When Vodou meets Virtual Reality
I have been approached as an "expert" on Vodou, and asked if I have something written on the subject. Pretending that Vodou is my "expertise" would be very exagerated, but I do have developped an interest and studies on the subject, through readings as well as direct experience and meditation. I do not have a text exclusively dedicated to Vodou, but I often include Vodou inspired comments in my texts, or references to Vodou values. If you have some time, you can browse through the archives of my blog (www.djaloki.blog.com); I suggest you type "Vodou", or related concepts in the search tool of the blog. My essays are categorized under the "Djalòki's writings" label which you will find in the "Categories" title on the right hand-side column of the main screen of the blog.
I have been lecturing on cross-cultural awareness and respect in the US and in Europe. Three of the lectures I have given, titled "Spiritual Literacy", "Imaginary Friends for Real!" and "Vodou, as Lived by a Post-modern Ayitian", are more specifically about Vodou. I usually feel comfortable with answering verbal questions.
Some people have asked me to write on Vodou and I have been thinking about it. I think that Vodou is quite difficult to circumscribe within a static linear rational medium. There are reasons Vodou has traditionally been transmitted through the oral line. Once something is written, it is isolated, confined and immovable, which would not do justice to most Vodou values and concepts. I have been thinking more and more that Virtual Reality will be a much better way to present Vodou, when that technology is more advanced and more accessible to the public, on the Internet for instance. I will then certainly be honored to participate in a joint work of presenting Vodou, along with other "experts", through a multidimensional medium, with possibilities of depicting the invisible realms and creating unusual emotional and mental states through multisensorial stimulations.
For now, I will keep on thinking about a written text accessible to the non initiate.
That is it, really, for us in the states or other western places - what is our context for coming to vodou? I know there are now many blan manmbos and hougans, so maybe a western orientated vodou will develop, with western lwa - who are also our ancestors, after all. Budhhism has changed as it has come to the west, so too may vodou and other African rooted sprititual practices be adapted to the time/space of the west. All spriits are available to us, if we listen and open ourselves, not an easy thing in the western culture of security and the one god theory. If you write something it is YOUR experience, and if I write something it is my experience and so on, until we have a mulititude of experience, which I hope can become universal experience of the Divine collective.
Part of the western characteristic? is a type of intellectualism that wants to categorize and quantify everything, break it down to smaller, more understandable parts. Vodou does not fit into this method, though one could list all the estimated 247 lwa, and then all the family lwa - millions - and then the way people in northern Haiti do one ceremony and the way people in southern Haiti do a similar one, and so forth, to WRITE it down in supposed captivity. Ecstasy and joining with the Divine occurs in many spiritual practices, even in the Christian church but until it happens to you, all the reading in the world is only theory. It is very difficult for people to get over their/our fear, and the fear of losing oneself to the lwa, to the Divine, holds some of us back. I find that I have FOUND myself, through spiritual communion, found that we are all connected in the Divine collective and vodou is my means of transportaion. Others may have a different mode of transport.
I do hope everyone else will write about this, too. Respè! Ayibobo! (Comment this)