The blood, the dead and the power of the otherworld

The cult of the dead was subject to the hierarchy: if the dead man was poor, he was thrown into the bush to feed the beasts; if he was rich, he was paid great honors; his grave was dug under his deathbed and, in the distant past, a child was slaughtered on his grave to appease Liba, the guardian of the dead. The funerals of kings were accompanied by massacres. Men and women were sacrificed on their graves to serve them as servants and wives in the other world.

Besides, the Dahomeans did not fear death; they believed so completely in the immortality of the soul that they saw death as the passage to a more real and eternal life. To talk to his ancestors, the king once killed with his own hand a man whom the family was very honored to see chosen as the king's ambassador. Smaller rituals also included such sacrifices at regular intervals. The goal being in a way to renew the "staff" of the former sovereigns. The people immolated on the tombs were provided with a bottle of tafia and cowries for the cost of the trip.

The religions of Blood and Snakes (Vodou) in Dahomey.

Besides this blood religion, practiced especially in the Abomey region, there existed along the Slave Coast (especially Dahomey and Togo) another religion which, with its innumerable priests, also strongly impressed ancient travelers, which was first called the religion of serpents. It was in reality more of a local cult of the serpent – a sacred python of three meters, which had its priestesses in Ouidah, and to which a mythology complex -, of which there were many other aspects, such as the sacredness of trees (which foreigners did not have the right to cut), and especially the veneration of numerous powers.

Inside the houses, worship was mingled with all the acts of life; on the outside one found at every street corner in the towns, under every tree in the countryside, small terminals covered with pottery and offerings: palm oil and corn cakes were constantly being replaced. We were afraid to address ourselves to the “Lord of the spirits” who was too great a god; but we adored the soul of the ancestors and the forces of nature, the secondary geniuses.

Sometimes the patron of cities was a snake (the dangbé), as in Ouidah, which represented benevolence and happiness, sometimes a dog, a monkey, a caiman; on the seashore, we worshiped the god of the waves. The Dahomeans worshiped the souls of the great; they worshiped their own soul not "when it goes down in the belly" but "when it goes up in the head and stirs up ideas". Each object had its soul which was a power; the Christian cross was a respected power; the same can be said for cannons and guns.

These powers were called voodoo, from which derives the name of Vodou or Vaudou under which this religion is known today. It has been from the coasts of Dahomey in America and has been adapted there in various ways by trafficked slaves. In Haiti as in Brazil, it has remained all the more anchored as it is experienced by the poorest segments of the population as a tool of identity expression.