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How Houngans Use the Light from Distant Stars

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Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture
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Abstract

Qur’an and Bible traveled on the ships bound from Africa to St.-Domingue. So did tracts of the European Enlightenment; copies of the Declaration of the Rights of Man; abolitionist letters from the Abbot Grégoire; Christian catechisms; grimoires full of instructions for magic rituals to insure love, good fortune, and victory. This print material was spare and simple compared to the complex intellectual environment carried around the minds of the people on board.

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© 2006 Claudine Michel and Patrick Bellegarde-Smith

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Benson, L. (2006). How Houngans Use the Light from Distant Stars. In: Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312376208_10

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