The Gede & Honoring the Ancestors

Back to Vodou, In the wake of all of the Halloween revelry (note to rabid Christians: It’s not a holiday to celebrate the cult of death—it derives from All Saints and All Souls day on November 1 and 2 in the Roman Catholic Church, and may even stretch back further than that to early harvest festivals in Europe) I thought it might be interesting to speak about the African traditional religion of Vodou. It’s a bit easier to understand, I think, if you are Catholic, because the Church basically appropriated or blended ancient pagan rituals, such as the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice, with its own to keep everybody happy.

Followers of Vodou did the opposite—they (as well as a host of other African Traditional Religions) hid the rites they brought from Africa in the rituals of the Catholic Church, syncretising their spirits, called lwa (note that they are not gods; the Vodou religion recognizes one supreme God, Bondye) to Catholic saints. The lwa and ancestors are spirits that are not worshiped but honored and served, hence adherents are called serviteurs.

When a Haitian friend of mine’s mother died, I watched the video she had made of her mother’s wake and funeral. There was a full-on Catholic mass with proper funeral rites. After the wake, the entire congregation of family and friends walked to the cemetery where they sent her off with her favorite song (a modern konpa) and acknowledgement of the spirits who live there, the Gede.

I have seen the Gede in ceremonies, and they are very funny and very tricky and mischievous. They usually show up at the end of a ceremony (which can last for hours and be extremely intense) and provide comic relief. I have learned to take off any jewelry and hide it, along with any money I have, because they’ll beg for it and take it if you’re not vigilant. They are also extremely flirtatious. A Vodou priest I know tells me that the phallus is the symbol of the Gede (Haiti being a paternalistic, male-centered culture), and that the phallus brings life (never mind that there are female reproductive organs involved!) That’s why Gede oversees life and death. They are the completion of the circle of life and death. My friend says that the Gede are myriad and almost impossible to count, that they have so many different characteristic because there are so many different personalities to those of us among the living. Or as one individual put it: As many people who have died is how many Gede there are.

During the feast days people put on their party clothes, parade through the streets, dance, and process to the graveyards to feed and honor the Gede at Baron Samedi’s cross. Baron, who is the leader of the Gede, and his children love spicy foods and rum laced with hot peppers, which they will not only drink with impunity, but will rub in their eyes and other places I won’t specify, with no apparent harm done (think about the firewalkers who skip over burning coals without getting burned). Baron is the master of the cemetery and the crossroads (yes, that place where the Devil is said to hang about at midnight) and Maman Brigitte, his wife, is the mistress

In peristyles (a combination of sacred spaces and community centers) the priests and people come together for ceremonies and celebrations, offering food and other items to dead loved ones. It is a chance to reconnect with ancestors and the past, echoing the West African concept of sankofa an Akan word that means “go back and fetch it” This means one must go back to the past and reclaim it in order to go forward. Understanding how and why we got here, just as studying any history, brings clarity.

I don’t dance in cemeteries, but I do pray for, remember and honor my ancestors in my own way. I also pester my mom and other living relatives to tell me stories about family members whom they knew who have passed on, and I write them down. When I look at the photographs that I do have of my grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles and aunts, I feel that I know them better and better, and hearing about their personalities, talents, habits (good and bad), likes, dislikes, and character traits has helped me better understand who I am, because more and more I know who and where I came from.


Images from top: Fet Gede in a cemetery in Hait; the veve (a representation of the lwa, usually drawn on the floor with cornmeal, flour, coffee, and the like to attract or draw down the lwa) of Baron Samedi; the veve of Maman Brigitte; a man lies on the grave of a loved one during Fet Gede in Haiti.