Vèvè are ritual drawings used to consecrate sacred spaces. They are sacred Haitian hieroglyphics, divine drawings traditionally painted on the ground at a Vodun ceremony, representing a particular divine spirit, natural element or an irreducible essence of our African Ancestors. The act of drawing a vèvè is a calling forth of that particular sacred energy.
The Danbala and Ayida Wedo vèvè are serpentine in form. This vèvè symbol means the out and in breath, the contract and release of birthing, the yin/yang, the male and female, the form of waves of energy coming and going at the subatomic human cell level or the DNA. Danbala and Ayida Wedo or both together Ayida Dan Wedo / Danbala-Wedo, are the Haitian archetypes for creation. Wholeness in Vodun requires both female and male energy, both Rada and Petwo, both Yin/yang, both the contraction and release, inhale and exhale, et al, in ONE.
Usually one honors the warrior spirit Ogou in the form of Sen Jak (St. James). The priests where not aware that the enslaved Africans were using the Catholic lithographs of saints to call up their own spirits. Not aware that when the enslaved in Haiti prayed at their churches to the Virgin Mary, for instance, they were seeing the Haitian lwa (spirit/archetype or mistè- myteries), Ezili Dantò. You'll notice in the Carnegie video the dress I wear has a heart with a dagger going through it. That is the Haitian hieroglyph or vèvè - divine sign for Ezili Dantò. The mother Goddess takes out her sword to cut out evil with good. As there is but one race and all on the planet are her children and creations, for her to draw her sword from the heart means while she is using the sword to bring back harmony, she bleeds painfully.
In my writings, stage blocking and dance choreography, I often use Ezili Dantò's vèvè. The drawn form is used to praise her and call upon her love for strength and protection.
She is inherently my most powerful energetic vibration, my mèt tèt. In Vodun we are each manifested onto this realm for a purpose and carry one collective energy of a universal archetype, psychology or spirit more so than another. That energy is called your mèt tèt. If you live your life in line with lifting up that energy you will be successful, have met your purpose for being born. A manbo or hougan - Haitian priest/(ess) or more precisely, spirit master - can decipher your mèt tèt, if you cannot. But it's better in my opinion if you choose from the various archetypes. What you choose, chooses you. If you see love you will be love. See health to be a healer, et al...
With a focused temperament and emotional make-up that is mostly Petwo (fire, hot, passionate) and that of Vodun's protector/nurturer, Ezili Dantò, I tend to lift up that collective life-force in my writings, advocacy and art. If I were of the Rada nations (cooler energies), I could have been the more detached, Ayida Wedo or the cool herbalist and healer archetype, Simbi. Both Rada and Petwo are essential for creation, harmony, health and balance. These vibrations exist together in greater or lesser proportions in each human being. When meek and accepting are more present, there may be more suffering and oppression depending on the tone of the planet's overall transmigrated powers/mass consciousness at any given stretch of time. Dessalines taught Haitians to say no. The Haitian Revolution came to pass when the Petwo nations* came forth with Rada at their base.
Ezili Dantò of HLLN performs in Miami with Sanba Yatande, Manno and TiRouj, May 2008.
In the performance piece, Ceremony Bwa Kayiman which is a poetic depiction of the actual Haitian Vodun ceremony and political congress that, on August 14, 1791, began the Great Haitian Revolutionary War against France, England, Spain and even a US embargo, I wrote:
i didn't know what i was. How i came to be created Kreyòl or much about Vodun until after i had returned from Haiti and started feeling the tones of Red, textures of Black and cold distance of the Moonlight. But, it is the unified Petwo/Rada nations, living within my psychic heritage, that call to me with this vision of a world that's reached past its divisions, angers, hatreds and envies to where many "nations" coexist. i'm practicing remembering that the amalgamated Africans in Haiti had no money to bribe or amass and wield power with; no gun arsenals for shows of force to control or subjugate the masses and classes with; no laws to shoot hope and dreams, forever deferred.
No.
The Africans, who became Haitians, in the land of the Taino/Arawak Amerindians expected the tools of combat to crawl from their bodies and mind, and it did. Their veins are the vortexes for a unified African PSYCHIC FORCE: and they surrendered to that. (Ceremony Bwa Kayiman)
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*Alkebulan is an ancient, pre-colonial, name for Africa
**Petwo are the African spirit nations, particularly form the Kongo, of aggressive action. The more temperate nations are called Rada.
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