“A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it”—Zora Neale Hurston

A Zangbeto at rest. Zangbeto are the Vodou guardians of the night among the Ogu or Egun people of Benin, Togo and Nigeria. They are charged with maintaining law and order, and keeping communities safe and secure.

 

In order for us to even begin to dismantle the artificial construct called race, and the racism against people of color that it serves, we need to decolonize our minds. And that begins with our origin stories. I'll let Djimon Hounsou speak in In Search of Voodoo: Roots to Heaven on YouTube movies or Amazon Prime. This is for folks who feel they'd like to begin decolonizing their minds. 

 

Trigger Warning: There are scenes of animal sacrifice in this film. Bear in mind our own treatment of animals in the American agricultural industrial complex and how we benefit from it. Bear in mind that kosher and halal meat is prayed over by holy men to make it pure. Bear in mind that animal sacrifice is also part of the monotheistic (Judaic, Christian, Islamic) canon.  Bear in mind that animals that are sacrificed in African Traditional Religions are not wasted, often eaten. 

Bearing these things in mind is an act of decolonization.

A note to those of us who talk to God: Just as the people of the world don't all speak the same language, we do not all talk to God with the same tongue: for me, religion is the language that God gives us to open the conversation with our souls. And as Zora Neale Hurston said in her book Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica, "Gods always behave like the people who make them."

 

Above: Ceremony at The Kitchen in Manhattan for friend and artist Houngan Asogwe* Michael Zwack who passed away in spring of 2017. The ceremony, which I attended, continued off-premises at his home with his widow, family, and friends. It was a moving good-bye and fitting send-off to a dear friend.

*A houngan asogwe is a Vodou (or as in the film, voodoo) priest and the highest member of the Vodou clergy, the only one who can ordain other priests.