Back Casting
Bones - Past
As with all my other research blog material I often search randomly in my general topic until I find something that catches my eye, and makes me say “oh that’s interesting”
With the Past: Bones section I did the same searching for interesting things they did in the past with bones, the first thing I found which really caught my eye was the “Oracle Bone”
“Oracle Bones Are pieces of bone normally from ox scapula or turtle plastron (underside) which were used for divination chiefly during the late Shang Dynasty”
Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_bone.
Oracle Bone Script is one of the oldest known forms of Chinese written language. According to recent archaeological research, it dates back as far as 4,800 years ago.
This is a sample of what the script looks like. The script was carved on tortoise shells and ox scapulas (shoulder blade) bones. Hence the name of "bone script” In English literature, it is commonly called oracle bone script, because some of the objects are thought to be used as oracles, though the script language was not restricted to just oracle applications.
Trust the Chinese to not be squeamish about guts and bones and have them throwing them around like playthings, using these old bones to practice a form of divination, fortune-telling, known as pyro-osteomancy.
“Pyro-osteomancy is when seers tell the future based on the cracks in an animal bone or turtle shell either in their natural state or after having been burned. The cracks were then used to determine the future”.
When I think of Bones however, usually the first thing that comes to mind is dead bodies, and one large topic that revolves around the dead is the traditional healing practise of Voodoo.
Image is found here: http://www.voodoo-curse.com/images/voodoo1.jpg
This ancient art is often referred to with images of dolls full of pins, and usually mistaken for a form of witchcraft or evil art that is used to make people suffer and cause them pain, maybe even death.
The word Voodoo seems to scare people, the main census is usually one of “voodoo is bad and should be feared”, but most of the comments and fears come from outside of the country it originated from, which is understandable when people don’t understand it, and have been told many things about it over the years which was mainly propaganda from the Western world as they tried to enforce Christianity on the African world.
Several sites over the internet show obvious fear or disgust when it comes to voodoo, people often saying it’s wrong and should not be tolerated no matter what country it is in.
A news website in 2006 looked into people reactions in the modern day world to Voodoo, and it was a very mixed bag of reactions, a lot of people either don’t care or condone it, but you get several which are dramatically different, saying it is an evil practise full of death and sacrifice.
A few quotes below show peoples thoughts and feelings to the Voodoo religion.
“There are two forces in the world: good and evil. Voodoo obviously belongs to the latter” Moses Mulongo, Nairobi.
But when you stumble across quotes and feeling such as this one, your opinion of the religion might change dramatically.
“This religion is not good. They kill humans and have inhuman practices. My father is from Togo and my mother from Ghana so I know what the Voodoo religion is all about”. Theodore Kofi Agbenorxevi, Lagos.
Is this true? I always thought that the rumours of human sacrifice and murders was a lie made up by other religions, but if someone that has witnessed Voodoo first hand dislikes it and claims it to be evil, is this to be trusted?
I looked into the rumours of human sacrifice and think I may have found the source, a little site states the following:
“While slightly less known than the "Voodoo Doll" myth, in the late 1800s, many believed that Voodoo incorporated human sacrifice in its practices, most often believed to have been sacrifice of children. This myth was perpetuated by the writings of Sir Spenser St. John, who was a consul to Haiti. These writings had no evidence to back them up, but were nonetheless sensationalized and picked up by newspapers around the world; In fact, the idea of human sacrifice goes completely against the moral code in place in Voodoo, which includes not harming others”.
So it was just a way of condemning the religion by a Western writer, and from what this article is implying is that Voodoo doesn’t even involve the dolls so famously stereotyped to the religion itself!
The dolls above are little dolls which aren’t voodoo dolls at all, and are in fact little dolls called poppets used in European religion!
“The widely held image of Voodoo in the Western world is one of wax dolls with pins sticking out of them and black magic. Voodoo is, in fact, one of the world’s most ancient religions. Voodoo arrived in the West during the slave trading days”.
The word poppet itself comes from the Middle English popet, meaning a small child or doll.
“In folk-magic and witchcraft, a poppet is a doll made to represent a person, for casting spells on that person or to aid that person through magic. These dolls may be fashioned from such materials as a carved root, grain or corn shafts, a fruit, paper, wax, a potato, clay, branches, or cloth stuffed with herbs. The intention is that whatever actions are performed upon the effigy will be transferred to the subject based in sympathetic magic. It was from these European dolls that the myth of Voodoo dolls arose”.
So it was a European belief that was mistaken for a Voodoo religion belief, but It is still strange how people mistook a healing icon such as a poppet from the European religions, and applied it to the Voodoo religion, and then tried to make people believe it was in fact a horrible black magic trinket that is used to harm others. When in fact both religions seem to be about healing people.
But let’s set aside these misinterpreted meanings of voodoo, and the idea of poppets I want to find out what Voodoo really is, and where it came from.
The basis of the religion came from Africa, but the Voodoo we now know was structured in Haiti. A variety of different ethnic groups amalgamated their religions and formed the Voodoo that is known today”.
So voodoo isn’t so much a black art but more a religion, which is understandable.
After countless tries in trying to find out where the voodoo religion was created, I have only come up with rumours and peoples beliefs in when it was created, the only thing I can confirm is when it reached Western soil.
“Voodoo is a religion that was brought to the Western coasts by slaves from Africa. It is believed to have started in Haiti in 1724 as a snake cult that worshipped many spirits pertaining to daily life experiences”.
According to this site, the voodoo religion was initially weaved in with Catholic rituals and beliefs.
“Voodoo practitioners cannot understand why their religion is so misunderstood”.
Even the experts and people who practise the art cannot say why people are dragging their religion through the dirt and saying that they are black magic worshipping human sacrificing cannibals.
I think I have found the source of the strange Voodoo dolls, and their misbelief to be voodoo dolls which are used for evil, little talismans that are held by the priests and worshippers of the voodoo religion look very strange and warped.
“Talismans are bought and sold as fetishes. These could be statues representing voodoo gods, dried animal heads, or other body parts”.
http://www.squidoo.com/african-vodou image found at
An image here of what people regard as a Voodoo talisman, I think it’s a birds foot, or something similar. With shrivelled and dried animas parts, the squeamish my look upon this and be disgusted and shout witchcraft.
Although there are a lot of misconceptions about the religion, there are some points which really highlight where the rumours of strange goings on came from, the dances and the rituals that they hold can be somewhat strange and in some cases disturbing.
“Voodoo rituals are elaborate, steeped in secret languages, spirit possessed dancing, and special diets eaten by the voodoo priests and priestesses. The ancestral dead are thought to walk among the living during the hooded dances. Touching the dancer during this spirit possessed trance is believed to be dangerous enough to kill the offender”.
Hectic dancing around and belief they are being possessed to an outsider can seem very black when you think about it.
a stereotypical look of a voodoo priest, in a nice cartoon style, just to liven the topic of death up a little bit!
And don’t think that voodoo has died out of time, it is still thriving, mainly in the African nations, but here is a link showing a man who actually makes money off of his faith, a lot like most churches in the western world.
Offering a variety of services like Curse removal, love spells, and you can even create your own spell, which is a nice interaction I thought although a little strange if you ask me, but the whole religion itself is somewhat confusing to someone like me.
(I would have put a custom spell into my blog but at $49.99 a spell I don’t think I could afford such a treat!)
After looking at what Voodoo priests offer, and how they try to help people as much as possible, and seeing how they love to dance for their religion and are extremely happy, I want to look at the book that condemns the religion.
The book is called Hayti or the Black Republic and was written and published On April 25, 1805, he published the proclamation that officially established Haiti as a Black state and banned Whites from its borders.
“Haiti was discovered by Columbus in 1492. After the Spanish killed off all the Native Americans (by 1512), they imported African slaves to work in the plantation economy”.
Which explains why Haiti was the source of all of the Voodoo, they shipped in black slaves who already worshipped in this manor, and if you throw strange worship into a white American town, you’re going to get some rumours thrown around.
Actual writings from the book itself show how much the man doesn’t like what he is seeing in Hyati, saying that everything he comes across is poor and does not work, believing that the state itself is worthless.
“Suffice it to say that Hayti's best president was Geffrard, a mulatto, and that the dictatorship of her Black heads of state always has been marked by a redder smear than usual upon the page of history. The better, the wiser, the more enlightened and less brutalized class has always been composed of the mulattos, and the Blacks have recognized the fact and hated the mulatto element accordingly. But to pass from the earlier days of independence to more recent times: we had not long ago the savage rule of President Salomon, a notorious sectary of snake worship, beneath whose iron hand the country groaned for years, and public executions, assassinations, and robbery were the order of the day. And at the present time? Today in Hayti we come to the real crux of the question. At the end of a hundred years of trial how does the Black man govern himself? What progress has he made? Absolutely none”.
You can see with a white man of the time slandering the name of the Hayti nation and the art of voodoo, why people believed the white man over the slaves of the voodoo people.
This library of flawless logic is where I got most of my quotes of the book.
All this talk of sacrifice and human sacrifice has got me interested in whether it was actually a common practise, and whether people actually killed people in the name of religion or for your god, from one controversial book to another, the bible ladies and gents.
There is a section in the bible in which God himself is meant to have asked for a man’s son in sacrifice to him, and he was willing to do this small test. The story which I was thinking of:
“When Isaac became a young boy, God spoke to Abraham and commanded him to take his son to Mount Moriah and offer him as a sacrifice to God. This was God’s test of Abraham’s faith. Abraham loved his son very much, but did not hesitate to follow God’s words for he was a man whose faith in God was strong. As Abraham and his son reached the place where the sacrifice was to be performed, Isaac said to his father, “Father, where is the lamb that is to be sacrificed?” Abraham replied, “My son, God will provide the lamb”.
Straight from the site Jesus Answers, this is a very appropriate and useful site for someone who hasn’t got a clue about this sort of thing.
It is a pretty sick thing to ask for a man to do, even if it was just a test, being able to kill your own son in order to pass a mere test in the name of god is ridiculous, but that’s just my views on the matter.
A god which constantly tests someone just to see whether they would kill, and still go back to him to worship, which is considered good and a saviour, and there are gods which are in religions we know nothing about, who dance and love life and spread happiness, are condemned just because a white man said they were evil in the 1800’s.
Witty and interesting. Looking forward to reading more.
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