building, adornment, and the resulting experience of secrecy that emanates from shrines supports the building of new transnational networks and diasporas that are beginning to encourage a conceptual expansion of the African-Atlantic world. To achieve this I focus on how strategic choices in ritual flexibility and experimentation in shrine-building work to support the transnationalization of religions such as Vodún as they move from space to space, and how the religion's material culture and repertoire re-localize as social and national spaces shift. In so doing, I argue that processes of secrecy, which in Vodún are typically tethered to religious objects such as shrines, encourage -instead of restrict -the global expansion of West African religions.

Fá Divination, Well-being, and Coolness in Bénin, West Africa

“…Apart from the contents of Gbădù 's four warty calabashes, to make Gbădù , the cosmic womb of creation, one must also use the womb of a once-living woman (Bay 1998;Landry 2016;Maupoil 1943). While Bay and Maupoil have supposed that the womb must be from a woman who 'died during pregnancy' (Bay 1998, 258), I was taught that the womb must be from a family matriarch who bequeathed the use of her organ before her death to make the shrine that would come to protect and ensure the growth of the family.20 Bay argues that the use of a woman's womb in the construction of Gbădù points to 'the hostility of the vodun to the female' (1998,258).…”

“…I felt it was important to fulfill the oaths of my initiation and listen to Jean's advice. I became a diviner's apprentice with the understanding that I must only do so if I was able to submit to the possibility of belief (Landry 2008(Landry , 2016Stoller and Olkes 1989). I promised Jean that I would take my oath of initiation seriously, and this meant following his advice, even when it was challenging to do so.…”

Between Electricity and Spirit: Paranormal Investigation and the Creation of Doubt in England

“…Tanya Luhrmann (:xviii) observed that in the contemporary United States the “supernatural is often treated as an entertaining fantasy.” The same can be said of Britain. However, people across the world routinely come to experience (Klin‐Oron ), know (Luhrmann ; Keane ), and trust (Landry ) incorporeal entities such as gods, spirits, demons, aliens, and angels. In the face of these varied, rich ways of understanding the supernatural, English paranormal investigators’ sustained attempts and failures to establish satisfactory knowledge of or belief in ghosts appear all the more curious.…”

“…Critics have challenged its ethnocentricity (Asad ; Ruel ), its immeasurability and analytic ambiguity (Needham ), and its attendant power relations (Asad ). Anthropologists have responded to arguments for and against belief (Carlisle and Simon ; Lindquist and Coleman ) by ethnographically mapping the particular ways that people orient themselves to these supernatural beings, including material relations (Keane ), trust (Landry ), evidentiary procedures (Holbraad ), and psychological practices (Luhrmann ).…”

BLURRING BOUNDARIES: NOTES ON ETHNOGRAPHY AND THE HOLY HUSTLERS OF BOTSWANA - Richard Werbner, director. Holy Hustlers. 2009. 53 minutes. English subtitles. United Kingdom. International Centre for Contemporary Cultural Research, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester. No price reported. - Richard Werbner, director. Counterpoint One. 2011. 37 minutes. United Kingdom. Royal Anthropological Institute. No price reported. - Richard Werbner, director. Counterp

“…In Holy Hustlers, Werbner shows his viewers how congregational families rally together in their desire to fight against witchcraft and are subsequently emboldened, just as are diviners and priests of autochthonous gods, by evidence of a prophet’s or ritual’s efficacy. Whereas a priest of the “old gods” might develop trust in a shrine that answers his or her wishes (Landry 2016), Boitshepelo’s prophets find confidence in their capacity to predict impending storms, illnesses, and misfortune. In the film’s final and most provocative scene, Boitshepelo and his followers descend upon a Botswana refreshment bar that has purportedly been infiltrated by evil witches.…”