Is Vodou the result of a mixture of Catholic and local native faiths?
By far the most commonly held misconception about the origins and cosmological structure of Vodoun is the mistaken notion that it arrived in the New World as a fragmented hodgepodge of unintelligble beliefs, until it incorporated Western and indigenous religious practices into its body corpus in order to legitimize and offer it structural integrity. In truth, Vodoun is a 10,000 year old tradition which PREDATES Christianity, and is replete with all the elements that would define it as a “religion” proper. With ANCESTOR veneration, and service to the Nature gods at its core, it is arguably the oldest religion in Africa. “Voodoo” was also secretly practiced amongst the slaves of the South long before the influx of Haitiain immigrants to Lousiana. Though highly adaptable to wherever African descendants migrated or were taken and enslaved, the Vodoun religion incorporates the flavor of its local surroundings largely for its survival. This was especially the case during the height of the re
