The Serpent and the Rainbow

A Note on Orthography

THE ORTHOGRAPHY of the name of the Haitian traditional religion has been the source of some academic debate. The word voodoo comes from the Fon language of Dahomey (now Benin) and Togo. It means simply “god” or “spirit.” Unfortunately, as a result of the sensational and inaccurate interpretations in the media, Hollywood in particular, the word voodoo has come to represent a fantasy of black magic and sorcery. Anthropologists have attempted both to highlight and to avoid this stereotype by using a number of terms including vodu, vodun, voudoun, and vodoun. I have followed their lead because I feel, as I hope this book will show, that the rich religion of the Haitian traditional society deserves to be recognized, and what we have come to know as “voodoo” bears little resemblance to it. I use the term vodoun because it seems to me to be phonetically the most accurate. However, it is important to note at the outset that the Haitian peasants themselves do not call their religion “vodoun.” Theirs is a closed system of belief, and in a world of few alternatives one either “serves the loa”—the spirits—or one does not. Vodoun, from their point of view, refers to a specific event, a dance ritual during which the spirits arrive to mount and possess the believer.

For the sake of clarity, I refer throughout the book to the “vodoun society.” This is a concept of convenience, and it also reflects the view of an outsider looking in, not that of a believer surrounded by his spirit realm.

Likewise, the spelling of zombi is a matter of some disagreement. Webster’s prefers zombie, the more familiar form, to zombi. My Oxford dictionary doesn’t even have the term, which reflects the American fascination with Haiti since the Occupation. The sources in the literature are mixed. Seabrook (1929) spelled it zombie, as did Deren (1953). Metraux (1972), Huxley (1966), and Leyburn (1941), on the other hand, use zombi. Metraux is perhaps the recognized authority on the religion, but to my mind Deren had more intimate contact with the people and is an important source as well—although this has little to do with the spelling of the term.

Of more interest is the derivation. The word probably comes from the Kongo word nzambi, which more or less means “spirit of a dead person.” This is yet another example of the African roots of the vodoun religion and society.