Word: damballa
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...dispensary and the need to come immediately when they were sick or hurt. She told them about the school. And wherever she could she would wage a persistent Protestant war against the voodoo gods, Papa Legba (who is interlocutor between men and the gods), Maitresse Erzulie (of love) and Damballa Wedo (the good serpent of the sky), and against the houngans (priests) and mambos (priestesses) who served them...
Rigaud Benoit made the Christ child in his Nativity a mulatto out of deference to Rodman, though his personal opinion is that "God is white, and the Devil is black, or else dark red, like Damballa [a voodoo deity]." Philome Obin prayed every day before going to work on the center panel above the altar, stuck a chromo cliche "Eye of God" in one corner and painted a strangely feminine, death-rigid Christ crucified in a Haitian street. Castera Bazile, the only one of the Haitian muralists with a monumental sense of figure composition, used a similar street scene...
...African religion difficult . . . the most logical adaptation for the slaves . . . and the simplest, was to give their adherence to that Christian sect which . . . in emphasizing baptism by total immersion . . . most resembled the types of worship known to them. . . . In the U.S., where neither Bosumtwe nor watra mama nor Damballa is worshiped, Negro Baptists do not run into the water under possession by African gods. Their water rituals are those of baptism. Yet it is significant that, as the novitiate . . . is immersed, the spirit descends on him at that moment if at all, and a possession hysteria develops . . . almost indistinguishable from...
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