During a recent seminar, I made a quick presentation on Vodun Principles.
It was very popular and I’ve got a lot of questions.
Here are the main Vodun principles, excerpt from my presentation.
– Vodun is not a religion. Religion means linking things, but in Vodun, this principle is childish because nothing could be unlinked. Nothing could be separated from the whole. Separation or individualism is a dangerous illusion. No one and nothing could Escape Reality.
– At the beginning is the Real. (Not Word). Words are humans fabrication. The universe, the world and humans lived thousands of years before language. The word is an abstraction and abstraction is authority dependent and rigid, while the ‘real’ is independent and fluid.
– God does not intervene in Humain affairs. Life means independence to reproduce and evolve, learn, organize and project without any external interference. We see that with trees and animals. God does not need to intervene in life. Life autonomous and self-adapting
– No one could know God. God is outside of Human cognitive power or realm. Anyone speaking in the name of god is a crook or deranged person, like anyone pretending to know him or her.
– Only a Direct knowledge of Nature gets humans close to God. (Revelation or truth outside of phenomelogy is no valid.)
– Nature (Habitat) has principles and laws (éssé).
– The principles and laws are the Spirits (Gbongbon). There are numerous Spirits (paganism).
– Regarding the numerous spirits, they need to be materialised (vodun). Like you need a physical phone to call a distant friend, the vodun are the medium to communicate with God.
– Like in the human society, no one goes to the president of a nation when she has a problem. The person goes to the specialized public department who could help with his problem. The specialized departments are the voduns.
– Anyone trying to talk directly to the president with every problem she has would be viewed as a deranged person.
– When you have teeth pain, you go to a dentist. When you have eye problems you go to an ophtamologist. When you have a dick problem, you go to a Dickologist … that the same principle behind the numerous deities of Vodun. Each vodun is an incarnation of natural principles.
– Discovering the spirits (trough trans) and living in harmony with the Spirits (konou) give power to humans
– Accurate knowledge (Nunya) of the spirits of the real is Aze (Azéto).
– Evil and Good do not Exist. Harmony is the ultimate law.
– Violating Harmony angers the spirits (Gble Konou)
– The Spirits should be made Real (Vodun), and Scripting language (ébo) is the mediation (Agbéssa) of the real.
– There is a mirror of the entire universe in each individual (Kpoli). Each individual mirror reflects however a part of the universe, at a time. The part your mirror reflects is your destiny or mission on earth. You need to know you mirror (kpoli) and clean it often to have clarity in life. You can also learn to move your mirror to see more of the universe.
– People whose Kpoli (mirror) are dusted or broken, suffer depression, misery and unexplainable issues in life. They have have to get help to clean their Kpoli or get it fixed.
Vodun is only the visible part of the African spirituality. It’s the mainstream part of african spirituality like holding a phone is for any person who could buy or access one. Holding a phone and using it does not make you specialist of Shanon laws of information.