Terms and Spirit Listing
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Verser

(V.ENC) The ritual pouring of liquid, such as water or liquor, on the ground for the loa.

Vévé (vever)

(V.ENC) Vévés are elaborate designs that symbolize the gods and ancestral spirits. They are painted permanently on the walls of the hounfort, as well as drawn in cornmeal, flour, gunpowder, powdered red brick, chalk, charcoal, or ashes just before a ceremony or invocation of a god. Usually drawn around the poteau-mitan, on the altar, or on top of a place of sacrifice, the vévé acts like a magnet, obliging the spirit who it represents to descend to earth and appear at the ritual. These vévés symbolize the loa who is being honored in the ceremony, and serve as both a place to put offerings and a magical symbol that calls the loa down to the material plane. These vévés incorporate the symbols of the particular god that they represent: a cross for Legba; a heart for the goddess of love, Erzulie; a snake for the patriarchal leader, Damballah-Wedo; a coffin for Baron Samedi, the spirit of death; and so on. They radiate out from the center-post in a wider circle. Despite the elaborate care and skill with which they are drawn, they vévés are generally destroyed by the end of the ceremony, blown away or swept apart by dancing feet.

(SV) The vèvès are designs traced upon the ground of the peristyle or the oum'phor, or upon all sorts of objects, even ritual food. In the course of Voodoo ceremonies, the reproduction of the astral forces represented by the vèvès obliges the loas (who are representations of heavenly bodies, start, and planets) to descend to earth. Depending upon the rite, the vèvè is traced with what flour, corn meal, Guinea-flour (wood ashes), powdered leaves, red brick powder, rice powder (face powder), and even gunpowder, powdered charcoal, bark or roots. As a rule, the milder rites such as the Rada, a solar rite, require white or yellow wheat. Tradition, though not always respected, demands that corn meal be used for the intermediate or less mild rites, whereas red brick powder or red dust or ashes belong to the fire rites whose cabalistic agents can, if need be, serve upon the points-chauds (hot points)-not that these rites are fundamentally or necessarily evil, but rather because they have a greater tendency to burn when they are improperly or imprudently employed. The powder of leaves, if the leaves are of the soothing variety, can be used for the mystères of the points-frettes (cold points). If the powder is made of noxious leaves or merely of the "stinging" variety, it can "walk with" the so0called "Bois-Piquant" (pungent-wood) loas, the loas of the fiery rites: the Pethro and the Zandor. Gunpowder serves to precipitate magically the mystères. Face powder, scarcely used in Haiti, if at all, for vèvès, is traditionally employed for the brilliant mystères that "walk on the resplendent points" of the Sun: Erzulie Za-Gaza, the mystère Joltière Viscière, and Legba Brillant Soleil. For face powder symbolizes the purification, at a very high degree, of the ceremonial and sacrificial material.

Vodouisant

(V.ENC) An uninitiated vodou devotee who attends ceremonies, receives advice and medical treatments from a houngan, and takes part in other vodou-related activities.

Voodoo dolls

(V.ENC) The voodoo doll is a product of this belief in the power of symbols. These dolls are generally crudely fashioned form wax and incorporate hair or nail clippings from the person who the doll is supposed to represent. Obviously, the doll represents that person, and the hair or nails just ties the doll and the person closer together. The idea is that if you inflict harm upon the doll, the person will experience similar harm. And if the person is hurt, it's probably because he believes so strongly in the power of the symbolic doll that he manifests psychosomatic symptoms, rather than from any real magical effects. Despite the fact that voodoo dolls are almost universally associated with vodou, actual practitioners in Haiti rarely use them, and they are not at all important to the fundamental practices of the religion. Indeed, they primarily seem to serve as souvenirs sold to tourists in voodoo shops in New Orleans.