Do you Voodoo or VooDon't?

[welsh]

Oh! What a terrible title for a thread! Sorry, couldn't resist.

ANyway, how about Voodoo?
If say if we are going to get rid of evolution than we should allow for voodoo. Hell it makes as much sense as the other superstitious mumbo jumbo.

WHat's the difference between a Christian witchdoctor (aka televengelist) and a Voodoo witchdoctor. Better spells? Love potions?

In Benin... it's political power.

Benin

Voodoo still wins

Jan 26th 2006 | OUIDAH
From The Economist print edition
A controversial ancestral religion still fends off foreign ones

A WOMAN in a bright dress dances round in a tight circle, the pumping artery of a headless chicken pressed to her mouth. Nearby, another woman carries a slaughtered goat on her shoulder, sucking on its red neck as she cavorts around. Benin's national day of voodoo, earlier this month, may not be how Hollywood would have portrayed it, but it comes close. “The women are not drinking the blood,” a voodoo expert, Martine de Souza, explains. “The animals have been sacrificed to the spirits, and the women have been possessed by the spirits, who are accepting the sacrifice.”

Try that in your regular Sunday Mass?
COnsider that Sunday Mass often loses in the rating to Nascar, it might be just what the good father needs.

Since 1996, voodoo has officially been a national religion of Benin, a small west African republic, where more than 60% of the people are said to believe in it. Slaves from this corner of Africa brought the religion to the New World, most notably to Haiti. Its tenets echo those of many African religions. There is a supreme god, Mahu, and a number of smaller gods or spirits, with whom humans can negotiate.

THere is also a pretty good discussion of Voodoo as avatars for the Cthulhu mythos in the New Orleans guidebook... but I digress.

The #1 reason for Voodoo--- tourist dollars. Benin after all sells itself as the source of voodoo.

Cool!

“Voodoo is everything to me, it helps me get whatever I want,” says John Togbé, a school teacher. “If I have a problem I go to the voodoo chief, who makes sacrifices for me, and afterwards my problem is resolved. For example, my wife and I couldn't have children for many years. I asked the spirits for a child, and three years later my child was born.” Voodoo believers pray and sacrifice before setting off on long trips, and at big moments in their lives.

My sex life is crap, my witchdoctor gets me a juju that makes my mojo go, and it's better than Enzyte.

Some historians say that voodoo's bad image in the world is because Haitian slaves used it as a form of protest; it gave them a secret place where they could foment revolt against their masters. The Béninois hate the way Hollywood portrays voodoo as a source of evil. “You people in the West think voodoo is bad,” Mrs de Souza complains. “But it can only be used for good. It's true there are powers that can be used for evil, but that's not true voodoo.”

BEcause there's nothing like tribal drums to scare the crap out of brutal slave master plantation owners.

Interesting to note that on the DVD for the voodoo flick Angel Heart that are many special features on Voodoo.

Now you go to Nigeria and you get a whole different brand of witchdoctor.

Voodoo was once banned in Benin, as President Mathieu Kérékou, a Christian, tried to please the Russians when they were his main foreign backers.

Because Voodoo is the Opium of the Masses! Really!

Yet voodoo believers practised in secret, and eventually the ban was lifted. Moreover, voodoo still influences imported religions such as Christianity and Islam. “The Christians go to church on Sunday,” says Na Honoun, a voodoo priestess. “But they come to see us the rest of the week.”

Ah....more effective than snake handling?

Could this have anything to do with a society where the health care system is shit?