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Greetings!

In support of my BROOKLYN TO BENIN ~ A Vodou Pilgrimage  campaign, I am offering a $60 Rootzmagic gift just in time for the New Year. Click here www.GoFundMe.com/BktoBenin and support Gigi's journey to learn more Rootzmagic in West Africa.

Smoke out your home of all the bad vibes with Gigi's BEGIN ANEW GIFT SET  ~ Spiritual Home Cleansing for the New Year and beyond!

INCLUDES: 1 small black cauldron with hanging chain, 1 1/2 lb bag of Ethiopian Frankincense and Saudi Arabian Myrrh rocks,1 1/2 ounce of Uncrossing Oil,1 1/4 lb bag of Copal rocks,1 box of Cinnamon incense (15 cones)2 bunches of Palo Santo (3 each)3 Swift Lite Charcoal packages (10 each)

As the end of the year approaches, it's time to clear out all that no longer serves us. Sometimes the people, things, perceptions and habits have just got to go. Often the air is charged w/toxic vibrations from ourselves and others. Start w/a spiritual cleansing of your self and home ~ ORDER TODAY! Visit www.GoFundMe.com/BktoBenin to make your contribution!

Mesi anpil ~ much thanks. 

Gigi

www.REGINEROMAIN.com

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Brooklyn to Benin: A Vodou Pilgrimage By: Regine Romain

A Haitian-American’s journey into the spiritual traditions of her ancestors

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Vodou is an ancient traditional West African religion that originates with the Fon and Ewe of Benin and Togo. Translated, Vodou means: the power and creator of all things. Since the 15th century, practioners of Vodou have endured global religious persecution due to ethno-centric prejudice and miseducation. Millions of Africans were transplanted with their religion by way of the horrific Trans-Atlantic slave trade – the largest forced migration in global history. Vodou was successfully maintained, though its power was seen as a threat to the institution of slavery and consequently, systematically demonized, with many practioners punished through beatings, dismemberment, and public executions. Amazingly, Vodou endured and though forcibly hidden, bloomed throughout the Americas and Caribbean.

Please support/follow the journey:

www.gofundme.com/BKtoBenin  

WWW.REGINEROMAIN.COM

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What can you tell us about your methodological approach to this project? In what conditions did you devise and construct this journey? How long did it take you to complete it – if the idea of closure was ever at stake in this project?

This project is an act of will, memory and cultural recovery that is developing a living archive of images, stories and experiences of a spiritual legacy that refuses to be forgotten.

Brooklyn to Benin brings Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Tell My Horse’ to photographic life, while conveying a feminine vision of Paulo Coelho’s ‘The Alchemist.’ Participatory observation and engagement are key methods in gaining knowledge and sharing wisdom gathered on this sojourn.

Photography, ethnographic research, interviews, archival photographs are being gathered to create a book of visual narrative as well as mobile multi-media performances with international performing artists.  

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Taking a page out of the Gospel of Pat Robertson, Chibly Langlois, Haiti’s first Roman Catholic cardinal revealed the "big social problem" in Haiti: Vodou. He…

Taking a page out of the Gospel of Pat Robertson, Chibly Langlois, Haiti’s first Roman Catholic cardinal revealed the "big social problem" in Haiti: Vodou. He argued that Vodou offers "magic" but no real solutions to a population deprived of justice and a political voice. "If a person is well educated and has the financial means, they will go to a doctor [instead of the Vodou priest] when they get sick. If that same person went to the court to get justice they would not go to the Vodou priest to get revenge. It's a big problem for the church. And for Haiti," Langlois said.

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Traditional faith 'offers no real solutions for the poor' and is a big social problem, says new prelate

Haiti's first Roman Catholic cardinal has described voodoo as a "big social problem" for his desperately poor country, arguing that the religion offers "magic" but no real solutions to a population deprived of justice and a political voice.Chibly Langlois, who was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in February, linked Haiti's belief system to its chronic political problems, which he says force poor Haitians – the overwhelming majority of a population of 10 million – to seek supernatural solutions.

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There are few religions as globally misunderstood as African traditional religions. Whether it is being wrongly labelled voodoo, juju or witchcraft, indigenous African faith systems tend to be associated with darkness, animal and human sacrifices, violence and general backwardness

Few people are aware that Voudou (rather than “voodoo”) is a faith based on harmony with nature, one that expressly forbids the killing of another being, or that most African faith systems believe in the concept of one God above all other divinities and deities, who function much as a pantheon of saints.

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Narratively is a platform devoted to untold human stories. We avoid the breaking news and focus instead on ordinary people with extraordinary stories.

I walk down the narrow basement stairs with ease, but before I can cross the entryway into the warm candlelit temple, the oungan, a male priest in the Haitian Vodou tradition, hands me a ceramic jar filled with water. Pointing to the entryway floor, he motions towards three spaces and asks me to drop water for Papa Legba, the Vodou spirit who grants or denies human access to communicate with any of the Vodou spirits, or lwas.

I pour the water. My salute to the gatekeeper had been approved. I enter.

“If the spirits aren’t happy they’ll tell me,” he says, smiling slightly. “They’ll tell me what kind of energy you have.”

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A younger generation is turning to voodoo to get back in touch with its roots, and others are embracing the religion after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

It was past 3 a.m. in a dim basement in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and Jack Laroche, a Haitian-American computer engineer, nervously awaited his bride: a voodoo spirit named Ezili Freda who believers say has the power to lavish love and wealth and render wayward spouses impotent.

As four drummers pounded rhythmically, voodoo priestesses in bright-colored dresses danced in ecstatic circles, dousing the floor with rum and chanting, “Ayibobo!” — the voodoo “amen.” The bride’s dramatic entrance was signaled when a priestess in a shimmering pink silk dress started trembling violently, her eyes rolling toward the back of her head before she fainted. When she came to, apparently possessed by Ezili Freda, she took Mr. Laroche’s hand and nibbled on his ear coquettishly before the happy couple exchanged vows in French.

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Immigrants from Haiti carry on the voodoo traditions in America, and in doing so make sense of a national tragedy.

Two years after an earthquake devastated Haiti, Haitians in America have turned to traditional religious ritual for comfort. Leigh Paterson explains the power of voodoo (spelt 'vodou' in Creole). They gather at a voodoo temple in a dark Brooklyn basement strewn with candles, plastic skulls and half-empty bottles of rum, the remains of a recent ceremony. With the knowledge of herbs and stars, we can heal Atibon Legba, Actor There, Haitian-American artists come to talk about their faith in voodoo and how it keeps them connected to their homeland.

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Benin's priests try to dispel misconceptions about ancient religion practised by half the country's population

But for the gentle hissing of pythons, Dah Dangbénon's voodoo temple could have been mistaken for a new-age hippy gathering. Seated in a semicircle on fraying raffia mats, devotees listened rapturously as the high priest talked at length about oneness with the cosmos.

"There can be no equilibrium without respecting the universal laws of nature, and our ancient knowledge and traditions," said Dangbénon, a silver-haired man whose toenails were painted an improbable bright pink.

He rolled his eyes exasperatedly when explaining how a faith that expressly forbade killing another human being had been "fetishised" by outsiders. "Voodoo is not about using magic spells to curse your enemies," said Dangbénon, whose clan has for generations overseen this temple dedicated to pythons. "If you choose to manipulate nature to harm your neighbour, it's not voodoo that harms your neighbour, it is you."

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The time has come to launch my GOFUNDME campaign... 

From January to April, I will be traveling in West Africa! In Benin, I will be attending the annual Vodou Festival. In Benin and Togo, I will be studying with traditional healers learning the about the divine alchemy that is Vodou and then off to Guinea for a 4week workshop in traditional dance. This project is a pilgrimage of a daughter born on the other side of the water – delving into depths of an ancient cascade of myth, memory, magic, and mystery.

Please support/follow the journey: 

www.gofundme.com/BKtoBenin  

WWW.REGINEROMAIN.COM

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Introduction

Timoun ki sot lòt bò dlo, (child from the other side of the water) is what I am called by Haitian folks born on the island. Growing up in the Washington D.C. suburbs during the 1970’s, I resisted much of the Jehovah Witness teaching of my parents’ newfound religion. Beyond the hills and valleys of my Christian rearing, I often traveled into otherworldly tributaries.

As a child, my fascination with Vodou began with the seasonal visits of my aunt, Tatie Rose Marie. My aunt was the family griot and unbeknownst to my strict Christian parents, whenever she came to visit she would lavish my sisters and I with amazing and powerful tales of Vodou. Her stories piqued my curiosity, especially her recantation of a significant Vodou ceremony that took place at Bwa Kayiman, which blessed the commencement of the Haitian revolution and independence of 1804. Although, many of her tales did frighten me, I always wanted to learn more about this distant land with such magical yet forbidden practices. Most importantly, I wanted to know what made Vodou taboo? Why would my ancestors in Haïti and Africa believe in a tradition that was “evil” - as portrayed by many historians, theologians and the global media? 

Many elements of Vodou’s religious customs and rituals filtered through Tante Marie’s personal narratives and my family’s historic practice back in Haïti, began to filter and influence my psyche and eventually become intricately woven into the fabric of my future spiritual journeys and lifestyle. 

Brooklyn to Benin is my personal pilgrimage into Vodou and its artistic and cultural survival throughout the Diaspora. Vodou, also spelled Vodun, is a spiritual and religious practice that originates with the Fon and Ewe of Benin, West Africa. Translated, Vodou means - the power, the source, the force, the creator of all things and the mystery. Brooklyn to Benin is a nomadic experimental mixed media project, exploring the empowering elements and rituals found within traditional and syncretic African religions practiced in the basement temples of Brooklyn, NY to the magnificent Vodou festival annually held in Ouidah, Benin.

This Brooklyn to Benin project is an outgrowth of my childhood fascination, my kaleidoscopic dreams, keen intuition and artistic gifts which are leading me on a global journey, to learn the ways of my ancestors as I find my place within the tradition. This project brings Zora Neale Hurston's 'Tell My Horse' to photographic life, while conveying a feminine vision of Paulo Coelho's ‘The Alchemist.’ Brooklyn to Benin serves as a beacon, connecting the world to inspiring stories of redemption and is open to all.   This project is a pilgrimage of a daughter born on the other side of the water – delving into depths of an ancient cascade of myth, memory, magic, and mystery.