Vodou En Vogue

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Vodou en Vogue

Author : Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469674025
Total Pages : 239 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis Vodou en Vogue by : Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha

Download or read book Vodou en Vogue written by Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2023-04-18 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Haitian Vodou, spirits impact Black practitioners' everyday lives, tightly connecting the sacred and the secular. As Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha reveals in this richly textured book, that connection is manifest in the dynamic relationship between public religious ceremonies, material aesthetics, bodily adornment, and spirit possession. Nwokocha spent more than a decade observing Vodou ceremonies from Montreal and New York to Miami and Port-au-Prince. She engaged particularly with a Haitian practitioner and former fashion designer, Manbo Maude, who presided over Vodou temples in Mattapan, Massachusetts, and Jacmel, Haiti. With vivid description and nuanced analysis, Nwokocha shows how Manbo Maude's use of dress and her production of ritual garments are key to serving Black gods and illuminate a larger transnational economy of fashion and spiritual exchange. This innovative book centers on fashion and other forms of self-presentation, yet it draws together many strands of thought and practice, showing how religion is a multisensorial experience of engagement with what the gods want and demand from worshippers. Nwokocha's ethnographic work will challenge and enrich readers' understandings not only of Vodou and its place in Black religious experience but also of religion's entanglements with gender and sexuality, race, and the material and spiritual realms.

Vodou en Vogue

Author : Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781469674032
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Vodou en Vogue by : Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha

Download or read book Vodou en Vogue written by Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Haitian Vodou, spirits impact Black practitioners' everyday lives, tightly connecting the sacred and the secular. As Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha reveals in this richly textured book, that connection is manifest in the dynamic relationship between public religious ceremonies, material aesthetics, bodily adornment, and spirit possession"--

Vodou en Vogue

Author : Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781469674001
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Vodou en Vogue by : Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha

Download or read book Vodou en Vogue written by Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha and published by . This book was released on 2023-06-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Haitian Vodou, spirits impact Black practitioners' everyday lives, tightly connecting the sacred and the secular. As Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha reveals in this richly textured book, that connection is manifest in the dynamic relationship between public religious ceremonies, material aesthetics, bodily adornment, and spirit possession. Nwokocha spent more than a decade observing Vodou ceremonies from Montreal and New York to Miami and Port-au-Prince. She engaged particularly with a Haitian practitioner and former fashion designer, Manbo Maude, who presided over Vodou temples in Mattapan, Massachusetts, and Jacmel, Haiti. With vivid description and nuanced analysis, Nwokocha shows how Manbo Maude's use of dress and her production of ritual garments are key to serving Black gods and illuminate a larger transnational economy of fashion and spiritual exchange. This innovative book centers on fashion and other forms of self-presentation, yet it draws together many strands of thought and practice, showing how religion is a multisensorial experience of engagement with what the gods want and demand from worshippers. Nwokocha's ethnographic work will challenge and enrich readers' understandings not only of Vodou and its place in Black religious experience but also of religion's entanglements with gender and sexuality, race, and the material and spiritual realms.

The Spirits and the Law

Author : Kate Ramsey
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226703819
Total Pages : 446 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (267 download)

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Book Synopsis The Spirits and the Law by : Kate Ramsey

Download or read book The Spirits and the Law written by Kate Ramsey and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-02-07 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vodou has often served as a scapegoat for Haiti’s problems, from political upheavals to natural disasters. This tradition of scapegoating stretches back to the nation’s founding and forms part of a contest over the legitimacy of the religion, both beyond and within Haiti’s borders. The Spirits and the Law examines that vexed history, asking why, from 1835 to 1987, Haiti banned many popular ritual practices. To find out, Kate Ramsey begins with the Haitian Revolution and its aftermath. Fearful of an independent black nation inspiring similar revolts, the United States, France, and the rest of Europe ostracized Haiti. Successive Haitian governments, seeking to counter the image of Haiti as primitive as well as contain popular organization and leadership, outlawed “spells” and, later, “superstitious practices.” While not often strictly enforced, these laws were at times the basis for attacks on Vodou by the Haitian state, the Catholic Church, and occupying U.S. forces. Beyond such offensives, Ramsey argues that in prohibiting practices considered essential for maintaining relations with the spirits, anti-Vodou laws reinforced the political marginalization, social stigmatization, and economic exploitation of the Haitian majority. At the same time, she examines the ways communities across Haiti evaded, subverted, redirected, and shaped enforcement of the laws. Analyzing the long genealogy of anti-Vodou rhetoric, Ramsey thoroughly dissects claims that the religion has impeded Haiti’s development.

What Is African American Religion?

Author : Anthony B. Pinn
Publisher : Fortress Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 92 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (898 download)

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Book Synopsis What Is African American Religion? by : Anthony B. Pinn

Download or read book What Is African American Religion? written by Anthony B. Pinn and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is there really a monolithic "Black church"? Distilling the arguments of Anthony B. Pinn's important and provocative work in Terror and Triumph, this brief volume asks the central question: What really is African American religion? Sketching the religious landscape of African American communities today, Pinn makes explicit the tension in traditional conversations about Black religion that privilege either Christianity in particular or organizations (with doctrines and creeds) in general. Discussing the misunderstandings and historical inaccuracies of such views, Pinn offers an alternate theory of Black religion that begins with a basic push for embodied meaning as its core impulse. In this expanded edition, Pinn offers new reflections on the state of the Black church.

From Douglass to Duvalier

Author : Millery Polyné
Publisher : University Press of Florida
ISBN 13 : 0813059062
Total Pages : 414 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis From Douglass to Duvalier by : Millery Polyné

Download or read book From Douglass to Duvalier written by Millery Polyné and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2010-06-13 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Haiti has long been both a source of immense pride--because of the Haitian Revolution--and of profound disappointment--because of the unshakable realities of poverty, political instability, and violence--to the black diasporic imagination. Charting the long history of these multiple meanings is the focus of Millery Polyne's rich and critical transnational history of U.S. African Americans and Haitians. Stretching from the thoughts and words of American intellectuals such as Frederick Douglass, Robert Moton, and Claude Barnett to the Civil Rights era, Polyne's temporal scope is breathtaking. But just as impressive is the thematic range of the work, which carefully examines the political, economic, and cultural relations between U.S. African Americans and Haitians. From Douglass to Duvalier examines the creative and critical ways U.S. African Americans and Haitians engaged the idealized tenets of Pan Americanism--mutual cooperation, egalitarianism, and nonintervention between nation-states--in order to strengthen Haiti's social, economic, and political growth and stability. The depth of Polyne's research allows him to speak confidently about the convoluted ways that these groups have viewed modernization, "uplift," and racial unity, as well as the shifting meanings and importance of the concepts over time.

An Intimate Rebuke

Author : Laura S. Grillo
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 1478002638
Total Pages : 211 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis An Intimate Rebuke by : Laura S. Grillo

Download or read book An Intimate Rebuke written by Laura S. Grillo and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-10 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout West African societies, at times of social crises, postmenopausal women—the Mothers—make a ritual appeal to their innate moral authority. The seat of this power is the female genitalia. Wielding branches or pestles, they strip naked and slap their genitals and bare breasts to curse and expel the forces of evil. In An Intimate Rebuke Laura S. Grillo draws on fieldwork in Côte d’Ivoire that spans three decades to illustrate how these rituals of Female Genital Power (FGP) constitute religious and political responses to abuses of power. When deployed in secret, FGP operates as spiritual warfare against witchcraft; in public, it serves as a political activism. During Côte d’Ivoire’s civil wars FGP challenged the immoral forces of both rebels and the state. Grillo shows how the ritual potency of the Mothers’ nudity and the conjuration of their sex embodies a moral power that has been foundational to West African civilization. Highlighting the remarkable continuity of the practice across centuries while foregrounding the timeliness of FGP in contemporary political resistance, Grillo shifts perspectives on West African history, ethnography, comparative religious studies, and postcolonial studies.

The Rastafari Movement

Author : Michael Barnett
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134816995
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (348 download)

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Book Synopsis The Rastafari Movement by : Michael Barnett

Download or read book The Rastafari Movement written by Michael Barnett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rastafari Movement: A North American and Caribbean Perspective provides a historical and ideological overview of the Rastafari movement in the context of its early beginnings in the island of Jamaica and its eventual establishment in other geographic locations. Building on previous scholarship and the author's own fieldwork, the text goes on to provide a rich comparative analysis of the Rastafari movement with other Black theological movements, specifically the Nation of Islam and the Black Hebrew Israelites in the context of the United States. The text explores the following topics: • Pan-Africanism, Black nationalism and Rastafari; • gender dynamics; • globalization; • concepts and symbols; • other Black theological movements. This text is ideal for students of religious studies, sociology, anthropology, African Diaspora studies, African American studies, and Black studies who wish to gain an understanding of the history and beliefs of the Rastafari Movement.

Journal of Haitian Studies

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 474 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Journal of Haitian Studies by :

Download or read book Journal of Haitian Studies written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Passages and Afterworlds

Author : Maarit Forde
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 1478002131
Total Pages : 187 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Passages and Afterworlds by : Maarit Forde

Download or read book Passages and Afterworlds written by Maarit Forde and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributors to Passages and Afterworlds explore death and its rituals across the Caribbean, drawing on ethnographic theories shaped by a deep understanding of the region's long history of violent encounters, exploitation, and cultural diversity. Examining the relationship between living bodies and the spirits of the dead, the contributors investigate the changes in cosmologies and rituals in the cultural sphere of death in relation to political developments, state violence, legislation, policing, and identity politics. Contributors address topics that range from the ever-evolving role of divinized spirits in Haiti and the contemporary mortuary practice of Indo-Trinidadians to funerary ceremonies in rural Jamaica and ancestor cults in Maroon culture in Suriname. Questions of alterity, difference, and hierarchy underlie these discussions of how racial, cultural, and class differences have been deployed in ritual practice and how such rituals have been governed in the colonial and postcolonial Caribbean. Contributors. Donald Cosentino, Maarit Forde, Yanique Hume, Paul Christopher Johnson, Aisha Khan, Keith E. McNeal, George Mentore, Richard Price, Karen Richman, Ineke (Wilhelmina) van Wetering, Bonno (H.U.E.) Thoden van Velzen

The Mana of Mass Society

Author : William Mazzarella
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022643639X
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (264 download)

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Book Synopsis The Mana of Mass Society by : William Mazzarella

Download or read book The Mana of Mass Society written by William Mazzarella and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We often invoke the “magic” of mass media to describe seductive advertising or charismatic politicians. In The Mana of Mass Society, William Mazzarella asks what happens to social theory if we take that idea seriously. How would it change our understanding of publicity, propaganda, love, and power? Mazzarella reconsiders the concept of “mana,” which served in early anthropology as a troubled bridge between “primitive” ritual and the fascination of mass media. Thinking about mana, Mazzarella shows, means rethinking some of our most fundamental questions: What powers authority? What in us responds to it? Is the mana that animates an Aboriginal ritual the same as the mana that energizes a revolutionary crowd, a consumer public, or an art encounter? At the intersection of anthropology and critical theory, The Mana of Mass Society brings recent conversations around affect, sovereignty, and emergence into creative contact with classic debates on religion, charisma, ideology, and aesthetics.

Spirits of Blood, Spirits of Breath

Author : Barbara Alice Mann
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199997209
Total Pages : 379 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

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Book Synopsis Spirits of Blood, Spirits of Breath by : Barbara Alice Mann

Download or read book Spirits of Blood, Spirits of Breath written by Barbara Alice Mann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-06 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before invasion, Turtle Island-or North America-was home to vibrant cultures that shared long-standing philosophical precepts. The most important and wide-spread of these was the view of reality as a collaborative binary known as the Twinned Cosmos of Blood and Breath. This binary system was built on the belief that neither half of the cosmos can exist without its twin. Both halves are, therefore, necessary and good. Western anthropologists typically shorthand the Twinned Cosmos as "Sky and Earth" but this erroneously saddles it with Christian baggage and, worse, imposes a hierarchy that puts sky quite literally above earth. None of this Western ideology legitimately applies to traditional Indigenous American thought, which is about equal cooperation and the continual recreation of reality. Spirits of Blood, Spirits of Breath examines traditional historical concepts of spirituality among North American Indians both at and, to the extent it can be determined, before contact. In doing so, Barbara Alice Mann rescues the authentically indigenous ideas from Western, and especially missionary, interpretations. In addition to early European source material, she uses Indian oral traditions, traced as much as possible to their earliest versions and sources, and Indian records, including pictographs, petroglyphs, bark books, and wampum. Moreover, Mann respects each Indigenous culture as a discrete unit, rather than generalizing them as is often done in Western anthropology. To this end, she collates material in accordance with actual historical, linguistic, and traditional linkages among the groups at hand, with traditions clearly identified by group and, where recorded, by speaker. In this way she provides specialists and non-specialists alike a window into the purportedly lost, and often caricatured, world of Indigenous American thought.

The Shaman's Wages

Author : Kyoim Yun
Publisher : Korean Studies of the Henry M.
ISBN 13 : 9780295745954
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (459 download)

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Book Synopsis The Shaman's Wages by : Kyoim Yun

Download or read book The Shaman's Wages written by Kyoim Yun and published by Korean Studies of the Henry M.. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Most studies of Korean shamanism--a popular religion that is both celebrated and stigmatized--have minimized regional differences, focusing on shamans from central Korea whose work involves spirit possession. Less attention has been paid to hereditary shamans, a number of whom have resided for centuries on Cheju Island, off Korea's southwest coast. Although simbang (native Cheju shamans) are relied upon to perform important rituals, for which they receive lavish offerings, they are often perceived as charlatans who swindle innocent people. This first study of the material exchange and politics of Korean shamanism describes interactions between shamans and their clients in order to show how this ritual exchange is distinct from other forms of transaction, such as barter, purchase, bribery, and gift-giving. The "ritual economy" of Korean simbang involves not only monetary payment, but also reciprocity, sincerity, and the expressive forms that practitioners use to authenticate ritual actions that both emphasize ritual exchange and distinguish it from other forms social and economic transactions"--

Meatpacking America

Author : Kristy Nabhan-Warren
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469663503
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis Meatpacking America by : Kristy Nabhan-Warren

Download or read book Meatpacking America written by Kristy Nabhan-Warren and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-08-09 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether valorized as the heartland or derided as flyover country, the Midwest became instantly notorious when COVID-19 infections skyrocketed among workers in meatpacking plants—and Americans feared for their meat supply. But the Midwest is not simply the place where animals are fed corn and then butchered. Native midwesterner Kristy Nabhan-Warren spent years interviewing Iowans who work in the meatpacking industry, both native-born residents and recent migrants from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In Meatpacking America, she digs deep below the stereotype and reveals the grit and grace of a heartland that is a major global hub of migration and food production—and also, it turns out, of religion. Across the flatlands, Protestants, Catholics, and Muslims share space every day as worshippers, employees, and employers. On the bloody floors of meatpacking plants, in bustling places of worship, and in modest family homes, longtime and newly arrived Iowans spoke to Nabhan-Warren about their passion for religious faith and desire to work hard for their families. Their stories expose how faith-based aspirations for mutual understanding blend uneasily with rampant economic exploitation and racial biases. Still, these new and old midwesterners say that a mutual language of faith and morals brings them together more than any of them would have ever expected.

Religion in the Kitchen

Author : Elizabeth Pérez
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479839558
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

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Book Synopsis Religion in the Kitchen by : Elizabeth Pérez

Download or read book Religion in the Kitchen written by Elizabeth Pérez and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016-02-16 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honorable Mention, 2019 Barbara T. Christian Literary Award, given by the Caribbean Studies Association Winner, 2017 Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion, presented by the Society for the Anthropology of Religion section of the American Anthropological Association Finalist, 2017 Albert J. Raboteau Prize for the Best Book in Africana Religions presented by the Journal of Africana Religions An examination of the religious importance of food among Caribbean and Latin American communities Before honey can be offered to the Afro-Cuban deity Ochún, it must be tasted, to prove to her that it is good. In African-inspired religions throughout the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States, such gestures instill the attitudes that turn participants into practitioners. Acquiring deep knowledge of the diets of the gods and ancestors constructs adherents’ identities; to learn to fix the gods’ favorite dishes is to be “seasoned” into their service. In this innovative work, Elizabeth Pérez reveals how seemingly trivial "micropractices" such as the preparation of sacred foods, are complex rituals in their own right. Drawing on years of ethnographic research in Chicago among practitioners of Lucumí, the transnational tradition popularly known as Santería, Pérez focuses on the behind-the-scenes work of the primarily women and gay men responsible for feeding the gods. She reveals how cooking and talking around the kitchen table have played vital socializing roles in Black Atlantic religions. Entering the world of divine desires and the varied flavors that speak to them, this volume takes a fresh approach to the anthropology of religion. Its richly textured portrait of a predominantly African-American Lucumí community reconceptualizes race, gender, sexuality, and affect in the formation of religious identity, proposing that every religion coalesces and sustains itself through its own secret recipe of micropractices.

Jinnealogy

Author : Anand Vivek Taneja
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 1503603954
Total Pages : 386 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (36 download)

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Book Synopsis Jinnealogy by : Anand Vivek Taneja

Download or read book Jinnealogy written by Anand Vivek Taneja and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the ruins of a medieval palace in Delhi, a unique phenomenon occurs: Indians of all castes and creeds meet to socialize and ask the spirits for help. The spirits they entreat are Islamic jinns, and they write out requests as if petitioning the state. At a time when a Hindu right wing government in India is committed to normalizing a view of the past that paints Muslims as oppressors, Anand Vivek Taneja's Jinnealogy provides a fresh vision of religion, identity, and sacrality that runs counter to state-sanctioned history. The ruin, Firoz Shah Kotla, is an unusually democratic religious space, characterized by freewheeling theological conversations, DIY rituals, and the sanctification of animals. Taneja observes the visitors, who come mainly from the Muslim and Dalit neighborhoods of Delhi, and uses their conversations and letters to the jinns as an archive of voices so often silenced. He finds that their veneration of the jinns recalls pre-modern religious traditions in which spiritual experience was inextricably tied to ecological surroundings. In this enchanted space, Taneja encounters a form of popular Islam that is not a relic of bygone days, but a vibrant form of resistance to state repression and post-colonial visions of India.

Vodou

Author : Marcel Carty
Publisher : Xlibris Corporation
ISBN 13 : 1450023193
Total Pages : 112 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis Vodou by : Marcel Carty

Download or read book Vodou written by Marcel Carty and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2010 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Summary of Vodou: The Next Stage attempts to delineate the silhouette of a religion undergoing a process of transformation. Contacts with high priests and priestesses reveal their efforts and readiness to adapt the faith to the demands of time. The recent recognition of Vodou as a religion (2003) by the Haitian government has set the stage for further adaptation and change. Some of the mysteries that permeate the faith now require clarification; rituals should be refined, and some of the secret teachings unveiled. The public access to the religious concepts would also imply a reinterpretation of myths, and a systematic approach to the faith in the light of values and evolutionary concepts. Hence, initiators must more efficiently train candidates to priesthood in order to promote the evolutionary trend of the belief-system. The Vodou creed simmers down in its essence the seeds of change. The deific manifestations inspire believers to search for and find better ways to cope with life difficulties. The derived insight and inspiration throw off sparks of creative energy that ease the material and spiritual journey. Like every human endeavor, Vodou reflects the worshippers' level of spiritual development; their use of formal knowledge to search for truth would enhance their understanding and integration of lessons learned from spiritual phenomena. The yearning for enlightenment demands acts of faith and courage. It requires a motivating force to move from a perceived good to a greater good. Perseverance and a confident hope could set the stage to move away from well-worn path to more actualized concepts. During rituals, for example, one would see a shift from invocation to evocation of deities; this would ease the forward movement on the spiritual ladder. It would not only shed light on better ways to embark on the earthly pilgrimage and the practice of rituals but also open the mind to the endless spiritual possibilities. The time for a paradigm shift in the religion has arrived, and adjustment now becomes a necessity. The public recognition of Vodou paves the way to a higher level of awareness. Vodouists now more than ever must use a new narrative to explain how the channeling of deific energies gives access to information hidden beyond the realm of consciousness, among other phenomena. The pursuit of change would stem from new ways to grasp religious and ethical concepts and integrate them in the practice of the faith. The summoning of deities would require a larger vision, magical knowledge, and the proper conditioning of the believer,s body, mind, and heart to better channel a higher spiritual vibration. This implies a connectedness to the sacred dimension within the confine of formal knowledge, and an honest perception of one's potentialities, resources, wants and needs. The forward movement on the ladder of spiritual development would not easily unfold; for, change usually takes time. A higher stage of religious practice would require faith, courage, conviction, self-expression, and a more appropriate interaction with others within and without the community of believers. The Vodou faith supports free will, freedom, justice, and respect for self and others. Hence, the change process would entail more individual, social, and spiritual responsibility to demonstrate the willingness to pursue enlightenment.