An Ethnography of a Vodu Shrine in Southern Togo

Studies of Religion in Africa

Supplements to the Journal of Religion in Africa

Edited by

Benjamin Soares (African Studies Center, Leiden, The Netherlands)

Asonzeh Ukah (University of Cape Town, South Africa)
Shobana Shankar (Stony Brook University, New York, USA)

VOLUME 46

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An Ethnography of a Vodu Shrine
in Southern Togo
Of Spirit, Slave and Sea
By

Eric J. Montgomery and Christian N. Vannier

LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Kossi beats the Brekete, Bisi’s Shrine, Gbedala.

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Contents

Acknowledgements vii
List of Illustrations viii

1 Introduction: Religion in Millennial West Africa 1

Part 1
Of Spirit, Slave, and Sea

2 Dawn of the Gods: History and Power in Eweland 41

3 Between the Pipeline and the Sea: The Gbedala Community 80

Part 2
Ethnography of a Shrine

4 Gorovodu: A Family of Gods 127

5 The Shrine at Gbedala 154

Part 3
Performance in Gorovodu Ceremony

6 Fetatrotro: Feast and Festival 219

7 The Northern Others: Slavery and Islam in Gorovodu Ceremonial

Performance 251

8 Conclusion: Shrine Ethnography and Global Vodu 271

Glossary 283
Bibliography 286
Index 298
Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge our African brethren: Kossi, Asana,
Dado, Dodzi, Sofo Bisi, Sofo Amagbe, Anibra, Baniba, Ahudza, Sylvio Tete, and
the entire village of Gbedala and greater Gorovodu/Brekete community. In the
United States we have to thank all those who assisted with feedback, criticisms,
and advise on the book and our work more generally: Judy Rosenthal, Guerin
Montilus, David Akin, Thomas Killion, and Fred Pearson. Valuable manuscript
copy edits were provided by Graham Liddell, Ken Yagoobian, and Earlexus
Dixon. Lastly, to our wives Sowmya Rangaswamy and Jean MacKenzie, and
Christian’s first daughter Veronica, thank you! To Eric’s wife Sowmya, in the
words of Saul Williams, “you massage the universe’s spine, the way your twirl
through time, and leave shadows on the sun.” None of this would have been
remotely possible without your guidance, patience, and encouragement.
List of Illustrations

2.1 A re-telling of the origin myth of Gbedala 53

3.1 Factory behind Gbedala village 82
3.2 Factories behind Gbedala village 82
3.3 Port Autonome, west of Kinshasa village 84
3.4 Boat mural, Gbedala village 85
3.5 Bokonosofo Bisi in his shrine, Gbedala 91
3.6 Kossi with family 97
3.7 Bokonosofo Amagbe 100
3.8 Beached pirogues, Gbedala 109
3.9 Port du Pêche with Port Autonome in the background 111
3.10 The gravel trade on the beach of Gbedala 116
4.1 Mural on the exterior of the Mami Wata shrine, Gbedala 129
4.2 Mami Wata shrine, Gbedala 131
4.3 Abiba and Sadzifo 135
4.4 Kunde dances in front of the drum group, Salah ceremony,
Gbedala 139
4.5 Ablewa dancing at a Fetatrotro 141
4.6 Ablewa and Sunia Kompo fetishes at Bisi’s shrine, Gbedala 142
4.7 Sacra Bode mural, Madza’s shrine, Gbedala 144
4.8 Bangede possession 145
4.9 Bangede pantheon, Bisi’s shrine, Gbedala 147
4.10 The shrine at Ameka 148
4.11 Sourougou mural, madza’s shrine, Gbedala 150
4.12 Nana Wango fetish, Bisi’s shrine, Gbedala 151
4.13 Eric holds a Wango paddle, Bisi’s shrine, Gbedala 152
4.14 Wango hats hang on the shrine wall, Bisi’s shrine, Gbedala 153
5.1 Kossi beats the brekete, Bisi’s shrine at Gbedala 156
5.2 Tronsis in Bisi’s shrine, Gbedala 163
5.3 Three Senterua surround and aid a Tronsi seized in possession
trance 164
5.4 Holding the blade in his left hand, Bosomfo Balanga and an assistant
sacrifice a dog to Kunde, Bisi’s Shrine, Gbedala 169
5.5 Amagbe’s assistants prepare the medicinal bath 198
5.6 Atike medicine 203
6.1 Dzatá secures the cow before the ceremony begins 224
6.2 The cow sacrifice 229
List Of Illustrations ix

6.3 Kunde demands his rhthyms from the drum group as Dzatá leads on the
brekete 230
6.4 Sunia Kompo shakes hands with an observer 232
6.5 An adept speaks with Ablewasi 233
6.6 Nana Wango 237
6.7 A Senterua attends to Wango at the door of the Sakpata shrine 238
6.8 The ehadzito takes a needed rest 240
6.9 The gods assemble in the ceremonial courtyard 243
7.1 Tchamba-Hounon Atsu in the Tchamba shrine, Gbedala 258
7.2 Prayers at Salah 264
 CHAPTER 5

The Shrine at Gbedala

Within the sacred spaces of the shrine and Sacred Forest, rituals take place
for initiation, transformation, and confirmation. There is no direct transla-
tion in Ewe but the shrine may be referred to as “god house” (tronfome), “altar”
(vosamlekpui), or “medicine house” (atikewofe). In the community, the shrine
serves communal functions, acting simultaneously as a hospital, place of wor-
ship, a court, and stage for ritual performance. Sandra Greene defines shrines
in West Africa as spaces that are knowable to the senses and the focus of col-
lective ritual activity (2002, 9). They are sacred sites, defined as much by their
physical properties as by their spiritual forces. Membership in shrines is vol-
untary and cut across other categories of membership that typically compose
West African society such as kinship, class, occupation, ethnicity, language,
and gender. Individuals join because they received a sign that it is their destiny,
others may fear witchcraft, seek empowerment, or seek escape. Furthermore,
multitude of deities from different religious networks may be housed in a
single shrine. New deities are constantly added and established deities are
transformed in function and nature (Venkatachalam 2015, 67). This inclusive,
voluntary, and transformative character gives shrines a protean nature, the
ability to transmute and evolve easily and fluidly through time and ever-chang-
ing political economies.
There are shrines of esteem such as those mentioned at Kpando by Friedson
(2009), but generally there is equality and shifting power circles. Gorovodu is
not a centralized religion and no one shrine dominates over others.1 Instead,
they are an archipelago of religious centers whose relationships are based on
the life history and agency of the founders and contemporary keepers. They
link together ritual networks that extend across West Africa and globally, and
each have unique and thematic histories, spiritual significance, and meanings
that evolve through environmental transformations, technological innovation,
cultural contact, and political change. Village shrines anchor moral points of
reference and cultural points of memory. Those that migrate to cities or further
abroad often consider their community-shrines as moral point of reference,

1 Friedson (2009) argues the shrine at Kpando in Ghana acts as a sort of Gorovodu “Mecca”
because of its location in the natal village of Kodzokuma and thus its role as a parent shrine
to all others. Of course, the real “parent shrines” are in the north where the individual gods
come from, even though many have changed roles or become less important in their ances-
tral north.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/9789004341258_006

The Shrine At Gbedala 155

even those several generations removed. Those that find success outside the
village (in a city, the U.S., or elsewhere) are morally obliged to provide material
support to their kin in the community and the community itself (Ellis and ter
Haar 2004, 129).
The shrine connected to the lineage and compound of Bokonosofo Bisi is a
regionally recognized source of ritual power. It is small, well worn, and grimy
compared to other grander shrines like those located at Ameka, Denu, Kpando,
or Aneho. These adjectives may be construed as compliments however, as they
express the age of the shrine and its constant use, characteristics that reveal
the power of the gods and priests that reside there. The main chamber is per-
haps four meters by four meters with a corrugated metal roof. The cement
walls look as if they were once painted a brilliant white, but years of sacrifice
and libations of blood, gunpowder, and gin have blackened whole areas. The
salt of the ocean is also a source of erosion and on our last visit, Bisi discussed
the need for renovation. On the floor is an aged rug for adherents to kneel
comfortably. In the grottoes are several more mats and stools for larger crowds.
Along the north wall drums, costumes, and bags of goods are stacked from
floor to ceiling. There are many types of drums stored here though scores of
different drums are used for different ceremonies or to communicate with dif-
ferent gods. The largest drums are the brekete drums, the deepest drum played
at Gorovodu ceremonies and its vibrations are felt in the chest as much as
heard. A large cylindrical drum that is slung over the shoulder and played with
a curved stick, the breketewo here are built from metal bodies and stretched
with cow skin. At any given time there are three to six brekete drums hang-
ing on the eastern wall of the shrine. Many of these were made personally by
Kossi and Dzatá and are attended by only them. Next is the double-headed
gota drum, played by squeezing the vertical strings that encompass the drum’s
exterior. These drums are played always at Salah ceremonies on Fridays. The
agbadza drum is played at the wake of someone who died a hot death and
must be buried in the Sacred Forest. Finally, the small sakpate drums are a
set of three smaller drums. The drumheads of the sakpate drums should be
made of the skin of the afoube, a type of goat living in the central forest belt.
Unfortunately, the afoube is rare and thus expensive and could be substituted
for sheep or cow. There are also the sogo (for agbadaza war dance), the tall
slender atsimevu, the deep bass agboba drum, and the smaller kloboto and
totodzi. These drums, like the Ewe language, are eternally tonal, so much so
that good drummers can “talk” across space and language.2 Each particular
drum calls forth different dances and takes the lead in different rhythms. They

2 The cross-rhythmic structure of Ewe drumming has been well documented (see Friedson
2009; Hill 1981; Jones 1959; Locke 2010).
156 CHAPTER 5

Illustration 5.1
Kossi beats the
brekete, Bisi’s shrine at
Gbedala.

are sometimes elaborately carved or vividly painted and they are often kept
behind the fetishes to be imbibed with power. Like most sacred material cul-
ture here, the drums have spirits to which veneration must be directed in the
form of libations and prayer.
On the south wall sits the shrine’s speaker system. Many shrines own a
speaker system with which to project the voice of the song leader (ehadzito)
over the drums during public ceremonies (how they always locate a power
source, no matter the location or infrastructure of the village, has always
been a source of amazement). Behind the speaker system is the shrine’s stor-
age antechamber, where several fetishes brought to Bisi to imbibe with more
power hang on ropes or chains. There are also fetishes Bisi inherited when a
sofo of another shrine died and family members did not or could not maintain
them. Along the walls there are large burlap and canvass bags filled with imple-
ments, ingredients, and seemingly random materials collected by Bisi over the
The Shrine At Gbedala 157

years. There are animal bones and parts from across the spectrum: monkey,
snake, lion, tiger, leopard, dog, cat, crocodile, ostrich, turkey, and many others.
There are plant parts organized in innumerous plastic bags, sealed gourds, old
medicine bottles, and the like. There are old plastic water bottles that contain
different medicine prescriptions fashioned using various ingredients that are
roasted together into a black carbonized powder. A huge container of sacred
black medicine made from gunpowder, animal blood, and countless types of
plants sits in the corner. There are small plastic and glass vessels containing
mercury procured from mines in central and northern Ghana. There are pieces
of rock, copper, and iron. Neatly wrapped into fabrics, there are coins, cowry
shells, and feathers. Altogether, they comprise a complex pharmacy that Bisi
draws upon for healing and ritual.
There are two entrance/exit portals in the north and southern corners of
the shrine. The primary northern doorway is marked with a special water basin
and area for setting aside shoes. Along the east wall are chairs and an elec-
tric torch. Opposite, the god-fetishes are aligned along the west wall in their
respective kpome made of stucco and ceramic. Inside each oven is the mate-
rialization of the god, the fetish, and innumerous small objects, dried blood,
and burnt organic materials such as kola nut or plant medicines. These origi-
nate from prayers and venerations that always begin on the far left-hand side
with Kunde, and move right until one pays homage to Nana Wango on the
far right side. Above the fetish houses are stacked and hung dozens of sacred
tools, accouterments, weapons, and so on that are symbolically attached to the
god-fetishes, but themselves divinized with their own identities. On the wall
hang the ferryboat hats of Nana Wango, the wooden rifles of Bangede, and the
axe of Kunde. Atop the kpomewo are the wardrobes of each god that are put
on adepts when they are in the throes of possession trance. Bisi made all the
objects in the shrine, including the god-fetishes, and either he or his assistants
frequent the northern forests and local fetish market to obtain the rest that is
necessary.

The Shrine as Church

The shrine at Gbedala is first and foremost a place of worship. Shrines are a
place for sofos and tronsis to seek spiritual direction and understanding. Priests
must identify the powers at work on members of the congregation and assist in
supporting the spiritual power if beneficial, or neutralizing the spiritual power
if harmful. Fundamental is the conditioned relationships one forms with the
gods by giving them what they desire and, most importantly, following their
158 CHAPTER 5

moral code. The vodus demand serious attention. They are hard-working pow-
ers in nature and they need to be fed and cajoled by those who serve them.
Sacrificing animals is central. The life power of the animal is transferred to the
gods so the gods may transfer it to humans. The sacrifice of animals, Afa divina-
tion, possession-trance, and collective rituals of communication and exchange
between the priests, adepts, and gods determines the course of action. Healing
is essential to shrine activity, but most cases of healing also rely heavily on
ritual and prayer. One may ask the gods for whatever he or she wishes and
indeed, prayers are often framed as economical and practical.

The Congregation
In Gorovodu, the border between the material and spiritual worlds is fluid and
permeable. The continuous exchange between these worlds is made possible
by the agency of religious specialists. Defined as herbalists, fetish priests, divin-
ers, medicine men, witch doctors, oracles, native doctors, traditional healers,
or magicians, religious specialists defy typologies and categorizations simply
because of the multi-faceted roles they play in communities and the differ-
ences between individual priests themselves. They may be better defined as
a social institution through which congregation members engage religiously
inspired social structures.
Bokonosofo, a title of Akan origin (Manière 2010, 195), facilitate the produc-
tion of knowledge between gods and the community. They are for the most
part ritually self-sufficient and have independent access to the gods. However,
there is an acknowledged hierarchy that transcends regions and nation-states.
They may be women or men, but most women who become sofos (priests,
from the Akan term osofo) or amegasi (seers) tend to do so, but certainly not
always, after menopause. Bokonosofo is actually the combination of two spe-
cializations that are common linked together, bokono and sofo.3 Bokonos are
diviners that divine through the Afa pantheon of spirits, and are frequently
called Afa diviners or masters of Afa. It crosses all religious systems in West
Africa, and it is very common for Vodunsi, Christians, and Muslims to regu-
larly visit bokonos for divination (see below). Becoming a bokono takes several
years of apprenticeship as the trainee moves from a beginner (bokovi) to mas-
ter diviner (togbui bokono). Gleason (1973, 9) describes Ifa knowledge (using
the Yoruba system and spelling from which Ewe Afa derives) as collective,
with even the most senior togbui bokonos constantly learning and sharing with

3 Elsewhere Eric has discussed vodu and Sofo Bisi as shamans par excellence. Montgomery,
Eric (2016) “African Shamanism: The Life and Acts of Sofo Bisi.” Shaman Journal, Volume 24:1.
Bokonos are almost always men. Women typically are amegasi.
The Shrine At Gbedala 159

others. Normally, the gods will call diviners in dreams, castings, or visions.4 Also,
many carry it in their “genes” and divination can be passed through the lineage
on either the mother’s or father’s side. Yet it is common for an individual to be
both a sofo and bokono and more common for an individual to enjoy a greater
reputation as one or the other. Bisi, Hadaya and Amagbe are all bokonosofos.
Sofo Bisi is known regionally as an herbalist, healer, and witchcraft arbiter, but
he does not earn the money or possess the energy of the younger bokonosofos.
Amagbe’s charisma is unparalleled when leading prayers, sermons, or in song.
Hadaya enjoys an impeccable reputation through divination abilities (inher-
ited from his grandfather). Older, more experienced priests visit him regularly.
Since it was Sofo Bisi who personally crafted the vodu fetishes at Gbedala
shrine, he enjoys special advantages when praying to the gods here. If others
come to ask for blessings or benefits without Bisi and especially without his
prior knowledge and consent, the vodus may not respect them. It is Bisi who
commands the shrine and has earned the knowledge and trust of the gods
housed there. So it is with healing. The power to heal stems from the extensive
training, knowledge, and experience, but also from a power whose wellspring
is the gods and their beneficence. The gods heal and judge, but the sofo has the
power to act as the conduit.
When visiting Sofo Bisi there is often a line of individuals waiting to see him
for matters of divorce, finding work, transgressions, sickness, conflict, and so
on. His ritual constituency includes individuals and groups from the commu-
nity next door to the United States, Italy, France, and Japan. They come to Sofo
Bisi for advice and assistance in matters spiritual, physical, social and psycho-
logical. When asked about pay rates for services rendered, Bisi and Amagbe
quickly corrected the question.
“We don’t measure in this way,” Bisi remarked. “You are always after num-
bers, child!” “Let’s see how to answer this,” Amagbe said.

Any sofo that you go to charging you a set rate is fake, a false prophet.
The money is not for me, it is for the shrine to appease the gods. If I take
too much, what do you think Kadzanka and Kunde will do to me? When
you go to a sofo and you need Kadzanka’s power or Bangede’s fetish, they

4 There is a specialization of religious labor amongst sofos in Gorovodu. Sofos may be divided
between ritual spheres. Afa, Mami Wata, Gorovodu, and Tchamba each have priests that keep
their shrines and maintain veneration. The honorific sofo is understood across these ritual
spheres though there are specificities. Hounon is an Adja referent to a high-ranking priest of
vodu and may also be attached to bokono, amegasi, or mamisi (priest of Mami Wata). Tohono
refers to priests of the Yewevodu order or priests of the thunder and lightning god Heviesso.
160 CHAPTER 5

ask you to provide items and they are provided by you. If they do it and
it doesn’t work, there is something missing, but if it is done correctly you
will see the positive results. Then you will in turn help me as I helped you.

“Why am I a sofo in this area and not rich?” Bisi followed rhetorically. “For me,
my sources in life depend on my adepts, those who come to me to be bap-
tized into the vodu. If I don’t do well by them, the spirits will not do well by
me.” Sofos serve the gods in order to serve their ritual constituencies. In doing
so, they are expected to demonstrate humility and exercise self-control. It was
emphasized during interviews with tronsis and sofos alike that sofos should
never use their status to their own advantage. They should never use their sta-
tus to gain money, pursue women (if the sofo is a man), take bribes, or other-
wise influence others outside of their role as sofo. This inevitably happens. The
pursuit of financial gain or uncontrolled sexual desire has befallen more than
one priest in West Africa. Unscrupulous sofos take advantage of the desperate
or ignorant.
Most bokonosofos interviewed for our research insisted there is no set pay-
ment system for their services, whether healing, divining, or otherwise act-
ing as interloper with the gods. Many quickly informed us that any sofo that
charges a specific amount for a service is a charlatan. If the gods deliver what
you ask, you will be thankful and repay them at the shrine. Sacrifices, libations,
and ritual instruments all cost money and must be procured for many differ-
ent ritual services. Direct payment to priests for services is negotiated at the
intersection of culture and socio-economics. The wealthy are expected to pay
more. The poor are expected to pay less. Yovos almost always pay much more;
local adepts, much less. For example, every morning we prayed at the shrine
with Sofo Bisi to help us in our research. Each morning we purchased kola nut
and gin to make prayer (one should not show up to the gods empty handed
when asking for favors). The more libation and food brought to the fetishes
at the shrine, the more content the gods will be and thus the more spiritually
powerful the shrine will become. Sofo Bisi never asked us for payment nor did
he make us feel inclined to give any. For him, daily libations and kola for the
gods was payment in itself. Sometimes, individuals receiving ritual services
may skip out on reciprocating payment or, more frequently, make perpetual
excuses or accuse the sofo of greediness to dodge payment. “Oh, it happens
all the time,” Amagbe mused one rainy afternoon, “But that’s their problem.
That’s on their conscience. Not me, I do the gods’ work.” Yet, most sofos assured
us that spiritual punishment would surely follow such unrepentant acts. “They
will receive their punishment and they know that.” Self-discipline and righ-
teousness are keys to a good sofo’s success.
The Shrine At Gbedala 161

Though vodu in general is adamantly non-hierarchical, there is more hier-

archy in Gorovodu compared to other denominations. From the beginning,
Kodzokuma worked hard to centralize and codify the production of fetishes
through his home base in Kpando (Manière 2010; Friedson 2009). A sofo should
always be referred to as such out of politeness and respect and it is proper to
refer to Bisi as “Sofo Bisi,” whether or not in his presence. Upon initiation one
may refer to a priest as “Mama” or “Papa” but to do so prematurely is viewed as
taking unearned liberties. Higher-ranking priests initiate juniors through the
variety of rituals that mark allegiance and commitment to gods and ancestors.
Successive initiations act as the means by which religious knowledge may be
passed on and the religion may be reproduced in a controlled way. The hierar-
chy in Gorovodu stems from these progressive initiations through which bod-
ies of knowledge, including medical, botanical, and psychological, are taught
and passed on. Over time, one must master an unknown number of prayers,
herbs, dances, songs, possession practices, and sacred languages. Generally
speaking, a sofo-to-be is first afflicted by divine illness or inspiration. He or
she is then taken to a sofo for ritual and divination to determine the cause.
If the gods sanctioned the call then the individual is apprenticed to a higher-
ranking priest as an assistant priest. Being sponsored and initiated by higher-
ranking sofos demonstrates a lineage-based rationale whereby sofos may trace
their “bloodlines” back to Dzreke or Kodzokuma. At the end of the initiation,
the newly ordained sofo walks to and from the shrine and the Sacred Forest
carrying the fetishes. He is then presented by elder sofos with the ceremonial
accouterments—a red fez commonly worn in Muslim Africa, and extravagant
yet uncomfortable Ashanti royal sandals (also worn by the Asantehene). For
a junior sofo to establish a small shrine the costs of purchasing necessary rit-
ual goods, fetishes, animal offerings, and other items can easily reach four to
six thousand dollars. One often goes into debt to build the shrine, construct
the fetishes, and quicken them to life through an immense amount of ritual
and animal sacrifice. Moreover, once established, the gods can be demand-
ing. Healing, divining, adjudicating, and sustaining the overall well-being of
the congregation requires continuous gift and counter-gifts. When Eric teased
Amagbe about being a “big man” in the community, he laughed it off and said,
“No, no, no, let me tell you, no serious person becomes a sofo to make money!”
Only charlatans.”
The path of ritual labor specialization is different for women and men.
Sometimes service begins as an adept (tronsi), which is determined by an
“opening of the mouth” ceremony (agodzedzenetro) (see Rosenthal 1998, 190,
or “mouth opening” ceremony (nuvuvu) see Venkatachalam 2015, 75) held
in the Sacred Forest. Sometimes the spirits call through dreams, other times
162 CHAPTER 5

through divination or ritual. Most often, spirits possess the bodies of initiates
and choose them as wives, often for a lifetime. Initiation for boys and girls is
determined when the god possesses the child for the first time. Most often the
spirits come to the child in their early teens, but we have observed this in girls
as young as six and boys as young as eight. The child may start to “act bizarre”
or embody a certain vodu’s mannerisms or habits. The family and sofo will take
the child to the Sacred Forest for divinations to identify the spirit. The child is
given kola nut and medicinal alcohol as they are laid on their back. Continual
clapping (akpefofo) is performed together with light chanting and the metro-
nomic clacking of bells (atoke). The portal between this world and the other is
opened with sounds, tastes, and touches from the family and religious special-
ists. If meant to be, the entranced child may begin to sing a song specific to a
spirit and so unveils the spirit who has chosen the child as a wife in eternal
spiritual matrimony. Marriage to the spirit opens the adept’s personhood, add-
ing another status to their identity. Sometimes after several days no spirit will
come and they will collectively agree that the child is not yet ready. When our
friend’s much younger brother, Musani, became an adept in the spring of 2003,
he was in the shrine and forest for three days, coming in and out of trance but
unable to speak. No spirit revealed itself and he returned to his normal life.
A few months later he was “acting strange” again and after a full night of ritual
in the Sacred Forest he opened his mouth and sang a song of Bangede. From
then on he was a wife of Bangede (Bangedesi).
Once an adept, one is considered a permanent member of the vodu com-
munity. Women and men initiated into a vodu sect become the “wife” (regard-
less of gender) of one or many vodu (vodunsi) or a child of the vodu (tronduvi).
The personalities of the spirits are as multi-vocal and complex as humans and
manifest themselves in numerous ways. For example, Kunde adepts tend to
be very loyal companions and natural leaders with mature attitudes. They are
also strict and attentive fathers and mothers. Sometimes adepts have opposi-
tional personality traits from their spirit, with the spirit acting to “level out” or
make the individual “well rounded.” Initiation as an adept involves religious
education similar to that of a priest. Vodunsi must know how to gratify each
vodu. They must know songs, dances, religious laws, appropriate behavior, and
so on (see also Forte 2010, 134). Once initiated, adepts are expected to follow
Gorovodu law and the personal behavior archetypes outlined during initiation
that include food and other taboos. Failure to observe such laws and taboos
may result in spiritual punishment (sickness of self or family members, ill luck,
or trouble), social reprimand by the sofo of the shrine or religious association,
and sanctions in the form of money or libations. The gods know no religious
boundaries and converting to another religion will not free one from the gods’
power.
The Shrine At Gbedala 163

Illustration 5.2 Tronsis in Bisi’s shrine, Gbedala.

Once initiated as a tronsi, there are many paths one may take in service to
the spirits. The individual rarely chooses his or her eventual vocation, rather
the spirits will guide him or her making their intentions known through
divination, revelatory illness, possession episodes, and so on. Those who are
never called to be spirit wives may be called instead to be spirit guides and
receive training as a senterua. Senterua are women adepts that care for spir-
its during possession trance. These individuals are not spirit wives, they are
not possessed by gods, but serve crucial roles during ceremonies. Whenever
someone begins the initial stages of possession trance, anywhere from one to
four senterua surround him or her depending on the forcefulness of the epi-
sode. They manage the possession by physically guiding the individual/god
through or around crowds and onlookers, fetching sacred herb water (amatsi)
from special buta kettles, loosening clothing, tying baggy clothes, or remov-
ing jewelry. Senterua act as guardians and are often close friends or relatives
of those who fall into trance. They are able to read and react to the needs
and desires of spirits through senses and experience that requires years to
accumulate. Alternatively, individuals may serve a lifetime as a kpedziga, or
praying priest, acting as a sort of “first assistant” to the shrine. He or she leads
the congregation in alms and often serves as master of ceremonies or song
164 CHAPTER 5

Illustration 5.3 Three Senterua surround and aid a Tronsi seized in possession trance.

leader (ehadzito). The kpedziga also assists the sofo in the gathering and prepa-
ration of herbs and plant medicines.
Women often become initiated as seers (amegasi), someone who channels
the ancestors and an individual’s ancestral soul (dzoto) and identity spirit soul
(vodudzoto) to make knowable the individual’s destiny (se). The reputation of
an amegasi rests upon her highly developed intuition and abilities in augury.
Unrelated to Afa diviners (see below), amegasi are frequently sought out either
before or after an Afa divination in order to receive a second opinion or cross
check an inquiry or spiritual challenge (Rosenthal 1998, 259). For men, the next
specialty in the ritual division of labor after kpedziga is bosomfo, for whom the
task of sacrificing animals is solely reserved (we have never observed a woman
sacrifice an animal or play the drum). One may then take on more respon-
sibility as a bosomfowoah, the direct representative of the sofo, empowered
with the sofo’s status and role, when healing, medicine, or politics between or
within shrines pull a sofo away.

Prayer
Before engaging the gods in daily prayer, we first washed our hands, feet, and
head, rendering us pure enough to enter into the shrine. This brief cleanse,
perhaps appropriated from Islam, is not always done before entering the
shrine but considered a very formal practice that should always be done. Once
inside, we knelt on the mat facing the fetishes. As the sofoga in attendance,
The Shrine At Gbedala 165

Sofo Bisi would lead the prayers. The sofo leading the prayers never pours liba-
tions himself. It is always done for him; and so Kossi would assist him as his son
and a minor sofo by feeding the god-fetishes and pouring the ritual libations.
Bisi slowly sat on the low stool in front of Tron Kunde, the age of his knees
evident. Kossi leaned over and stretched his long arm to pour gin into the glass
held by Bisi. Kossi then retreated without a word, putting his back to the wall in
deferential silence. Sofo Bisi then turned to Kunde and asked him to allow us to
perform any ceremony we needed in order to achieve success. He rhythmically
knocked on the base in front of Kunde’s kpome with a rock while praying.5 Bisi
poured drops on the fetish in a pattern meant to wet specific points. During
prayer, one provides Kunde with three chalk and three kola nuts, always with
the left hand. All other vodus receive four from the right hand. As he did this,
he asked Kunde for blessings, and then Kadzanka. He then rose, despite the
creaking of his knees, and moved over to the second kpome, home of Ablewa.
He prayed to Ablewa, invoking her other name, Tcheriya.
“Tcheriya we have come to you. We have come to you to greet you.” Talking
in Ewe, his voice produced a quiet rhythm. The words were not sung, but were
not simply uttered either.

How are you Tcheriya? We too are fine. We have come to you in this
house today to greet you. When a son comes he must go to the mother
and father and greet them. We have come to you in search of long life. We
have come to seek long life for our children, long life for our wives, our
friends, and all other people on earth.

Without lifting his eyes, he raised the shot glass in his left hand towards
Kossi who dutifully poured the gin, and passed the glass into his right hand.
“Ablewa, we don’t pray with empty hands, we pray with drink. So Tcheriya,
we are giving you drink.”
Again he poured a succession of drops on the fetish in a definitive pattern.
It amazed us how many drops and small streams can come from a one-ounce
shot glass when poured by experienced hands. He then touched the fetish and
turned to Eric who was sitting nearest to him, extending his right hand. He
shook hands with Eric and then turned, touched the fetish, and shook Eric’s
hand again. This ritual was repeated three times as Bisi transferred power from

5 This acoustical practice is common when praying to Kunde. According to Friedson, it raises
the prayers “to an even higher level of discourse, requiring and demanding attention, sending
them forcefully to the gods” (2009, 74).
166 CHAPTER 5

Ablewa, through himself, to Eric. As visitors here to understand and pay respect
to the gods, we were guests and so received the power from the vodus that day.
Bisi then shifted to the third kpome, home of Sunia Kompo.

Sunia we have come to you. Sunia we have come to your mother, we have
come to your father, and now we have come to you. We ask for long life. We
ask for long life for our children. We ask for long life for our wives. We ask
for long life for our friends. We want everybody to have long life. We want
to lead a good life. We want to walk in the light of your rules. We want to
have energy and strength in everything we do. That is why we are here.
Now, when you come to somebody you need to offer them a drink so
Sunia we are going to offer you a drink. And the drink is gin. It is not any
drink that we offer you. So Sunia, we give you drink, we offer you drink.
You must support your mother and father and give our visiting friends
long life and prosperity.

Sofo Bisi then stood and moved the stool to the far wall to sit and honor the
final three gods. The rest of us attending shifted as well. Kossi knelt nearby on
his haunches in front of Sunia and faced Bisi.
Bisi began the prayer to Bangede by picking up the small bell (ega) that
always rests near the fetish and ringing it. He rang it continuously throughout
the entire prayer.

Oh Bangede Ketechi, we have come to you. We want to greet you. We

beg you, you and your ancestors, and those who do dangerous work.
We greet those who are with you; those who have died in blood. Have
mercy on us and give us strength. We know you have been working
together with them. We have come to you so that you take care of us.
All of us here we want long life and strength in everything. We want good
life and anything that happens, anything we need we ask you to give to
us. We know you have strength and energy. We know that anything that
happens to us, when we come to you, you do it for us. So we have come
to you. So you help us. When we come to you, as usual, we have to offer
you a drink.

The same ritual was repeated after Bisi set down the bell. Kossi poured the gin
with a grave expression. Bisi took the glass and poured the gin first on Sacra
Bode and then Bangede. “So we have given you the drink.” Bisi extended the
glass again to Kossi who quickly refilled it. He poured drops on Sacra Bode
while invoking the names of Mossi and Sacra. He then poured gin on Bangede
The Shrine At Gbedala 167

again and invoked the names of the three other gods that compose Bangede:
Magazun, Sourougou, and Tsengue. He picked the bell up again and rang it as
he squared himself in front of the anthropomorphic fetish of Nana Wango.

We have come to you Wango. Wango, we have come to the father, the
mother, we have come to everybody. We come to you now. Our friends
here, they’ve come to you. They’ve come to greet you. We give them
honors.

Bisi then touched the fetish with extended fingers, turned and shook hands
with Eric, again repeating the ritual three times. “Wango, this is your drink.
Drink it and give our guests long life.” The same ritual with Kossi was repeated
until Wango was satisfied. Bisi then calmly threw his hands into the air above
his head palms facing outwards. The prayers were complete.
Kossi then poured a tote of gin and handed it to Christian. It is customary for
the sponsor of the morning prayers to be offered to break bread with the gods
after prayers and libations are complete. Kossi turned to us with an ounce of
gin with the same serious but inviting demeanor. This was a respectful act, one
that represented fellowship with the congregation of faithful and community
with the gods. It also represented a shot of one hundred proof gin at eight in
the morning. It is customary to pour the first drops of drink on the ground
to demonstrate reverence for the ancestors. That morning, Christian deployed
the pragmatic end to this small ritual. If one were in the mood for gin, one
would pour out only a few drops for the ancestors and gulp the rest. If one
were in no mood for alcohol at the moment, like that morning, one could offer
the ancestors the bulk if not all of the gin. We trusted that by the conclusion
of fieldwork, it had all balanced out and the ancestors were satisfied. Pouring
most out onto the ground, Christian quickly swallowed the rest. He handed the
glass back to Kossi with a quiet merci who took it and poured another for Eric,
then offered a drink to Balanga and the assistant shrine caretaker (kpomega).
He never offered a drink to Bisi, who consumed alcohol only on very rare occa-
sions. The ritual prayers were over.
The most common activity at any shrine is prayer (dogbeda). Prayer is a
bodily and multisensory engagement that brings the gods and the relation-
ship between self and god into perceptual consciousness. In the presence of
the fetishes, prayer rituals are both an individual exercise and typically public.
They are led by a ritual specialist and conform to a certain order and process.
Yet, there is room for imagination and creativity. Serious adepts go to the shrine
each morning and often again during the evening. Even the less engaged make
it to the shrine on Fridays and Sundays. There are two types of prayer: regular
168 CHAPTER 5

and occasional. The best time for regular prayers is every six hours: 6:00 a.m.,
noon, 6:00 p.m., and midnight, a cycle viewed as akin to that of Muslims. These
temporal points represent transition periods in the day, crossroads, which are
the times of the vodu. Occasional prayers are held as necessary: a loved one is
sick, one has a job interview the next day, fishing has been no good the past
week, and so on.
Prayer and libation is a form of direct communication with the gods. Prayer
makes public the consciousness of the fact that health, good fortune, fertility,
and so on are dependent upon ongoing engagements with the Other (in this
case, the Other-divine). When done in good faith, the gods will hear, under-
stand, and accept one’s prayers and so most adepts will save money for when
they need assistance from the vodus. They may then go to the shrine and pray
with gin and kola and not come, as Sofo Bisi said in his prayer above, empty
handed to their spiritual mother and father. If the spirits come through and
assist the individual, the person must return and thank the gods with sacrifice.
To generate a conversation with the gods, priests deploy cowry shells, which
have a deep history in West Africa. Pervasive in the Indian and Pacific Oceans,
cowries entered West Africa by way of Arab and Hausa caravans and later
traders aboard European ships. They became the chief means of exchange in
transactions involving slaves. Eventually, cowries were utilized so extensively
in the main slave ports they became accepted as a sort of general currency.
They were small, easy to transport, non-perishable, and easily weighed or
counted to determine value. Money from the past, and thus associated with
wealth particularly generated from the slave trade, cowries were made sacred
and are today cast to communicate with and determine the will of the vodus
and trowo. On the floor in front of the kpome, one may ask questions or offer
gifts to the gods. To receive an answer or to ensure the gift is accepted and
not found wanting, a priest casts eight cowry shells on the ground. The shells
land either face up or face down: face up indicates a positive reply; face down
a negative. Even numbers are “yes”, odd numbers, and “no.” If all eight cowries
land face up, it is a very strong positive indeed. Of course, answers are usually
mixed: six down, two up; four up, four down, and so on. The specificity of the
binary code closely parallels the rules of Afa, but creativity and imagination
are still present in the way questions are posed or the innumerable different
ways one can probe the same question. It also allows room for more negotia-
tion between individual and gods.

Sacrifice
In the context of West African vodu, Rene Girard is correct in pronouncing,
“Sacrifice is here visualized as engendering religion” (1979, 89). It is integral to
The Shrine At Gbedala 169

Illustration 5.4 Holding the blade in his left hand, Bosomfo Balanga and an assistant
sacrifice a dog to Kunde, Bisi’s Shrine, Gbedala.

many religions in Africa and African-based religions in the New World (see, for
example, Deren 2004, 33).6, 7 We argue sacrifice is the direct visceral experience
of giving to the gods and the faith that this giving will be reciprocated.
The intentionality inherent to act of ritual slaughter allows us to intuit
the ongoing relationships with the gods through which life and success is
made possible. The gods of Gorovodu and the practices of sacrifice (vossa)

6 In the New World, the toleration of animal sacrifice as a religious freedom was hard won
only recently. In the United States, two separate priests and associations of Yoruba Orisa and
Lucumi won court cases in the Supreme Court of Florida (Skinner 1994). In an exhaustive
study of the relationship between the vodou religious practice and state law in Haiti, Ramsey
(2011, 185) notes that laws against sortileges (spells or magic) were redefined to prohibit the
practice of vodou among the rural peasantry more generally under the auspices of pratiques
superstitieuses (superstitious practices). Strikingly, this redefinition under the presidential
regime of Sténio Vincent in 1935 specifically targeted the practice of animal sacrifice, which
came to be known as a sort of legal litmus test of superstitious practice but was also recog-
nized as the constitutive practice of the entire vodou religious complex.
7 With sacrifice comes a rational logic that lends itself to reciprocity and transformation
between worlds and realities. Hence the “logic” of sacrifice is universal (de Heusch 1985).
Hindu Vedas cite it extensively; sacrifice fills the pages of both The Old and New Testament.
In Islam, people offer a camel or ox during Eid. From scapegoats to metaphors (Girard 1979;
Le Guin 1973), the multidimensionality of animal sacrifice has been thoroughly investigated
ethnologically. Our purpose here is to formulate it’s meaning among Ewe vodu worshippers.
170 CHAPTER 5

cannot be separated because sacrifice lies at the center of the reciprocating

relationships between people and gods that creates the social and moral order.
The vodus demand regular sacrifices from adepts in exchange for working
on their behalf. What to sacrifice is determined by the known tastes and tradi-
tions of the gods and also determined afresh with each sacrifice through Afa
divination (Afakaka). As Friedson (2009, 85) points out when making compari-
sons to Evans-Pritchard’s cucumbers for cows, sacrifice is the centerpiece of
ceremonies and everything in traditional Ewe religion. It is a very common
ritual, deployed during initiations, adjudications, and appeasements, healing
events, and asking the gods for serious favors. Offerings may include gin, kola
nut, chalk, money, or other goods, but the giving of the blood of animals is the
most esteemed and desired offering one may make to the gods. The sacrifice
of animals is the giving of life, symbolized by blood. As blood is the essence
of life, its conveyance through ritual gives power to the vodus, restoring their
divine vitality. From this power and restoration, the vodus are able to support
and provide service to the congregation.
Animal sacrifice in Gorovodu is not an orgy of slaughter. It is a precise
and meticulous ritual carried out by a specialist. There is no fury in the kill-
ing, rather the bosomfo carries out the ritual peacefully, confident in its legiti-
macy and necessity. Once the animal is butchured, the gods absorb the blood
that is poured upon their fetish. They may also eat directly, through a tronsi
taken in possession-trance. This material reliquishing is rooted in mimeticism
(Girard 2011, 83). Each god favors an animal with which it shares mimetic rela-
tionships to its inherent personality. As Sofo Bisi said again and again, “The
gods have their certain tastes and they like what they like. Without the blood
of certain animals they will not work.” Kunde prefers dog, Ablewa hen, Sunia
pidgin, Bangede cat, Sacra Bode goat, and Wango duck. Almost all spirits eat
fowl, most will eat goat of appropriate color. Animals are very rarely sacrificed
in the houses of Mami Wata. Instead she demands fruit and sugar in the form
of candy or soda. Note that the sacrificial animal does not replace or directly
symbolize the god. Such a symbolically direct act of violence would perpetu-
ate the reciprocation of internal violence the community is seeking to prevent
or heal. Sacrifice means more than the life of animals and should not be the-
orized as simple killing. It is a relinquishing and gifting to the gods through
destroying (49). Animal sacrifice to the gods protects the community from
its own internal violence that originates in n’bia. Through mimesis sacrifice
restores or maintains social harmony. It restores harmony when the gods are
welcomed and thanked for their intervention in disputes or criminal activ-
ity and it maintains harmony when the gods are thanked in public ceremony.
When the congregation comes together to break bread with the gods and each
The Shrine At Gbedala 171

other, such as a Fetatrotro ceremony, it is the pinnacle and crescendo of reli-

gion and life.

Spirit Possession
During an interview with a senior priest from Ghana in 2013, a younger priest
sitting with us suddenly grew quite frustrated. “What is your obsession with
spirit possession? You [anthropologists] spend too much time with words and
categories. You have to allow the spirits to speak. Our ancestors are dead but
they long to come back and dance, eat, and drink, and when they do, it makes
us feel good. Understand? It’s really quite simple.”
Perhaps the most encompassing and ambitious study of possession-trance
is I.M. Lewis’ Ecstatic Religion (1971). Drawing upon examples from several cul-
tures, Lewis situates possession into the social and political circumstances in
which they occur by delineating between peripheral and central possession.
Peripheral possession cults are defined by possession where spirits that origi-
nate from outside the society possess women and men of low social standing
(i.e., those peripheral in society).8 The spirits have no moral implications or
significance and the women are blameless for what is said or occurs during
possession because they have no knowledge or control over themselves. Yet
during the possession episode the possessed individual holds high status, their
demands must be met and their needs must be placated. Hence, for Lewis,
peripheral possession is an instrumental “oblique aggressive strategy” (32), a
“gesture of defiance” (33) employed by socially peripheral individuals (typi-
cally women in patrilineal societies) to “achieve ends which they cannot read-
ily obtain more directly” (85). It is not threatening to the social status of men
nor does it cause them to lose face because, again, it is not women who are
making demands, but spirits. The spirits are, in most cases, outsiders, aliens,
or belonging to another social group rather than autochthonous to the society
in question (see also Boddy 1994). For Lewis, this reinforces the notion that
they are not directly threatening to the overall social order of male dominance
and allow women to posit their experience as illness or misfortune attacks
by amoral spirits. Peripheral possession thus publicizes insubordination and
frustration with the established order, but in a socially secure manner and not

8 This assertion that it is more common among women and men of low social standing is
reinforced by Greenbaum’s statistical study (1973) of 114 societies in which “possession trance
was significantly related to the presence of slavery and to the presence of a stratification
system of freeman of at least two social classes” (54).
172 CHAPTER 5

to the point of subversion (120).9 The rebelliousness inherent to possession is

kept in check by witchcraft accusations. Socially peripheral individuals are not
granted too much power through possession because witchcraft accusations
typically leveled against women act as a check against their religious power.
As stated by Lewis, “if possession is the means by which the underdog bid for
attention, witchcraft accusations provide the countervailing strategy by which
such demands are kept within bounds” (122). In central possession religions,
the spirits are “sternly moralistic” (34) and intervene in human affairs to right
moral wrongs and sustain public morality. Spirits are at the center stage in
the religious life of the society. In these religious systems, religious specialists
retain a privileged position vis-à-vis the spirits and their powers, which gives
them a subsequent political power in society as well. Specialists often act as
the de facto leaders in politically decentralized societies or where physical or
social environmental pressures regulate against the formation of large stable
social groups. Whereas possession illness is a sign of oppression in peripheral
religious societies and often resolved by exorcism, in central possession societ-
ies, possession illness is typically evidence of divine calling or inspiration (133).
Though Lewis’ groupings faced criticism (see, for example, Bourguignon
1973, Lovell 2002), they establish a starting point from which we may discuss
possession in Gorovodu because of his emphasis on the spirits that operate
upon the individual transformations (Bourguignon 1973, 28). The analyses pre-
sented in Bourguignon’s edited book do not tacitly distinguish between the
spirits or engage their relation to the public morality of the society (29). Both
are central to grasping the emic of religious belief and practice in Gbedala.
Here, an understanding of possession eludes and embraces both of Lewis’
basic constructs (see also Lovell’s (2002) critique of Lewis in relation to her
analysis of possession among the Watchie Ewe in south-east Togo). The gods
are peripheral in that they are Others and also afflict mostly women in the
community (certainly not always women of lower status), yet they are central
because of their intense moralistic and stern nature. When in trance all barri-
ers reeking of hierarchy disappear. The individual who is possessed is a god,
and thus higher status than any chief or sofo. The individual experiences the
mimetic embodiment of not only the god, but also the symbolic capital that
accompanies the god. The embodied god becomes like a wedge forcing open
the limitations inherent to structures.

9 Kertzer (1988) built on this agency-centered approach which sees rituals as powerful acts
that can both “liberate” and “transform” the status quo.
The Shrine At Gbedala 173

Since Lewis’ study (and indeed even before), the anthropological litera-
ture on spirit possession grew more diverse and more complex. Given its near
universal nature, spirit possession has captured the inquisitiveness of anthro-
pologists throughout the world. It has been interrogated from functional,
structural, and processual schools, through symbolic, interpretive and post-
modern lenses. Many early analyses followed Lewis and focused on the regu-
latory and controlling aspects of ritual (see Turner 1977, 61).10 Turner (1967)
argues episodes of spirit possession are “liminal,” in that the usual conventions
and structures of society break down, if only for a moment, and when struc-
ture is overcome with anti-structure everybody at the theatrical performance
becomes one by reaching communitas. These occasions can be sad, joyous,
or angry but meaning is inherent in self and society most when spirit posses-
sion happens. In more contemporary scholarship, spirit possession is viewed
as a “continuous enactment and performance of history, memory, and iden-
tity” (Lovell 2002, 122). Kramer (1993) and Wendl (1999) view possession as a
multifunctional institution that serves as a means of therapy, entertainment,
social criticism, art form, memory reenactment, and performative ethnogra-
phy (Wendl 1999, 120). It has been described as epiphany (Montilus 2014) and
ravishment in raw form (Rosenthal 2002, 324). An early definition given by
Bourguignon (1973) defines possession trance as possession by spirits involv-
ing “the impersonation of spirits—the acting out of their speech or behavior.
It does not involve hallucinations, and it is typically followed by amnesia” (12).
Despite the diverse attempts to define spirit possession, it remains a highly
complex and charged term denoting the intricate, multidimensional relation-
ships between people, communities, and gods.
Here, possession is embodied presences of the gods through which divine
absences are made real, the empty made filled. Through possession the con-
gregation intuits and experiences the gods. It is a manifestation of the gods
and a means by which tronsi demonstrate their commitment to the gods and
the gods demonstrate commitment to adherents. Possession brings the gods
and everything they entail: morality, medicine, power, faith, obedience, peace
in the community, and so on into the sensed presence and lived reality of the

10 The collective desire and healing elements of possession have maintained centrality since
the dawn of religion. In fact, much of western civilization, including Christianity itself,
appears to have begun with spirit possession. Davies (1995) argues that Jesus worked as
a spirit-possessed healer and argues against the “teacher first” archetype of Christ, and
offers ample “theatrical examples” of the theatre of possession.
174 CHAPTER 5

faithful. Through possession participants hear the gods speak, touch them, see
them dance; and it is through possession that gods exercise their authority,
making known their desires and requirements. This way, gods that appear to
dance the bodies of adepts are the “yin to the yang” of the material fetishes
that rest in the shrine. Past studies that treat possession-trance in a general
cross-cultural fashion often treat it in isolation of other aspects of the religion.
It is a public affair and performance. More than a technique du corps, it is a
non-conscious imgodification that holds deep meaning for the individual pos-
sessed by the spirit(s) and also for the ceremony participants, or those partici-
pating in the greater religious context in which the possession trance occurs
and is given meaning. Private occasions tend to be between healers and the
afflicted because the nature of possession can be deeply personal. As public
occasions they can be cathartic, bring fortune and blessing to the community,
resurrect and transform social memory, diagnose community-wide illnesses or
misfortunes, and be just plain funky affairs, filled with singing, dancing, and
carnivalesque mayhem.
In Gbedala, each possession episode is unique, though thematic elements
run through and connect each. There is always an unpredictable, improvisa-
tional character to the timing and vibe of a possession episode. The vodus can
fall on an adept at any time and possession may be involuntary. If the vodu
wishes to speak, the vodu will fall on a vessel and use it to speak. Yet they most
often come to possess the bodies of adepts when their specific rhythms are
drummed, their hymns are sung, and they are fed the blood of animals, in
other words, when they are roused and offered gifts and veneration. They pass
through the body so that they can speak and dance. Sometimes the person will
whisper and whimper. Other times, they will shriek and shout. Normally, the
spirit possession takes some time to coalesce. The body seems to be getting its
rhythm and balance, and the feet are an indicator of the depth and character
of the trance. One foot first, then the other, the tronsi will begin leaving per-
pendicular lines in the sand of the performance space. The person will look
“empty” and speak in a language or tongue that is foreign, normally of north-
ern origin, or hybrid. For example, they may request a saraka (Hausa) instead
of vossa (Ewe). They may demand goro, aga or aha: Hausa words for kola and
gin. The tron will then make revelations about “unseen things” such as jeal-
ousy, envy, revenge, and love in order to make them public and sort them out.
Sometimes when trance comes, the congregation will grow tense or nervous
and keep their distance in fear they may be called out for any of their trans-
gressions, especially those of a personal or private nature. Once revealed, the
possessed and those tied to the event will end up in the shrine, trying to sort
out what is wrong and what should be done about it. The spirits work hard at
The Shrine At Gbedala 175

keeping people on track in life. They can be very unforgiving. They are beyond
nature, and capable of manipulating reality.
Almost all sofos interviewed have seen whites or foreigners fall into
trance—there is an Old Dutch man in Cotonou who is renowned for entering
into possession-trance at ceremonies—but according to Amagbe, it is danger-
ous because psychologies and identities are built differently. “All people can
go into trance, simply because it has nothing to do with you,” said Hadaya on
one occasion. “You’re just the horse that the spirit comes and rides. The vodus
are riding the person and they take over their head. That’s why when you come
back you don’t remember anything. One doesn’t want to take pictures of some-
one in trance because a person who was in trance can see the pictures in their
normal state and not believe it because they don’t remember. The vodus can
take a specific person and get them to talk to another person to tell them some-
thing.” It is taboo to discuss what happened with the person because it can
offend the gods.
“What if someone is faking?” Eric asked.
“People fake it because they are not pure or could be drunk. They will be
punished. Vodus can come and trap a person or possess someone else to say
the other person is faking. They have lots of ways to punish you. They can cause
accidents or make all your children become drunkards for example.”
Humility is crucial, and showing off to gain attention is frowned upon.
When trance is faked or if people are drunk or on drugs while going into trance
it can cause great trouble. On occasion, those who are abusing alcohol or drugs
are believed to have perished while going into trance by offending the spir-
its. Although there is cannabis in each and every fetish, and although they are
offered gin regularly, most vodu spirits detest the abuse of drugs.
“Has anyone died during possession?”
“Oh yes,” Hadaya said. “People die during possession when they have severely
gone against the law. Bangede will come and strike them with his spear. They
die of a heart attack.”
During ceremonies, there may be sermons that make light of these trans-
gressors calling them “false prophets” who are sure to be punished in life by
offended sprits.
The longest trance episode Sofo witnessed was two hours. “Anything lon-
ger becomes dangerous for the tronsi.” Dehydration and exhaustions can take
their toll when dancing ceaselessly for hours in the heat near the equator. “Of
course there have been exceptions,” he said after thoughtfully reflecting upon
the question. “When there is special work it may go from morning to night.
When there is strong special work.” Hadaya agreed, and they elaborated no
further and dismissed any further questions on the subject.
176 CHAPTER 5

Divination

Anyigba sese gake agama do na fo anyi blewuu (Though the earth is solid,
the chameleon is cautious with its steps)
Ewe proverb

∵
A man named Popi sought divination to help him understand why he was
consistently refused a visa to travel to France and work at his uncle’s restau-
rant. He had exhausted himself with conversations at the embassy, personal
references from friends and relatives in both Togo and France, proofs of his
economic stability, and so on. Popi had good reason to be anxious. Leaving for
France meant making good money to support his family (who will remain in
the village) but his connections to France and knowledge of his family mem-
bers there has started to bring the hungry eyes of the police. Arresting individ-
uals with foreign connections is an easy bribe-for-bail scheme and Popi knew
he would be victim sooner rather than later.
To “make his road clear,” to bring light to this mystery, Popi hired one of
the more renowned Afa diviners in the area, a man from Denu named Dalete.
Dalete came to the village by taxi, but met us down the beach on a wide stretch
of sand in front of the Togo Beach Hotel, just next door to Gbedala. Popi was
weary of what Afa was to reveal and wanted no “hungry ears” from the com-
munity hearing the divination. Dalete appeared, walking through the hotel
grounds toward us on the beach wearing a huge friendly smile, and a red pagne
cloth around his waist. He carried a large satchel in which he kept the items
of his trade. After introductions and pleasant conversation, Popi took off his
shirt and put on a white pagne cloth over his blue jeans and sat in a chair next
to Dalete who unrolled a mat on the ground and sat in the sand with his legs
facing straight out. He scattered his massive assortment of shells, coins, rocks,
and other trinkets on his mat that lay to his right and began to sift through the
pile with his hands while he made small talk with all of us. From the beginning
of the process it was evident that Popi’s journey to France to work under-the-
table in his uncles’ restaurant was not going to be easy.
As soon as the agumaga (divining chains) were swung, there was activity.
Immediately both Sakpata and Heviesso from the Yewevodu pantheon made
their faces known through the trinkets that Dalete interpreted and through
the divination chains that he swung. Upon hearing their presence Dalete was
The Shrine At Gbedala 177

elated. It was the first time he had seen these two spirits appear simultane-
ously though his grandfather told him it happens on occasion. Sifting through
the trinkets and speaking aloud, Dalete mentioned the village of Sowe near the
city of Cotonou in the Republic of Benin. He then mentioned a zikpui or gun,
meaning that somebody in the military or a wife of Bangede may be blocking
his exodus. After a few minutes of concentration and reading, Dalete spoke,

A person very strong in vodu prevents the plans of you getting to France.
Why can’t you find money or proper documentation? Because a close
friend or brother does not want you to go. Who would do this? He does
not want to see you succeed and surpass him, for he too lived in France.
He speaks badly about you behind your back, incessantly, but since
others fear him the message never makes it back to you.

Dalete stopped and furrowed his brow, confused. This was a good start to
understanding Popi’s challenges, but it was not enough. More information was
needed to compose a good plan of action. Dalete interpretations were being
stymied by the incessant presence of Bangede, whose face kept appearing
in the trinkets. He switched course. Dalete asked Popi a series of perplexing
questions. After Popi answered, Dalete would consult the trinkets or swing the
agumaga, reading the answers Afa was giving. Looking more exasperated,
Dalete seemed to be trying to determine if this close friend or relation of Popi
is alive, dead, a person, or Bangede himself. Afa spoke monotonously and con-
tinued to say the same thing. The questions posed in a multitude of ways but
the same answers keep coming up. It is a living person. It is a male, and he
appears to be the central obstruction of the project.
The session continued for another hour or so. Popi was biting his finger-
nails and shaking his legs. He was turned back at immigration in Paris last time
he went to France and eventually jailed for three months then deported for
possessing false papers. It is a person, an older man whom you know,” Dalete
concluded after reading the divination. “A strong man. A very strong adept of a
particular vodu.” It was then quickly revealed that the person is a priest and an
adept of Bangede. Popi shouted out, “It’s true,” knowing immediately who was
blocking him. His close friend and confidant “Lango,” convinced Bangede that
blocking him was a good thing. But why? Again, more information was needed
to conceive of an effective plan of action.
We knew Afa revealed something serious because of the sudden look upon
Dalete’s face. He looked sharply at Popi. “Are you and your friend cheating peo-
ple? What are you both doing?” The connotations of the question were clear.
Popi explained how he and his partner were participants in several hustles.
178 CHAPTER 5

One was working with government officials to secure papers for wealthy
Togolese to travel to the U.S. Another was working with crooked members of
the police to shakedown small businesses for money. Dalete looked surprised,
but pleased with his honesty. Lango was preventing him from leaving because
he wanted to always keep Popi under his thumb. For cheating his fellow citi-
zens, Bangede was happy to block Popi’s visa requests as punishment.
Now a plan of action was considered. An intense conversation between
Popi, Dalete, and Afa ensued in Ewe for quite some time. It was obvious that
Lango must be confronted, the thought of which Popi seemed to relish. Then
Bangede must be appeased. Popi had not engaged in any illegal activity for
some time so ongoing punishment could be further thwarted by renewing
his commitment to vodu law and Kunde’s authority and giving thanks to
Bangede for his proper punishment. Popi knew the sacrifices to Bangede
would be expensive. “I will struggle to pay for these things but by all means it
must be done, otherwise I will be stuck in Togo forever,” he said, exasperated.
A plan in place and a renewed heart in Popi’s chest, the diviner was paid
three thousand CFA (six dollars). At the time, Popi truly believed he was very
close to exiting Togo forever, but he never did. In 2012, after ongoing failures and
more appeasements and sacrifices, he quit venerating the gods and became a
full-fledged Christian; yet still regularly visits Afa.
Afa (Ifa in Nigeria) is a system of practice and belief associated with the
vodu spirit of knowledge, Afa.11 Deeply entrenched culturally, Afa has been
subjected to immense scholarly attention (see Abimbola 1977; Bascom 1969;
Lovell 2005; Maupoil 1943). As a system of belief, Afa may be considered an oral
“sacred text” akin to an academic discipline (Oduwole 2012, 113), a cosmological
system of thinking (Abimbola 1994), or a theory and framework for acquiring
information. Known locally as the vodu of divination, Afa is “the mouthpiece
of the unseen” (Anedo 2014, 206), the translator and mouthpiece of the other
gods. It is a system of meanings and methods for communicating with the
gods who divine the future, reveal things or knowledge beyond the horizon of
individuals, and expose the cause of illness, misfortune, or witchcraft. Afa can
help determine where one should live, causes of death, when and where one
should hold a particular ceremony, why one is sick and how one should pro-
ceed with healing, whether or not to take a job, to start a project, or even con-
front a particular person. Though Afa exists outside relations to vodu (Muslims
and Christians seek out consultations with Afa too), it is an integral part of the

11 Afa is the Ewe term. The same or similar system is called Fa among the Adja and Fon in
Benin. Among the Yoruba in Nigeria, Ifa, or Orunmila, brings stability and order to a world
of fragility and chaos.
The Shrine At Gbedala 179

vodu religious experience and so Afa divination is a cultural constant along

the Bight of Benin, being carried out on a daily basis by professional diviners.
Afa divination sessions are not passive consultations to discover what the
spirits have decided about an individual fate, but processes “of active interven-
tion, intended to shape the course of life through communication between the
human and the spirit worlds” (Ellis and ter Haar 2004, 55–56). Gleason argues
divinations are an

. . . active process of forestalling calamity, of overcoming obstacles threat-

ening to prevent the living out of one’s allotted span, of assuring that
one’s destiny be full to the brim of its particular possibilities for increase
of well-being through wealth, women, and children, reputation . . . if
[Afa’s] instructions be obeyed (16, emphasis in the original).

When important decisions are being made regarding when and how to
travel; when, where, or what to buy and sell; with whom to engage in busi-
ness ventures; where and when to fish; or important questions regarding the
lack of job prospects, problems with conceiving children; and so on, the
potential costs of making the wrong decisions are immense, as immense as
the potential benefits for making the correct decision. In contexts devoid of
a social safety nets outside of one’s own kin relations, entrepreneurial risk-
taking is risky indeed. With so much on the line, decision-making can be para-
lyzing. Failure or the wrong life-course may mean penury. Success may bring
a new life for one and one’s family. Afa divination provides individuals with a
basis for discussing, imagining, and predicting the many different life-courses
a particular decision will set the individual upon. During divination sessions,
diviners guide individuals through the decision making process like a combi-
nation of priest and psychologist. Fears, hopes, opportunities, and dangers are
brought to the fore, examined, and rationalized. Upon completion, the person
has a plan of action at their disposal that instills purpose and confidence.
What rituals must one perform before setting out on this course? What gods
must be approached and venerated to ensure positive outcomes? During a dis-
cussion about an individual’s calling to Tchamba vodu (Grandmother Slave,
see chapter seven), Sofo Bisi’s youngest brother, Atsu, said Afa is the principal
means of decoding one’s history and calling,

When the slave spirit comes on your head it can make you crazy. You
don’t know what it speaks, what it wants, or where it is from. That is why
we do Afa divination, to figure all this history out. What kind of [slave
spirit] is it? Who enslaved whom? Why? When? These are the questions
180 CHAPTER 5

that only Afa can tell. Divination will tell you what type of drink the spirit
prefers, it will tell you what songs and rhythms it prefers [i.e., from its
homeland in the north]. Afa can cast all.

So important is the knowledge revealed by divination that individuals seek-

ing the most accurate information possible will have a divination done several
times, visit several diviners to secure “second opinions,” or diviners will col-
laborate to solve certain difficult cases.
During a divination session, diviners may use divination chains called
agumaga. The agumaga chain has eight shells attached to it at regular inter-
vals. The diviner clutches it in the middle, dividing the shells into four per
side, and swings the chain. Questions are asked, problems are posed, or issues
are raised. Spirits manipulate the agumaga and when the chain is allowed to
fall upon the divining board or prayer mat with a clack, the shells bounce and
land up or down. The diviner interprets the positions of the shells through
sixteen different combinations (medzi) that may be divided further into 256
life-signs (kpoli). Reaching, understanding, and interpreting the kpoli of each
client and how it relates to the history, psychology, and situation of the client
and the medzi cast by the agumaga are the ultimate keys to divining (see also
Venkatachalam 2015, 68–70). Diviners may alternatively use trinkets by casting
them onto a divining board or prayer mat and interpreting them (the earth and
sand will serve as the divining board. The diviner presses marks into the ground
during readings and the marks may then be interpreted and then wiped clean).
Diviners like Dalete come to a session with a special bag (vodzi) filled with
objects: bones, plants, feathers, teeth, stones, minerals, amulets, trinkets, bottle
caps, chars of glass, and so much more. Many of the semi-precious stones,
American trinkets, and even foreign currencies are gifted to the mediums and
will eventually make their way into their bag to assist with interpretation.12
The contents of the divining bag can be massive. Dalete’s vodzi contains over
one thousand items. Amagbe keeps around six hundred. He explained,

If it is money you are after or is blocking you then coins are used, if it is
good fish you seek, then shells or fish bones, different rocks represent
different things, bottle caps are also representative of money, some rocks
are medicinal and rubbed with leaves, glass can symbolize fragility and
taking care, all objects can be pulled to the front and asked questions,
depending on what it is you seek and the contexts of your situation.

12 Divination methods are by no means homogenous and may include “ugiri (beads)
method, water method, palm reading method, palm nut method, kola nut method, etc.”
(Alfred 2014, 209).
The Shrine At Gbedala 181

Afa’s origins are debatable. Many Yoruba advocate that Ifa originated in
Yorubaland and probably migrated with the Ewe from Ketu during the Aja-Tado
migrations several hundred years ago (see chapter two). According to some
diviners we interviewed, including Hadaya, Afa originated in ancient Egypt
and Sudan. “Where do you think all the sacred geometry of the Jews, Arabs,
and Asians, comes from? It came from Africa,” he would say. Gleason (1973, 14)
muses that systems of divination based on improvisations upon binary codes
such as Ifa originated in ancient Greece and were elaborated upon during the
eighth and ninth centuries in the Muslim world.13 It expanded into Egypt and
then to the Sudan, from where it could have easily traversed along the east-
west trade axis of central Africa into contemporary Nigeria and mixed with
indigenous systems. The southern Ewe had an established local divination sys-
tem that was replaced by Afa during the intense concflicts of the eighteenth
century. As a result of this replacement, most likely based on effectiveness, the
supreme god of Afa, Se, gained status at the expense of Mawu (Greene 1996,
135). Afa maintained autonomy and rapidly expanded during the colonial era
(de Surgy 1981, 9), and today an estimated 100 million people recognize Afa,
including many Christians and Muslims. Since Christians and Muslims con-
sult Afa, it can be independent of vodu. Yet, it is tangential to vodu belief and
practice because of the myriad of legends, proverbs, poems, totemic group-
ings, taboos, and songs that comprise both the vodu and the Afa interpretive
framework.

Becoming Afavi
Afa is the great revealer. He provides insights, evaluations, assessment and
plans of action. He detects problems, identifies culprits, communicates with
the vodus, consults the dead, and aids the search for prosperity and balance
in life. Afa can determine the root cause of affliction and agency within social
drama, sometimes it is spiritual, other times physical, and almost always
involving the violation of laws or the unsuspecting aze of jealous rivals. Afa is
tied to destiny (se) and there is no way to understand oneself or one’s person-
hood without discussing Afa and its ties to personal law, morality, and being.
As a linguist and go between, Afa garners enormous respect. In a world of dis-
proportionate access to power, Afavi (children of Afa) possess greater power by
being able to access information and knowledge that others cannot.
Before consulting Afa it is best to undergo initiation, which can be three
days, seven days, or six weeks, depending on the level of immersion, and cred-
ibility and reliability correlates to the level of engagement. After initiation, one

13 In this historical interpretation, Afa derives its name from al-fa’l, Arabic for “good omen”
or “fortune” (Saul 2006, 4).
182 CHAPTER 5

becomes an afavi. This does not mean one is an Afa diviner—that initiation
and training takes years of apprenticeship, study, and ritual. Rather, the main
purpose of becoming afavi is to determine one’s kpoli or system of life signs.
There are 256 kpoli that are divided into 16 major signs (medzi). Each major sign
is symbolic and energized with proscriptions, mantras, colors, taboos, songs,
and dozens of other data that relates to one’s destiny in life. An important com-
ponent of one’s kpoli is the dzoto (ancestral soul). Every person has a reincarna-
tion soul stemming from an ancestor that comprises part of one’s identity and
personality (Rosenthal 1998, 168; Geurts 2003, 274). One’s kpoli is connected
to songs, stories, taboos, totems, plants, and animals through which special
numbers, food taboos, sacred poetry, personality traits, faults, talents, indeed
an entire outline of one’s personhood and collective place in the world can be
foretold. In his analysis of the related Ifa system, Abimbola (1994) explains,

Ifa contains an immense volume of traditions, consisting of 256 chapters

[odu]. Each odu is believed to contain from six to eight hundred poems
known as ese Ifa, totaling as many as 204,800 poems. If all these oral texts
were tape recorded, transcribed, and published as books, it would result
in hundreds of books, thus making Ifa one of the most extensive literary
texts ever developed (102).

Sofo Amagbe remarked, “It takes a lifetime to know all the [256] Afadu
(chapters) of Afa and also to know the disposition of the hundreds of gods
revealed through it.” After the individual’s kpoli is recognized and understood,
divinations and consultations with Afa diviners will be able to produce more
details, information, and assistance from Afa and one can visit Afa regularly to
consult on economic or health affairs, to get into a university, or secure a visa
to escape.
Eric’s coming to Afa was Sofo Amagbe’s idea. Eric had just finished co-host-
ing a large Fetatrotro at a neighboring village and so an initiation or any other
ritual that involved animal sacrifice, long hours of prayer, or restrictive rules
was the last thing on his mind. The festival the weekend before was excep-
tional, but it was also draining, sleep was an after-thought and the cost of
the cow and alcohol was a month’s salary. Ritual and ceremony always cost
money, but Amagbe was insistent, “All vodunsi should have Afa done. We need
to determine your kpoli. It is Afa who talks to all the vodus and ancestors, you
need to become an afavi.” Eric thought he already was an afavi because he
had gone through Afa readings in both Ghana and Benin. But Amagbe coun-
tered, “You are not an afavi, you just had your Afa cast. You need to go through
The Shrine At Gbedala 183

initiation, and it will only take three days for the short version of the ritual.”
Kossi said he would go through Afa alongside Eric and that it would take a
day or so to gather all the necessary materials. Another strong togbui bokono
(master diviner), Sofo Gogo, was summoned from nearby Ameka.
The initiation began the two days later in the Sacred Forest. Kossi, Auntie,
Amagbe, and Eric met Sofo Gogo who was waiting with elaborate, silver agu-
maga chains to be used in the initiation. The colorful ornaments attached to
the chains made them seem almost gaudy compared to others. When queried,
Gogo said that he inherited them from his grandfather and that the chains and
the sixteen sacred palm nuts to be used in the ceremony were resting in the
Sacred Forest of Ameka for several nights, amassing the power (nuse) neces-
sary for them to be “ready to speak.” The instructions he gave to Kossi and Eric
were clear. From sunrise to sunset, they should not eat any meat, and refrain
from alcohol. Each day they were expected to pray before the Afa vessels that
Gogo would give them, bringing the vessels with them home to the compound
while sleeping, and bringing the vessels at daybreak back to the Sacred Forest.
The next morning Kossi and Eric slept in and were met with harsh words
from Gogo and Amagbe who entered the compound shouting. They quickly
prayed before their Afa pots and scurried to the Sacred Forest to bathe in the
medicinal water basin located behind the Togbui Nyigbla shrine. The entire
village was aware of the undertaking as they saw the two initiates making their
way through the village dressed in the pagne cloth, covered in chalk and plant
medicines, with pot in hand, to the Sacred Forest.
The third day was the day for the transformative rite of initiation. Kossi and
Eric woke up early and went to the Gorovodu shrine to pray. They grabbed
their heavy pots filled with plants, duck blood, gin, water, herbs, pepper, per-
fume, soda water, chalk, and much more and headed to the Sacred Forest and
eventually Amagbe’s compound for their final rites. After drinking some gin
and water, Amagbe started to lay down the ground rules, as he always did,
but this time with a smile. Kossi and Eric were expected to wash their bodies,
morning and night, with the medicine water from the sacred vessels for three
weeks. “Then you must make prayer to your dzonu (sacred Afa beaded neck-
lace), which was given to you in your Afa pot along with a sacred talisman.”
These beads are actually palm nuts and in the talisman is sacred kaolin, sand,
and saw dust from where your kpoli will be revealed. “You are also expected to
keep your pagne clean and sleep in it as much as possible, to wrinkle or soil
it is very taboo. Those in the know understand you have gone through an Afa
ceremony when they see you freshly shaved, in a white pagne and dzonu.” Eric’s
necklace was fashioned by Gogo and was a gleaming white with blue, yellow,
184 CHAPTER 5

and red beads in the center that represented water, sun, and blood, the realms
of Mami Wata, Heviesso, and Ogun.
After the instructions, Amagbe ordered Eric to sit in the sand while he
produced water, soap, and a new razor. He shaved Eric’s head quickly with a
single razor blade. Auntie, Fatima, and Dzatá laughed as his hair fell to the
ground but Amagbe gathered it quickly so it may be buried later, “to avoid
anybody waging bovodu on you.” Kossi was next, looking nervous as Amagbe
again worked quickly. Heads shaved, dressed only in the white pagne around
the waist, bodies painted in white chalk, and Afa vessels in hand, Kossi and
Eric walked to Amagbe’s compound. Gogo led the procession and Amagbe and
the others followed behind, singing a soft hymn and clapping lightly as they
walked. As they passed people in the community smiled and commented or
nodded their approval.
At Amagbe’s compound they opened some warm beers, and Eric purchased
the customary two bottles of sodabi and a bottle of gin. Gogo presented the
intiates with necklaces and some freshly cut herbs to put into the sacred ves-
sels. They then took each of the palm nuts soaked in oil and duck blood out of
their Afa vessels with their right hand and put them in their mouths, slurping
them dry. Worried about nausea, they proceeded nonetheless. Gogo jingled the
palm nuts from right to left hand. Every fourth and seventh exchange they took
the nuts from the left hand and rubbed them together with both hands. The
process took some concentration and dexterity, and so Gogo sat in front of
them and patiently assisted. Finally, the palm nuts were placed in a separate
calabash and wrapped in thick white cloth. Forever, this vessel serves as per-
sonal medicine and protection. One’s whole life-text is literally in one small
calabash. “This is your medicine and destiny, so take care of it,” uttered Gogo.
Then Gogo divined Eric’s kpoli. He sat in the sand with his legs stretched out
in front of him with Eric hunched to his right. He crafted in the sand a square
“table” on which to make the divinations. He procured the sixteen palm nuts
(deki) he brought with him from Ameka and set to work. He shook the palm
nuts in both hands clasped together.14 He would stop shaking and attempt to
leave only one or two in his left hand. When he opened his hands to see, and
there were more than two, he would start again. The goal was to produce a
binary code comprised of “1” or “11.” When he opened his hand and one shell
was there, he would mark a “1” in the sand with his middle finger. If there

14 The nuts and divining chain are not fetishes or medicines that require veneration. They
are tools, instruments, and symbols that tell people what to do, what not to do, why things
go awry, and most importantly, what can be done to fix it. Most often, this fixing involves
animal sacrifices, alcohol, and also personal restrictions and ransoms.
The Shrine At Gbedala 185

were two palm nuts, then he would mark “11” with his middle and ring fingers
clutched together. He did not speak or look up as he did this, and neither did
they, mesmerized by the clacking of the palm nuts in his shaking hands and
the binary code, which was slowly revealing Eric’s kpoli.
Once finished, two lines of “1” and “11” lay carved in the sand, finally, Gogo
revealed Eric’s medzi. “You are Gbelete, a strong spirit indeed,” he said. The
Gbelete medzi is tied to monkeys and offers a propensity for birthing twins.
One should wear Ashanti cloth and refrain from traveling alone at night.
Gbelete is a priestly chapter and is tied to fire, warfare, and long migrations.
He stood and sacrificed two ducks to Afa. Each died quickly. He then placed
eight nuts in each hand (for balance he insisted), and continued,

Gbelete is a hot and dangerous personality indeed. He possesses superb

social skills. His problem is that he talks too much, often without think-
ing, and this is the source of all the maso-maso in his life. Since he is a
talker and compromiser he gives, and gives, and sometimes afterwards
will feel cheated. He is advised to take action, to work hard at listening,
for he is short-tempered and will not tolerate injustice or hypocrisy. He is
intelligent, but also cocky. Humility is no potion for him.

Eric’s reading came complete with many stories, one involving the Ananse
spider trickster, and another tied to water spirits. Eric was given many proverbs
dedicated to quelling his impatience. His animal totem is the lion but there
were also associations with horses, ravens, panthers, and even swordfish and
turtles. These totemic groupings are a part of one’s self, and therefore taboo
to eat or mistreat. He was told to wear a lot of white and reds and to dress up
whenever possible. His heart and tongue were strengths, while impatience and
narcissism his faults.
To become afavi is to assume a series of personal taboos that are related to
one’s kpoli. “You should not eat sheep or goat, and the hot peppers you eat are
also very bad, eat only the green ones, and smoking is especially bad for you
because you are already running hot. You need coolness to balance.” He also
reiterated some other taboos. “You are not to eat red palm oil, koko yams, man-
gos or too much red meat.” He went on to tell Eric that too much carbonation
was bad, and that palm wine and champagne were especially bad.

On Fridays and Saturdays you must wear white shoes. White is also your
color, you dream in white, and prefer those whose color is white as well.
Red is also a strong color for you that you should wear when you are really
in need, especially on your head and upper body. Sakpata has also asked
for you to get her some Guinea pepper and sodabi, for she is tied to the
186 CHAPTER 5

land and earth, just like Gbelete. Other interdictions include sex without
cleanliness, and you must wash the body afterwards. Gumbo and okra are
also prohibited, as is anklo (a particular sauce made with animal blood).
Also, don’t eat any intestines or other inner organs of animals. These inte-
riors of any kind are prohibited.

After this initial revealing they then headed for the small shrine outside of
Amagbe’s home and parallel to the Sacred Forest. Assistants to Amagbe carried
an abundance of perfume and baby powder which Gogo and Amagbe admin-
istered all over the body, hands, feet, and head. Gogo waived the calabash over
their heads three times and in the four cardinal directions. He opened their
calabashes and added more black powder medicine. “Never open this,” he said.
On the divining board he carefully took each tiny palm nut with his right hand
and placed them into his left before depositing them back into the calabash.
The entire time he mumbled a sacred mantra (in Yoruba) and the women in
attendance responded with short stints of song. He then cut the number of
palm nuts in half, re-drawing Eric’s kpoli in the sand before erasing it quickly
with water. Then he drank some of the water, spitting three times on the palm
nuts, before giving the rest for them to drink. He then brought a half a tote of
gin and gave another half to the sixteen sacred palm nuts, pouring the gin over
them. Chalk was taken from his right hand and mashed with a divination stick
(latalafi).
From a brown leather vodzi, he placed black powder on the back of Eric’s
right hand for him to swallow. A duck’s head was then placed in his calabash.
The divining stick and calabash were covered with cloth and five minutes or so
of intense prayer followed as he moved Eric’s palm beads from hand to hand.
A metal and glass stone were pulled from the heap of consecrated objects and
then, more divination. He used the latalafi and seashell to pick up and maneu-
ver the duck head with gentle grace, as not to offend Afa. Questions were posed
and objects moved across the board and mat in general from right to left. By
now all thirty-six sacred palm nuts were again conjoined with the medicine/
amulet and placed to the right front end of the divination board, the duck head
carefully wrapped in paper and put aside. The agumaga was put to rest per-
pendicular to the front of the board.
It was now time for Kossi to undergo the same kpoli revealing. Eric and he
switched places and Gogo prepared to do the same for him. When Eric turned
and looked around, he noticed six women present, also wrapped in white, and
wearing their dzonu as well. They were also afavi, enjoying the pomp and cir-
cumstance of the rituals and the opportunity to sing Afa songs.
After Kossi’s kpoli was realized and understood, everyone returned to the
sitting area behind Amagbe’s compound. First, small chunks of duck meat
The Shrine At Gbedala 187

from the previous sacrifices and akume (corn porridge) with peanut sauce was
divided into three portions facing the agumaga and sacred board for Afa to eat.
Amagbe then served a generous portion of duck and akume, telling Eric “now,
you can eat.” After a three day fast with limited sleep, this was a welcoming
sentence. Kossi and Eric stood up after eating and were given their sacred ves-
sels. They placed them atop their heads and walked home with everybody fol-
lowing them from behind and singing hymns to Afa. From this point forward,
Eric’s kpoli would aid him in future divination sessions with Afa. More details
and information would be forthcoming to base important decisions and take
crucial actions.

Witchcraft
The summer of 2003 ushered in a period of enormous instability in the vil-
lage. The normally promising rainy season was not bringing a lot of fish and
many people were falling sick. In one month’s time seven children passed
from various ailments. During a Salah ceremony, an adept named Mansa Abla
was possessed by Bangede and taken to the shrine for the sofos to interpret
his intentions and meaning. Bangede revealed that he was sent by the grand-
father, Kadzanka, who was furious that a Bangede adept was making witch-
craft (aze among women, akpase among men) toward a group of women in
the community. The aggressor was a lady named Alipossi who was traveling
to Ghana and paying fetish priests to curse her more prosperous neighbors.
Originally from Klikor (Ghana), Alipossi had been living in Gbedala for seven
years since marrying her husband. Now he was withering away on his death-
bed, sick for two months. Someone must have alerted her because when they
went to her compound to confront her about Bangede’s vision she was gone,
having packed her things and departed. Her husband was lying there sick, too
ill to even speak. Bisi had him brought to the shrine where he lay on his back
and received treatment. During the healing prayers, cowrie shells were cast,
asking the gods about Alipossi’s crimes and guilt. Bangede and Kadzanka con-
firmed their accusations. It was she that was making her husband sick through
bovodu; but she was nowhere to be found.
Throughout the night, Bisi prepared apotropaic bundles to protect the
village. Rumors and fear mongering spread through the community and by
morning, groups had ransacked Alipossi’s house, at first searching for evidence
of witchcraft, and then to eradicate the bad juju emanating from the home. By
mid-morning it was set afire and destroyed. Before noon, Eric followed Bisi, an
assistant priest, and a bosomfo to the four corners of the village. At each corner,
they sacrificed a cock that was first doused in fresh palm wine. Each bundle
of offerings (vossa) contained pieces of a broken calabash, a drop of mercury,
charred plant remains, sliced limes, and gobs of red palm oil. Altogether, these
188 CHAPTER 5

“ingredients” comprised the prescription prepared by Bisi the night before,

according to instructions given by Bangede and Kadzanka.
The offerings lay there for two days, picked at by goats but mostly ignored
by everyone else. No one discussed Alipossi, witchcraft, or the sacking of her
home. A despondent mood seemed to saturate everything and everyone, even
Dzatá, who usually shrugged such things off. Alipossi’s husband remained at
the shrine, very ill, sleeping mostly, unaware of events surrounding him. The
afternoon of the third day brought a priest from Denu, Ghana, to Gbedala
alongside Alipossi and her sister. Alipossi fled to her natal home in Klikor but
quickly lost control of her senses, babbling incoherently at all hours of the day
and night. Fearing she was giving way to madness (adava), her family took her
to the priest from Denu who discovered though divination that Kadzanka was
bringing psychosis upon her as punishment for sins at Gbedala. Thus the priest
and her sister brought her back to Bisi. They went to the shrine together with
Amagbe, the Madza Alibobo, and several other assistant priests.
In the shrine, group prayers were made to each god. Kola nut was passed
around for everyone to chew and gin was poured in libation and offered to
those in attendance so they may break bread with the gods. Alipossi quickly
admitted her guilt, confessing “all that is on her stomach” quite readily. She
blamed her neighbor’s family for her own loss of kin and fortune. She did not
trust her husband, knowing he had been unfaithful with another woman for
years and even had a child with her. Alipossi’s sister too admitted her role in
facilitating witchcraft. The group was in the shrine for hours, and stayed the
night in quarters provided by Bisi so they may continue with confession and
healing. The next day, Aliposso was constantly sobbing. Her husband was close
to death and her neighbors had pillaged and destroyed her home. Through
Afa divination, it was determined that she must purchase seven goats and
seven bottles of gin for Bangede, a fowl, and a bottle of gin for each person she
admitted to cursing with aze. She was asked to stay away from her husband and
return to her family’s home in Klikor with her sister until things settled down.
Once judgment was passed and Alipossi humbly agreed to her punishment,
the priests took her to the Sacred Forest where she was cleansed for several
hours with special medicine water (amatsi).15

15 In the Sacred Forest, Alipossi received a small cut on her wrist with a razor blade. We
assume this was to create a physical pathway for powerful black powder medicine but
we did not receive an adequate explanation for this ritual. Once the healing rituals are
complete, it is very impolite to discuss the matter further so explanations were not
forthcoming.
The Shrine At Gbedala 189

After Aliposso returned to her natal home, her husband recovered for a bit,
but perished six months later. Aliposso returned for the ceremony and brought
many gifts for her husband’s siblings and neighbors. Though blamed for her
husband’s death, in time most members of his family forgave her. She moved
back to the village in 2007 and by 2013 she was re-married and regularly pos-
sessed again by Bangede, who abandoned her for over five years as punish-
ment. Yet it was Kadzanka who told Bangede of her transgressions, and it was
Kadzanka who instructed Bisi in the recipes for protecting the village. As Kossi
would remark later about the event, “It seems Kadzanka is the guardian angel
of our little town.”
Understandings and practices of witchcraft are cultural patterns of deal-
ing with otherwise unexplainable misfortunes or calamities that befall both
individuals and communities and also social processes of sin, forgiveness, and
redemption. Following Parish (2011), witchcraft refers to the manipulation of
forces by individuals wishing to harm others; or as Lovell (2002) describes,
witchcraft “denotes both the cause of, and response to, unacceptable events”
(110). Pervasive in many cultures around the world (see Geshiere 2013), witch-
craft is not a single belief system and there is no systemization of beliefs. It
is rather “an ambiguous fluid network of ideas and traditions that mix with
a multitude of other ethnic and religious ideas . . . and revolve around the
nature, meaning, and question of suffering” (Parish 2011, 306). From this basic
point of reference, more complex questions emerge. What counts as witch-
craft? Who is practicing witchcraft and why? Who is the victim and why? How
does the witch affect the victim? How is witchcraft healed and by whom?16

16 Anthropologists have explored the answers to these questions since the mid-twentieth
century. At first, discourses surrounding African witchcraft associated it with supersti-
tion and unsophisticated or primitive belief. Marwick’s (1965) functionalist notion that
witchcraft represents a “social-strain gauge” represented a leap forward by Western schol-
ars seeking to understand witchcraft in its social context. By the 1990s, a re-imagining
of witchcraft situated it into experiences of modernity and globalization (Comaroff and
Comaroff 1993; Geschiere and Meyer 1998). The anti-witchcraft movements that intensi-
fied into the mid-20th century were re-imagined as a continuation of pre-colonial reli-
gious beliefs (Field 1948) that reacted against individual accumulation that came at the
expense of kinship obligations (Parish 2003, 19). Parish (2003) argues that witchcraft allows
shrine priests to bring a model of knowledge and uncertainty to bear on the experiences
and dynamics of globalization (19). Recognizing that occult forces can both undermine
and reinforce power (Geshiere 1997, 10), many studies conceptualize witchcraft through
a significant moral dimension, especially in regards to accumulation and wealth (Meyer
1999; Parish 2000; Shaw 1997). Elsewhere, Parish (2011) discusses a long history of “circum-
venting uncertainty in the moral economy” and the need for protection from jealousy and
190 CHAPTER 5

The multi-vocality, ambiguity, and “nearby” (i.e., kin) nature make it a perme-
able construct. Ambiguity surrounds witchcraft in Togo, and within certain
villages and ethnic groups it varies immensely in belief and practice.
For the Ewe, emotions can be strong enough to assume a power in them-
selves. A power that, like all power (nuse), can affect other people mentally,
emotionally, and physically.17 The principle emotion from which witchcraft
draws this power is n’bia. N’bia is the emotion that gives birth to all social con-
flict (maso-maso). It is the sinful emotion that causes one to quarrel with their
family, authorities, their friends. It is the immorality that leads one to witch-
craft, to bovodu, to sorcery. Conceptually, n’bia sits at the intersection of envy,
jealousy, and greed. Rosenthal (1998) defines n’bia as “passionate envy” that
borders on death-wish (35). Envy may be defined as an emotion that occurs
when we lack a desired attribute enjoyed by another. Jealousy is an emotion
that occurs when a third person threatens something we already possess.
One is “other-centered,” and one is “self-centered.” We may envy the wealth of
another and jealously guard our own wealth. That which feeds envy and jeal-
ousy is greed, the indomitable egocentric desire for something we do not have
or more of what we do have (material or non-material). We want what we are
envious of and horde away what we have to protect against the envy and greed
of others. Altogether, this is n’bia. All other sins offer the actor a modicum of
gratification, if only in the short-term: lust, gluttony, avarice, pride, and so on.
N’bia is as permanent and ongoing as it is aimless. From n’bia springs malice,
the deep desire for evil or misfortune to befall another. This need not benefit
us. It is not enough for us to succeed over others. It can be the pure pleasure of
seeing another fail and in misery for its own simple sake.

witchcraft (7). Her studies analyzed witchcraft as experiences or critical commentary on

emerging dialectics between modernity and tradition and negotiating new social fields in
the post-colonial nation-state economy (Parish 2003, 18). Geshiere’s (1997) work among
the Maka in southern Cameroon demonstrate the modernity inherent to contemporary
witchcraft practices by relating them to entrepreneurship and political power.
17 So great are these powers of emotion that Sofo Bisi prepares special herbal protective
mixtures to protect against the harmful emotions of others. The bark of the exe
(Zanthoxylum xanthoxyloides) and the root of the babati (Jatropha gossypiifolia) are
ground together and mixed with water to create a thick paste. The individual seeking to
protect themselves from powerful emotions such as lust, envy, and hate chews the paste
while repeating the mantra, “Birds eat it and die. Animals also die. Men eat it and do
not die. The wild vodu will never eat and die (Xedui xeku laduika agbe toduimekuo, vodu
dzagla deke madui aka o).
The Shrine At Gbedala 191

We all have n’bia against others while simultaneously fearing the n’bia of
others against us. It always burns brightest between those who are intimate.
In its simplest form it is smiling at the success of a friend while feeling intense
bitterness inside. It is moderating our success to our siblings, aware that it may
cause n’bia in them against us. Yet n’bia is also the malicious desire (conscious
or unconscious) to see our friends, our parents, our own children, fall into mis-
fortune or misery, and the implicit recognition that they may be wishing the
same upon us. It is universal human nature to compare ourselves to others,
which makes n’bia both a sin and natural emotion, both individual and social.
It is so powerful it can cause illness and death in the self and in another. It can
tear apart the social fabric of families and communities. It can bring about
spiritual infestations or vexations.18 It is the significant negative force in Ewe
life, creating disorder over which Gorovodu law, gods, and congregation must
constantly keep vigil. The sheer passion of n’bia that burns in an individual’s
heart can unleash destructive energy into the world and poison those around
him or her. This may be done without conscious intent, since n’bia can arise in
one’s heart without awareness. Indeed, most often a witch harms others with
no conscious knowledge of doing so. Many are thought to operate by leaving
the physical body of the supposed witch at night, taking the form of a spirit
animal to travel and ply their activities.19 The individual awakens with no
knowledge or perhaps a hazy recollection as if a dream.20
The relationship between n’bia and witchcraft is best understood through
mimetic desire. Mimetic desire transforms being and presents social change.
It prevents stillness, spurring individuals to action. The agency of the actor is

18 Spiritual infestation is understood here as a haunting of the victim manifested in of

homes, places, and businesses. Vexation is when a ghost or malevolent spirit brings mis-
fortune upon a person.
19 More than once the distinction was made between witches, who turn into animals, and
vodus, who possess only human beings.
20 Eva Pocs (1999, 9–12) identified three types of witches: the neighborhood witch, the magi-
cal sorcerer, and the supernatural or night witch. The neighborhood witch is a social witch
who often curses a fellow community member after some conflict. The magical sorcerer
is a “cannibal” of sorts, increasing his or her fortune to the detriment of neighbors or kin.
The “night witch” is a demon capable of transfiguration, astral projection, and appear-
ing in dreams. The Ewe religious imagination does not compartmentalize witches in this
manner, but they perceive all three types and agree that witches possess these traits and
more. Popular attention from the West to witchcraft in West Africa has not changed much
since colonialism. Stories abound of “cannibals”, “witch camps”, and “innocent and falsely
accused victims.”
192 CHAPTER 5

the ‘I’ of desire (Bataille 1989). Yet mimetic desire is also the source of contin-
ual conflict between agencies (in this manner conflict spawns transformation
through action). When one’s desires replicate another’s or are replicated by
another it invariably leads to rivalry. When two desires converge on the same
object, conflict is inevitable (Girard 1979). Furthermore, mimetic desire is a
self-replicating process. The more another replicates our desires or desires the
same object, the more intense our own desire becomes. This way n’bia may be
viewed as reciprocal imitations of desire. And it is through rivalry that mimetic
desire, n’bia, transforms into action, in this case, the violence of witchcraft.
N’bia is fiercest when the social distance between rivals is small: brothers,
neighbors, co-wives, colleagues, and the like. This is why anthropologists have
noted time and again that witchcraft occurs most between kin (see Geschiere
2013). Unchecked, this violence may be reciprocated again and again in an
unending cycle of vengeance that spawns interfamily vendettas and blood
feuds.
Witchcraft is the embodiment of the unchecked violence that originates
in mimetic desire. Ewe frameworks of meaning posit a deep-seated agency
behind disease, ill luck, misfortune and their opposites: health, success, and
good fortune. Witchcraft embodies the agency of the former and in doing so
implicitly recognizes that hunger, penury, and disease are as much political
phenomena as they are economic and biological. Scarce resources in the com-
munity make reciprocity and sharing implicit in daily life. For Argenti (2007)
witchcraft allows cultural participants to face and deal with “the attractions
and dangers of the pursuit of wealth without regard to social norms” (15).
Most witchcraft events in the village stem from disruptions in the egalitarian
values of the community; but the social institutions threatened by witchcraft
are greater than those of the economic sphere: kinship, polygamous marriage,
land tenure, political power and authority, social hierarchy—all may be under-
mined and sundered by unchecked mimetic desire and unresolved reciprocat-
ing violence.
Everyone has n’bia and everyone is aware of the n’bia of others. Hence most
people take social and spiritual precautions against attracting the n’bia of
others. Most crossroads and homes have hidden apotropaic medicines or
amulets dedicated to the deterrence of witchcraft. Many of these objects are
produced locally and more are purchased at the famed Marche Fetiché where
religious items from throughout West Africa are sold (see chapter three). Even
non-believers and outsiders purchase and wear magical and occult objects. We
pray and make sacrifices to the gods to avoid the n’bia of others and discharge
the n’bia in our own hearts. If we come into money, we spend it on or with
others. We share in our successes. We minimize bragging. The personal perfor-
mances of sacrifice, libation, and veneration and the public nature by which
The Shrine At Gbedala 193

these social processes of reciprocation with the gods and other uncanny forces
play out to minimize n’bia may be viewed as a builder of social controls that
act as socio-economic leveling mechanisms (Rosenthal 1998, 229–230; see also
Marwick 1965). Accumulating wealth or power without gifting much of it back
to the gods draws n’bia and witchcraft, if not accusations that the wealth or
power was seized by these means.21 A few successful individuals, such as Dzatá,
maintain a household outside of the village in order to escape the demands of
the spirits, shrine, and priests. Remittances sent to the community from mem-
bers of the diaspora are meant to assist kin with daily economic challenges.
These monies are also meant for sacrifice to the gods to secure blessings and
good fortune for the person sending the money or their kin, to keep the indi-
vidual’s reputation in good standing in the community and avoid the n’bia
of friends and family, and to gain prestige by sponsoring sacrifices in public
ceremonies. The more one finds success abroad, the more one is expected to
reciprocate for this success back home: to parents that raised them, sibling and
cousins in need, gods who protect and succor them, and priests who medi-
ate with the gods on their behalf. Sponsoring sacrifices or ongoing gifts to the
gods from afar exhibits a commitment to the wellbeing one’s neighbors, home,
and family. The pressure to maintain these relations through reciprocity is
immense (see Geschiere 2013, 62). To not do so demonstrates the opposite; that
one has left behind and forgotten the family and home that raised and made
them. There is nothing the Gorovodu adepts detest more than a miser. N’bia
and witchcraft are sure to follow those who do not share in their success or
good fortune. In the words of Dado in 2013, “the man who has but does not give
will not live long and they will not be remembered after their death, they are
therefore nothing at all, they lack spirit and breath.” Space and distance will
not save or buffer one from the n’bia or sorcery of family and neighbors, and
will especially not save one from the reach and will of the gods.
Though n’bia is a great force for destruction, through prevention and heal-
ing it can also serve as a constructive force in Ewe society (Rosenthal 1998,
228). Once n’bia takes hold of someone, it can impede the living of a normal
life. Hence, an enormous amount of energy is spent preventing n’bia from
turning into actions of witchcraft or sorcery. To alleviate sin and the resultant
physical suffering, it is important to confess any n’bia in front of the commu-
nity and gods, referred to as “saying all that is on one’s stomach.” Confessions

21 This is the original “pull” associated with Gorovodu gods who were believed to bring
equality and balance to northern Ghana. New methods of accumulation brought about
by colonialism and colonial plantation economics (especially cocoa farming) resulted in
social upheaval and new forms of economic inequality that, in turn, resulted in the spread
of witchcraft accusations (Venkatachalam 2011; Allman and Parker 2004).
194 CHAPTER 5

in the shrine often seem excessive to outsiders, but it’s based on prudence.
Congregation members are aware of the ability of thoughts, emotions, and
words to disrupt life in the community. An inherent ethic of confessing sin,
framing debate, and seeking amends acts as a preventative measure against
violence in the community. Healing the witch and the witchcraft and return-
ing him or her to normalized statuses and roles in society is an important part
of the work of both priests and gods. Witchcraft allows trained priests to bring
out and deal with people’s hidden intentions and actions and subsequent guilt.
Almost all witchcraft healing processes we knew of in the community ended
with the sacrifice of animals to the vodus, echoing Girard’s statement, “violence
will come to an end only after it has had the last word and that word has been
accepted as divine” (135). The vodus gave assurance that order was restored
and this assurance was sealed with the blood of animals. Depending on the
degree of the manifestation, life goes back to normal once the punishment
has been served and apologies have been granted; and after the gods doing the
detective work have been paid for their efforts via various animal sacrifices. In
Aliposso’s case, re-incorporation was a much longer process because she was
not a natal member of the community and had “killed” her husband and future
unborn children. Yet even she was eventually fully integrated and accepted by
the community at large.

The Shrine as Hospital

If we reduce Gorovodu to a key-summarizing symbol (Ortner 1973), it would

have to be goro, kola nuts. Kola nuts are social. They are offered upon most
important rites of passage: first meetings, weddings, initiations, religious cer-
emonies, and so on. Kola nuts are used as medicinal agents against irritations,
shingles, body pain, circulation issues, and nausea. Kola is ingested to suppress
the appetite while inducing a serious energy boost, making it an ideal com-
modity during times of drought or poverty. When made sacred as offerings to
the vodu or when depoyed by adepts, kola nuts beome goro. Goro is the con-
nection to the vodus, it is the food of the gods, and so goro is life. Goro is chewed
between initiates to ensure truth telling and prevent deception or subterfuge,
and it means peace and unity. Goro lies at the core of the comprehensive set
of rituals and practices that is vodu worship. Goro is also medicine (atike, lit:
tree root) and Gorovodu is an atikevodu (medicine vodu, or literally translated,
tree root vodu). Atike medicines, including goro, are used to heal physical
ailments easily recognizable to western biomedicine (e.g., headache, fever),
ailments that would be considered purely psychological (e.g., impotence, night
The Shrine At Gbedala 195

terrors), and ailments stemming from the supernatural that are not recognized
by western biomedicine but certainly recognized in other religious contexts
(e.g., hauntings, curses).22 In Gorovodu, atike medicines are also a medium for
channeling the power of the gods and spirits and may be harmful or beneficial
depending on the agency behind the medium. Suffering, illness, health, and
healing are manifestations of spiritual power (nuse), in which an individual
may be rich or meager.
Both adepts and the Togolese government view the shrine as a hospital not
only symbolically or metaphorically, but also literally and officially. If a patient
is ill and dies at a shrine while seeking treatment, the government treats the
death as it would if the patient died at a Western-style hospital. Shrines and
bokonosofos did not always receive such recognition from governing bodies.
As the gods moved south and proved both troublesome and evasive, colonial
administrators sought ways to control them. The only effective avenue was
“managing” religious practice in order to minimize its subversive capabili-
ties. European administrators sought to assert their own worldviews through
contested processes of representation and meaning-making. One method,
popularized in Ghana during the 1940s, was certifying legitimate healers and
healing orders through a financially lucrative licensing process for priest-
healers. Priest-healers actively sought out these official stamps of approval to
legitimize their practices in the eyes of their ritual clients, healing patients,
Christian missionaries, medical doctors, and peers. Throughout the 1940s and
1950s, “traditional councils were empowered to issue licenses to practitioners
of ‘native medicine’ as part of the process of professionalization and thereby
legitimizing the practice of local healing” (Allman and Parker 2005, 225). This
professionalization and legitimation was part of a greater movement in which
gods were being translated from exotic subversive witch-finders to medicinal
healers, and fetish priests were imagined more and more as native physicians
or priest-healers (Allman and Parker 2005, 218).
Today priest-healers are simultaneously doctors, diviners, herbalists, psy-
chologists, and community leaders. Discussing traditional healers in Nigeria,
Offiong notes: “Traditional healers are the very embodiment of conscience
and hope in their respective communities. The holistic and cathartic nature
of treatment and the fact that in certain places of the country they are the
major or only source of healthcare makes them very important” (1999, 118). The
measure of a bokonosofo is the extent of his or her command over the diverse
pharmacopeia and ritual used in healing. To answer such questions as what

22 For a thorough treatment of the specific plant medicines used to treat different ailments,
please see Vannier and Montgomery (2015).
196 CHAPTER 5

plants to use, what dosage, frequency and duration, and to determine route
change for each patient, the bokonosofo draws upon experience and accumu-
lated knowledge. This knowledge may be passed from father to son, from priest
to assistant priest, or given to the priest-healer directly by the gods through
dreams or possession-trance. There is more to this knowledge than manipulat-
ing and combining different plants to allay different forms of suffering. Ritual,
secret names, the manipulation of spatial and temporal symbols, and so on
must be combined to make the plants efficacious. To understand the breadth
and depth of this pharmacopeia is a lifelong endeavor and, according to Bisi,
few from the younger generation have the money or patience for the training.
Recognized as efficacious, traditional healers receive adepts and non-prac-
titioners alike for healing and health consultation. Efficacy is a major reason
why many Christians and Muslims visit local shrines and healers. According to
Hadaya and Bisi, it is quite common for pastors to visit the shrine for rituals to
entice followers to join their congregation. Even Muslim Hausa traders some-
times visit bokonosofos for medicine and magic. One trader in cattle brings his
daughter to Bisi to assist with her sickle-cell anemia. Even as a good Muslim,
he will visit the shrine and break kola with Kunde. Herbs and plant medicines
are acquired from a variety of sources that may be reduced to two categories:
inside and outside the village. Outside the village, medicines are purchased
at markets, harvested in the bush, or exchanged as gifts between bokonosofo
from different, often distant, communities. Inside the village, medicines are
cultivated in the Sacred Forest, in the yard of homes, or in a garden adjacent
to the shrine.
Whenever there is a discussion of traditional medicine in Western aca-
demia, questions emerge. Does traditional medicine work? How efficacious is
it? Of particular relevance to this question is Waldram’s (2000) study of effi-
cacy in traditional medicine. In which realm of effectiveness are we speak-
ing empirical, scientific, or symbolic? Are treatments effective according to
whom: the patient, the healer, the community, or biomedical understandings
of pathogen removal? There is no doubt that healers are master semioticians
who deploy both ritual and herbs to treat the whole illness experience of a
particular patient, but are traditional healers effective at curing disease and
treating suffering as understood in biomedical contexts? These questions
plague the assumptions of most investigations into the efficacy of traditional
healing. Perhaps the best answers lie in personal experience. The authors
were treated for many ailments over the course of research and many were as
effective, some if not more so, than biomedical treatments in the U.S. What fol-
lows are simple and brief personal examples of the authors’ experiences with
traditional medicine in Ewe Gorovodu.
The Shrine At Gbedala 197

Diagnosis
The prayer ceremony begins every Friday morning in the main ceremonial
courtyard adjacent to the head shrine at Bisi’s compound. Though the cere-
mony name, Salah, is borrowed from Islam, this is a strictly West African vodu
affair held to praise the gods and ask for blessings (see chapter seven). The
fishermen husbands, fathers, and brothers had not yet returned from the sea
that mid-morning, so fifteen women wrapped in white pagne cloths clustered
in a semi-circle on wooden benches in the main courtyard of the village. On
the outskirts of the circle, we sat clapping with the rhythm and observing the
ceremony. Two young men kept rhythm with an adodo drum and bell while an
elder priestess, Dede, stood in the center leading the lyrical call and response
that characterizes vodu ceremonies in Togo. Praises were sung in the morning
sun to Kunde and his wife Ablewa. “The times are full of jealousy and envy, cel-
ebrate the success of others, find solace in Kunde,” repeated the women under
Dede’s guidance.
Soon, the vodus came to the ceremony and entranced the worshippers. The
presence of the gods became known when one woman began spinning, losing
her individuality in the possession. Kunde possessed the adept. She stood and
began to shake and jerk violently. Senterua surrounded her to ensure she did
not hurt herself or others and guided her into the shrine. Intrigued, Christian
walked over and peered into the open door. Kunde was in control, sitting on a
stool surrounded by the women, eyes tightly shut and slapping the hands and
shoulders of the other women. A senterua was hand-feeding a powder made of
roasted white kola nut and guinea pepper into her mouth. Standing and head-
ing for the door, Kunde ordered Christian to stay out of the way. Returning to
the circle of worshippers, where the drumming and clapping continued unaf-
fected, she began shouting in Ewe. A few women hastily departed the circle.
Kunde began dancing in the center while the remaining women raised their
voices and clapped to accommodate the god.
Taking all of this in, we did not immediately notice Amagbe and three
assistants preparing the medicinal wash outside of the circle behind us. The
assistants knelt in front of a large white basin around which a circle of chalk
was inscribed in the sand for Legba, Yewevodu god of crossroads, keeper of
gates, and guardian of ritual knowledge. Next to the basin sat a bottle of gin,
baby powder, and a bottle of soda water. In front, they prepared an egg for
Nana Wango and six glasses. They buried the base of each glass in the sand and
poured amatsi herb water. The lead assistant poured the gin around the basin
while praying quietly, a customary offering to the vodus. An older woman
assistant mixed water and baby oil in the basin while Amagbe produced two
different bunches of leaves from his satchel. He grabbed crushed dried leaves
198 CHAPTER 5

Illustration 5.5 Amagbe’s assistants prepare the medicinal bath.

from two plastic bags and mixed them into the basin with his hands. The lead
assistant added the soda water while whispering a prayer, first to Kunde and
then to Wango.
The women who left the ceremony now returned with young children, the
oldest being perhaps two years old. One by one the children were washed in the
bath made of water, oil, and herbs; all while the ceremony continued unabat-
edly behind them. After the final child was washed, Amagbe motioned for Eric.
He had been struggling with a fever the past week, taking acetaminophen to
reduce the distress. He suddenly found himself being stripped to his under-
wear and made to sit cross-legged next to the basin. Amagbe then washed him
too in the medicinal bath.
Once finished, Amagbe and the assistants gathered their materials with
smiles and Amagbe’s typical cackling laughter. Eric, soaked with oil and
amatsi, had little choice but to laugh along with him. The ceremony contin-
ued through all of this without pause but ended a short time later as women
departed to meet their fishermen at port to gather the fish to sell at mar-
ket. Dede departed for the same reason, while the Kunde adept, now out of
trance, was too exhausted for a follow-up interview. Before departing, Amagbe
offered an explanation: Kunde possessed the ability to deliver a message to the
congregation. Disease was coming to the community. Kunde was not specific
regarding the disease but ordered preparations to be made. The most vulner-
able among them, young children, must be washed in the medicinal bath.
While women gathered the children, Amagbe was summoned to prepare the
The Shrine At Gbedala 199

bath using a well-known prescription of medicinal leaves kpatima (Neubouldia

laevis) and kukotsi amagba (Heliotropium indicum). Together, they make a gen-
eral anti-fungal and anti-microbial wash. Recently struggling with fever, the
anthropologist was also viewed as vulnerable, and so bathed along with the
children.
One month later, the stomach pain was growing worse daily along with pain
and discomfort. At first it was treated with humor, “typical of an American in
Africa,” Christian remarked, hoping to fend off the feeling of dread when one
falls ill in a foreign context. The pain and discomfort came to a head at a din-
ner with several priest-healers at Sofo Bisi’s compound. Sofo Bisi arranged the
dinner with three other bokonosofos; surmising it would be of great value to
our research. Unfortunately, at the start of dinner Christian could not physi-
cally perform the duties of a respectful guest. The discomfort reached a point
where he excused himself and lay down in the adjacent chamber. The four
bokonosofos present agreed amongst themselves to take action. To proceed
with treatment, his social being needed to be laid bare to determine the agency
behind the physical ailment. We assembled in the courtyard of the compound.
Women relatives brought chairs and refreshments and Christian was invited
to sit in a circle with the others. Bisi called for an Afa diviner. “He is the best,”
he kept assuring Christian in his commanding yet charismatic tone. “He looks
very young. But trust me, he is the best.” A young man not older than many of
our students, barefoot and shirtless, walked into the center of the circle with
a satchel around his shoulder and rug under his arm. He did not look directly
at anyone but silently unrolled the rug on the dirt floor. Sitting with his legs
stretched out in front of him, he produced from his satchel several handfuls
of shells, glass beads, and various ornaments that he assembled in a small pile
to his left. To his right, he produced the agumaga and began communicating
with Afa.
Many strategies are employed by the patient to diagnose his or her illness
experience. It may be done through direct communication with the Gorovodus
by way of spirit possession. A vodu may possess either the bokonosofo or
patient to diagnose the suffering and determine the plants and ritual for heal-
ing. Most often however, an ailing individual visits an Afa diviner. Afa plays a
significant role in both diagnosis and prognosis. Afa may direct one to a bio-
medical clinic in town, lead participants to visit the shrine of a different vodu
pantheon (e.g., Yewevodu) and seek medical treatment there, or Afa may lead
an individual to a Gorovodu shrine. At this divination, Hadaya asked questions
and Christian answered. We would turn to the diviner who swung the agumaga
and prayed in a whisper to Afa. When the shells landed on the mat with a snap,
he would interpret the answer. Expressing “all that is in the stomach” is a very
200 CHAPTER 5

important aspect of the moral order of Gorovodu (Rosenthal 1998; Mann 2010).
As members of a confessional religion, adepts espouse soured social relations,
strong emotions such as jealousy or vengeance, or personal failings directly to
the gods. For Christian, the questioning felt like talking to a psychologist and
confessing to a priest simultaneously. Bisi was trying to tease out any jealou-
sies or sour personal relations and Christian could sense the avenues he was
exploring. The others sat to his left but remained silent as Christian answered
a succession of questions about his father and himself. Each time however, we
would look to the agumaga. Again and again the diviner would interpret them
in Ewe to Bisi who would translate to Christian. Often, they would talk back
and forth about an interpretation, resolve it, and move on without a transla-
tion. His father was not the answer. We needed to explore elsewhere. The con-
fession-questioning led to a colleague in the United States. The gods reacted
positively, which Christian immediately comprehended through the diviner’s
demeanor when he spoke to Hadaya. A mutual animosity at the university that
stemmed from competitive rivalry and university political intrigue was “poi-
soning” Christian from the inside. The diviner began looking at Christian and
smiling while whispering prayers. Hadaya seemed proud we were reaching the
true heart of the illness. He left the circle to prepare the herbal remedy.
Illness and disease are causal and derive largely from socialized agency. This
agency may be the power or actions of someone else, separate from the indi-
vidual patient. Someone who seeks to harm the sick person through witch-
craft or sorcery may cause the illness. The spirit of an ancestor may cause the
illness. The illness may also stem directly from the vodus, who are directing
the illness for their own purposes (for example, to call the individual to them
or punish the individual for breaking religious law). The agency may be one’s
own. Punishment for failing to observe religious mores often takes the form
of illness. For the Ewe, being and existence are based on relationships to
others. Etiology reflects this and thus there are no fixed relationships between
illnesses and symptoms (socially or biologically). Both may be the result of sin-
gular or multiple etiologies. For example, a bout of hysteria may be viewed as
the result of anxiety and from a deeply held jealousy over a rival’s success or joy
over their failure. If the etiology is a moral failure on the part of the Gorovodu
adept, then accepting one’s punishment-illness with humility and regret is an
important aspect of the healing process. One must confess and make amends
for healing to commence.
The diagnosis and treatment of disease in Gorovodu is concerned with
physical symptoms and the patient’s social and spiritual balance as well. Once
these psychological, socio-moral, and physical origins of the illness are known,
The Shrine At Gbedala 201

the healer may work with the gods to better the patient. Etiology stems from
both physical and spiritual realms and plant medicines act upon both these
realms by possessing physical and spiritual properties. Faith, ritual, and plant
medicines interlock as strategies enacted through the generative principles of
healing, to be effectively deployed in independent healing events (Vannier and
Montgomery 2015).

Treatment
“Is it always necessary to perform rituals when using atike medicine?” we asked,
admiring the kpatima leaf (Neubouldia laevis) in our hands. They both paused.
Sofo Bisi weighed his response while Dzatá remained silent. Sofo Bisi spoke in
Ewe, Dzatá translated.

You don’t need so much ceremony, but whenever the patient comes here
they must go to the shrine and pray for the vodu to give them the strength
to detect the kind of sickness that is worrying them. Or, maybe the person
must secure the protection of the vodu [through prayer and libation] for
the vodu to show what particular medicine can cure a particular ailment.

“What is the relation between the vodus and the plant medicines?” we inquired,
Christian setting the kpatima leaf on the table and picking up a stem of ata
(Piper guineese). Pointing to the seed-like fruits at the top, Dzatá said,

You must chew it before you talk to the vodu that uses it.
We asked, “What particular vodu uses ata?” Dzatá hesitated and looked
to Sofo Bisi.
“Bangede,” Bisi said, without turning his head, watching the sun bathe
the main village courtyard as if completely uninterested.
“Bangede uses it,” Dzatá repeated, looking back at me. “So you must
chew it before you talk to Bangede.”

About two months prior, community members began noticing chronic epi-
sodes of stomach pain, profuse diarrhea and the loss of appetite in Eric. One
Wednesday evening, he was lying on a straw mat in the homestead, listening
to the crashing waves of the sea, and worrying about the amount of fluid he
had lost. Dzatá came on orders from Sofo Bisi to bring him to the shrine. There,
they began by tossing cowries to the Gorovodus: Kunde, Ablewa, ending with
Wango. There was no consensus to the diagnosis, but Bangede was hungry and
demanded a goat. Eric told Bangede he only had money for a fowl. Flipping
202 CHAPTER 5

the cowrie shells communicated Bangede’s acceptance. He then said through

the cowries that the sickness was chronic sores resulting from a multitude of
problems. Sofo Bisi decided that Eric must immediately undergo divination.
Bisi summoned Amagbe to the shrine. They pushed on Eric’s stomach,
looked in his mouth, and stared into his eyes. Amagbe performed his Afa initia-
tion several years ago and knew his personality (kpoli). Every individual is given
a kpoli that represents a variety of taboos and prescriptions for behavior. The
Afa spirits accused Eric of breaking these taboos. Eric was indeed eating hot
peppers and smoking tobacco, bad behavior for his kpoli. Amagbe translated,
“it is more than just this sickness and diet; you are eating the wrong things
and they are killing you, but Afa also says there is n’bia in your life. Jealousy
is always on the stomach.” He insisted on making Eric a special Bangede talis-
man to wear around the waist, and an amulet to bury in his backyard to “trap”
the one who was jealous and transmitting the sickness. An adept was sent to
a nearby room to retrieve anyoto and bantsi leaves (Manihot esculenta). The
adodo drum sparked up, joined by the throttle of the brekete drum, incessant
clapping commenced, gunpowder was sparked, and libations of gin were
poured to Bangede. To finish the treatment, Bisi propped Eric up against the
shrine wall and squeezed juice from the anyoto plant into his eye. It burned.
Bisi softly sang a mantra and the small gathering responded in unison. Eric’s
cramping continued. Dzatá provided Bisi with a tonic of gboti (Vernonia amyg-
dalina) and gin in a calabash. He poured some to Bangede, and then handed
it to Eric. As Amagbe strung together a Bangede talisman to be worn around
Eric’s abdomen, the drum rhythms continued and Bisi reached into his sachet,
pulling out bottle of black powder. He sprinkled in these carbonized remains
of goroyi (Cola acuminata) and ata (Piper guineense) and uttered the sacred
mantras. As we stood to return to the compound, Sofo Bisi said to return the
next morning to drink more medicine. Smiling, Eric thanked him. He said the
vodus would “catch” whoever was envious. Eric was, however, to avoid beer,
cigarettes, and spice until told otherwise by the gods.
In the shrine, medicine is delivered to the patient using a plethora of meth-
ods. Plant parts may be boiled together as a tea, infused into a hot bath, applied
nasally or orally, or applied topically. The most effective medicine is black pow-
der medicine, also called atike. Black powder medicine is employed through-
out Africa to treat an array of physical and spiritual illnesses. Most often used
to alleviate suffering stemming from socio-supernatural causes. It is also used
alongside incantations and other formulae to create protective charms and
amulets. To create specific powders that cure specific ailments, plants are dried
then ground with other additives (e.g., animal parts, gunpowder, and sulfur)
and roasted to a powder that is stored in glass bottles in the shrine behind the
fetish houses. When administered, it may be sniffed, swallowed, or mixed with
The Shrine At Gbedala 203

Illustration 5.6 Atike medicine.

a beverage such as alcohol and drunk but most often, atike black powder is
administered by breaking the skin with a razor to create an open incision. The
black powder is then rubbed into the fresh cut, and goes directly into the blood
stream, a common way to deliver medicine to the body in a context devoid of
needles and serums.

Madness
In 2003, Sofo Bisi was summoned to Aneho by sofoga Ahudza, the most
recognized senior priest of Gorovodu in Togo at that time. Ahudza was sick
and wanted to share some theories with Bisi regarding recent episodes of
witchcraft. He was an impressive man, head of an elaborate shrine. He had
many wives and was an impeccable dresser with a majestic aura. We met many
times but he was always busy, serving clients, holding meetings, and maintain-
ing several businesses. Ahudza was dealing with cases of aze that were similar
204 CHAPTER 5

to cases in Gbedala and he sought Bisi’s advice and assistance. A women

named Ponshi was hysterical for two days, calling halleluiah and Allah Akbar
in between incoherent rants and guttural garbles. Through several moments of
lucidity, Ahudza learned from her that a friend of her husband from Ouidah in
the Republic of Benin bewitched her and that she was dying. Ahudza sent for
this woman and together with Bisi, they calmly brought her in front of Kunde’s
kpome to determine if this was true. Kunde revealed someone else. She had
admitted to adultery but said she had nothing to do with her husband’s death.
The cowries were cast and Kunde agreed. Instead, Kunde revealed it was the
spirit of her mother-in-law that was cursing her. Bisi mixed black medicinal
powder with molasses, tree roots, and tonic. Administering it, the woman
slowly became more lucid. With the assistance of the bosomfo of the Aneho
shrine, Bisi held her down on her back and forced her to swallow half of kola
nut as he swallowed the second half. After ingesting the kola the women stood
up and asked where she was and how she got there. She had no memory of her
recent tirades and her mouth was dry. She complained of severe body pain and
dizziness and did not know that her son had driven her three hours to meet
Ahudza and Bisi. Kunde and Kadzanka often display their healing strength
through treatment of mental illness and Bisi had experience with similar
curses from Ouidah, a city renowned for its magical power and the space of
one of the more magnificent Sacred Forests in all of Africa. Ahudza insisted
that he and Bisi take her to the Sacred Forest for treatment and prayer, ordering
everyone else to wait in the shrine. They returned late. Bisi did not want to get
into details but insisted everything was fine. She never fell into an episode like
that again, and eight years later (after Ahudza passed) she moved to Gbedala
because of Bisi’s skill in dealing with her ongoing psychological ailment.
When an individual displays symptoms of mental destabilization, he or she
is brought to the shrine and an Afa divination is held to determine the root
cause. Is the cause a vodu, witchcraft, bovodu, or was the individual born with
the malady? Is it inherited through the family? The source may be n’bia, con-
flict within a family over inheritance, a conflict within a polygynous family, or
any number of root causes. The vodus may be calling an individual to them
and many become celebrated adepts or assistants of the shrine.23

23 The treatment a culture accords to persons with sensory handicaps can be revealing
(Howes and Classen 2013). For example, though blindness is a handicap in the most audi-
tory of societies (because of the practical value of sight), blind individuals often choose
to become drummers or diviners in Ewe society.
The Shrine At Gbedala 205

Since psychological ailments come from an array of pathways, priests take

time to evaluate family history when assessing treatment. In Gorovodu medi-
cine, an array of treatments is devoted to different types of “madness” (adava),
or mental illness. Adava is a common ailment treated in Gorovodu commu-
nities. Schizophrenia, multiple personality disorders, night terrors, anxiety,
hysteria, depression, and others are contended with as physical, mental, and
spiritual ailments often linked to the agency of others, typically through
another’s n’bia, which often originates from consanguine or affine kin. Deaths
in the family are particularly inclined to cause uproars and bring forth witch-
craft accusations in communities along the coast where siblings are many and
inheritance modest. Other times when men marry multiple women in Ewe
society there is jealousy between the mothers and their children; stepmothers
throughout Africa are “blamed” for making children mad or dissociative. Other
times people neglect ancestral or vodu spirits that may then vex a house or
compound and bring about madness and hysteria. Psychic imbalances result
from children inheriting spirits from their parents that conflict with their own
personality or mental character. In these cases, the sofo will assist the indi-
vidual in adapting to the spirit or otherwise learning to live with it.

The Shrine as Court

The relationship between vodu law and state law is a blurry given historically
fluctuating traditional and state authorities. There is an enormous amount of
freedom inside the village of Gbedala proper, where the state yields to tradi-
tional authorities in most matters. Outside the village is the political and legal
realm of the state. One must be cautious and many live in constant fear of the
military/police and criminals. Bribery is part of life and people are especially
careful on the roadways and during the night. Traditional authorities have no
influence outside the village aside from the respect they command as indi-
viduals. Between the authority of the state and the traditional authority in
the village there is a sort of balance. Officials of the state rely on traditional
authorities to approve local development projects and programs and oversee
their implementation. Authority at the village level is expected to maintain
peace and normalcy. In return, representatives of the state (e.g., police, mili-
tary, other bureaucrats) rarely venture into the village except to conference
with local authorities or if seditious activity is highly suspected. When laws are
broken, justice is normally brokered through the chief and priests. In Gbedala,
where there is no active chief, it typically flowed through Bisi and lineage
heads. Priests act as advisors to the chief and as judges over problems between
206 CHAPTER 5

or among adepts at the shrine. As troto (shrine keeper or fetish owner), the
sofo-as-judge ultimately seeks positive peace but for that to come they often
punish transgressors strongly. The threat to send the case off to the govern-
ment is enough to get many individuals to confess and abide by their pun-
ishment. Each region or district takes informal reports and complaints from
disputing parties. Witnesses are often called to the shrine or priest’s living
quarters. People must pay for their debt and also leave something for the pre-
siding priest and elders, sometimes only gin and kola, or the promise of it later.
Vodu encompasses and internalizes many aspects of social life including
healing and law. Regarding legal processes, it is helpful to understand the
vodus as ruling by justice rather than formal state-derived definitions of “law.”
Justice has a moral dimension; law is a bureaucratic concept (Ellis and ter
Haar 2004, 146; see also Ramsey 2011). In Togo, as in many places, law is skewed
in favor of those with power and against those without it. Local structures of
jurisprudence based on religious law and overseen by religious specialists are
more just, equitable, and democratic than anything that happens at the state
level. This typically reflects the absence of effective and legitimate judicial/
enforcement institutions in society. Judgments (kodzo) are done at the shrine
with the assistance of the gods. Even offenses or conflicts involving Christian
or Muslim families will often be adjudicated there. Disputes may involve rival
fishermen, witchcraft, illness, criminal activity (e.g., larceny, fraud, assault) or
family disputes. Very serious crimes such as murder or sedition must involve
the government, but theft, property crimes, simple assaults or fights, and the
like are handled through the traditional system.
In 2013, we observed a judgment at Bisi’s shrine. A young boy and his accuser
arrived for judgment over the theft of a cell phone. The boy admitted his
wrongdoing and said it was Kunde who caught him by tormenting him during
dreams. He was forced to pay one thousand CFA (two dollars) restitution, give
gin and kola to all the gods, and sacrifice a dog for Kunde in compensation
for his capture. Bangede negotiated the punishment and demanded two cat
sacrifices for doing so. Bisi insisted: “No human being can judge another, only
god can judge. Vodus will forgive you if you come on your knees and apologize
and make sacrifices.” The parents of the accused arrived a few days later and
came to speak with Bisi. We were told that the boy would wash in a sacred bath
prepared by Bisi and be forgiven. Sacred plants and sacrifices opened the door
for redemption and the boy spent five days in the village performing prayers.
In 2004, Balanga, a young bosomfo, stole Eric’s camera in the middle of the
night. A few weeks later he confessed his sins. Shortly after selling the camera,
Balanga began experiencing great pain in his stomach and even left to stay with
friends near the border. However, after falling off a moto-taxi one morning, he
The Shrine At Gbedala 207

believed that punishment in the form of death was imminent and returned
to the shrine to confess. When he approached the shrine Kossi punched him
in the kidneys. His offense against a visiting foreigner and guest of Sofo Bisi’s
family made the entire village look bad, and most upset were Bisi and Kossi. Bisi
disciplined Kossi for unnecessary force. Assault is not permitted in Gorovodu.
Instead we would all await Balanga’s kodzo at the shrine.24 Before his confes-
sion, Balanga was looking ill and avoided Eric at all costs. “Look at Balanga
who stole your camera, he is suffering,” neighbors said. The Gorovodu have a
reputation throughout the Bight of Benin for punishing severely and quite rap-
idly. People who have been robbed, cursed, or manipulated visit Bisi in hopes
of alleviation. Balanga avoided the kodzo for months, but physical and mental
suffering imposed by the vodus took their toll on him and he finally set a time
with Bisi for his confession. Confession in Gorovodu is not private confession,
as in Catholicism for example, protected by oaths of public silence. Rather,
confessions are done publically in the shrine and are made public. When they
are private they tend to be less efficacious; matters of the public are best left
public.
In Gorovodu, “sinners” are publically exposed and made to confess and
make amends or risk the wrath of the vodus. Confessions are always done in
the shrine or Sacred Forest in the presence of the shrine keeper. Another sofo
besides the shrine keeper may not come to a shrine and weigh cases, hear con-
fessions, or pray to the vodus regarding sin and punishment. However, some-
times groups of priests will give council on regional issues and older priests
will often express their opinions if they are requested. Every trial and every
judgment involves the sacrifice of animals. Number and kind are dependent
on numerous factors including which gods are involved, the nature and extent
of the crime, and the wealth or poverty of the individuals involved, and may
even be negotiated between gods, victims, and perpetrators. Once an offender
is known and he or she confesses, sacrifice is required as penance to dem-
onstrate commitment to one’s punishment and the law and in mimetic sac-
rificial substitution of the sinner. The sacrifice of animals is essential to the
shrine-as-court processes in order to mitigate the potential revenge violence
of a victim’s kin. Violence directed at the offender is redirected to the animal
that is sacrificed to the gods in the name of compensation for the sin. This
way, sacrifice realizes an economy of violence. In an act of “sacrificial substitu-
tion” (Girard 1979) the revenge violence desired by the community or kin is
directed away from the perpetrator and onto a separate, safe, entity, which is
destroyed in a manner that is irreproachable: in the name of and for the gods.

24 See Rosenthal 1998 for a more in-depth examination of Gorovodu and community law.
208 CHAPTER 5

The community or kin will not wreak vengeance upon the evildoer; the gods
will. Here there are two mimetic substitutions acting in unison to minimize
n’bia and maso-maso. The sacrificial animal replaces the sinner and the gods
replace the mob. The undifferentiated mob is unified in the singular agency
of the god. The gods pull the powers of vengeance away from the mob, com-
munity, and victims to prevent mimetic violence—that is, an unending
cycle of revenge violence—from spiraling out of control and destroying the
community.
Those who are stealing or lying end up in front of Kunde because they sense
his power, or have been “caught” through possession, divination, or waking
revelations. Kunde will kill evildoers, and perpetrators of sorcery and witch-
craft. Kunde’s father, Kadzanka, despises thieves and will strike them or a kin
member down. People who come to confess their sins often allude to horrible
nightmares where the spirit is punishing them. Other times they encounter
witches in the night, those who morph into owls, cats, and goats to haunt the
transgressor. People also experience mysterious accidents and that brings
them to the shrine. When Amagbe was probed about this he laughed and pro-
vided examples of vodu law.

You shouldn’t steal, ever! Kunde killing someone for stealing is common
in our area. Don’t be jealous or envious of another. Don’t take the wife of
someone else. Don’t chase women. Don’t kill. But if someone is coming to
kill you, you had better kill them first. You shouldn’t make juju from just
anywhere. If you follow Gorovodu law, that isn’t necessary anyway. If you
are adept of Kunde, you should never lie or cheat. Telling lies, hustling,
playing two people off each other, Kunde takes these things very seri-
ously. You should never have an abortion if you are a woman. If you are a
man, do not allow a woman you had sex with to have an abortion. Never
forget to pray and give drink and kola to the gods. There are more but
these are our laws. They are like the Ten Commandments.

There is a sort of pride amongst many adherents, especially sofos, in the strict
laws of Gorovodu and their observance. This pride can border on a sense of
superiority, embraced especially by Hadaya, who said, “We have rules and laws.
If you want to go with them go, if not, don’t.” However, laws, codes, taboos, and
the swift and terrible punishments that accompany their disobeyance can be
quite burdensome. According to Hadaya, this is the point: the more implicated
in daily mundane life, the more difficult the laws are to follow, and the more
worthy, effective, and powerful the individual is who is able to adehere to them
all. This is a point of concern for Bisi, who said,
The Shrine At Gbedala 209

Some say Gorovodu is growing but I say it is dying. It is dying mainly

because Kunde is killing so many who are breaking the law. Now, many
are afraid to eat the goro because they know they will have to follow the
law and they know they will not be able to be faithful. They know they
cannot lead a moral life. So they don’t become adepts. Even in Gorovodu
many people are not serious. They drink, they fuck (mwame), they lie,
and they steal. They don’t pray or make sacrifices or tell the truth. Even
the sofos are drinking and fucking as they like. I know because I see it. But
I cannot say anything or it will bring n’bia and maso-maso, and maybe
even bovodu or aze against me. But Kunde and the others will take your
life if you constantly break the law. That is why many become Christians,
because the vodus are too unforgiving. But when you obey the law and
listen to the spirits you are rewarded handsomely, beyond words. Doing
good is necessary in vodu, otherwise trouble comes.

Muslims are viewed in Ewe vodu culture as similar in their ritual practices and
likewise rigid in their moral codes and laws. Christians, on the other hand, are
viewed as less moral than vodunsi or Muslims because of their lack of rigid
religious law. Furthermore, the lack of direct spiritual punishment and the lack
of public punishment for breaking these laws lead to immorality because there
are no powerful deterrents. Since they lack rigid law, Christians are considered
by many in Ewe society as more prone to alcoholism and are viewed as greed-
ier than others. As opposed to Muslims, Christians do not kill animals properly,
they do not sacrifice to their God, and they do not kneel to God when they pray
(evangelical prayer postures). Hence, many vodu devotees believe Christians
have no respect—for themselves, other people, other beings, and especially
their own history and culture. This is made most obvious in the eyes of vodunsi
through the centrality of forgiveness in Christianity. Amagbe said,

Christianity is immoral because you people have abortions. The whites

only see economics and think a lot of kids is a bad thing. When Christians
do immoral things, there is no punishment. The vodus will punish you.
Gods say don’t have n’bia. If you follow that, it is said you will be blessed.
Kunde is not subject to the intricacies of this world. He is a dog and like
a dog if you feed him and treat him as your companion he will be a most
faithful companion. If you do not he will bite you and injure or even
kill you.

If one breaks vodu law he or she must face punishment, which the vodus will
mete out accordingly without discretion or discrimination. Jesus, it is viewed,
210 CHAPTER 5

will always forgive. Stories are often told of a vodunsi who becomes a serial
transgressor or severely breaks the law and quickly converts to Christianity to
beg for forgiveness from Christ to avoid spiritual punishment. The stories mesh
well with local experiences of proselytizing by foreigners, but generally end
with the transgressor horribly punished through disease or accident. Islam is
viewed as more akin to vodu through understandings of law and morality that
are seen as lacking in Christianity. Sharia law is viewed as parallel to the law
of tron Kunde. Similar to vodu law, there is little room for forgiveness in cer-
tain interpretations of Sharia. One must face punishment when a law has been
transgressed. The law of Kunde is not about forgiveness, it’s about the truth.
From truth comes justice. People are afraid of the truth; they cannot face the
truth; yet Kunde will ensure the truth will be known.

Conclusion: Political Economy and Ritual in Gorovodu

Hadaya can be narcissistic and impulsive, he can also be eerily calm, but when
he recanted the story of his run-in with the military police, he was quite lively,
smoking an American cigarette and drinking totes of gin. In 2003, security
forces arrested opposition leaders and beat their followers as they sought to
quell protests of the election in which Eyadema was re-elected after appoint-
ing his own party to count ballots. Afraid the growing political unrest would
deepen, police forces began detaining those whom they suspected of sedi-
tion, namely young Ewe vodu priests from throughout the greater-Lomé area.25
When they approached Ameka, where Hadaya was living, they did not arrest
him, but instead brought refreshments and relaxed for a few hours before
moving on. Hadaya told the story with relish, asserting that he constructed tal-
ismans by following instructions from Bangede given during a divination ses-
sion. Once the soldiers entered his village, Bangede’s talismans seduced them.
The talismans resembled small daggers about three inches long, encapsulated
with an antique bell, adorned with horse hair, bird feathers, charred blood,
and other materials associated with Bangede and his pantheon. Hadaya sum-
moned the help of Tsengue, Sourougou, and Magazun: all tied to the police,
military, and means of violence. Police continued to visit Hadaya through the
troubling times of Eyadema’s death in 2005. When Eric told Hadaya that the
police made him uncomfortable, he said “Why? They are eating out of my
hand and will never touch you or ask for a bribe from you.”

25 There is a long history of violence and mistrust in Togo between the Kabye-dominated
military and the Ewe intellectual and priestly classes.
The Shrine At Gbedala 211

In the late 1980s, Ahudza, Bisi’s friend and a sofoga, was jailed for 18 months
and had all his fetishes seized, regularly fleeing to Benin in the 1990s to escape
the reach of the police. Each time he would place “medicine of Bangede,”
under his tongue. Once, in 1993 while protests rocked Lomé after Eyadema
dissolved the parliament, Ahudza was caught trying to cross the border into
northern Ghana. Hearing rumors of his imminent arrest, he fled his village
in such a hurry that he forgot his Bangede talisman and medicines. He was
held in two jails for just under a year, through the legislative elections of 1994.
He received harsh treatment his first six weeks of incarceration but later the
guards brought him food, mailed his letters, and even brought him gin and kola
to properly venerate the gods and intervened with them on the guards’ behalf.
Togo, like much of Africa, has an unpredictable political and economic
climate. Members of northern ethnic groups (specifically Kabye) control the
military, government, and other institutions to the detriment of southern
groups such as the Ewe. Predictable economic flows by which families may
properly plan for and invest in the future are rare. Fishermen have a bumper
catch today, and nothing tomorrow. When buyers at market are nowhere to
be found, fishmongers must sell the catch to the first buyer at the cheapest
price; only to find the next day that buyers are everywhere engaged in bid-
ding wars that are driving prices skyward. Many individuals engage in several
different ventures to ensure a steady income, playing the odds between risk-
taking entrepreneurialism and safety-first conservatism. If one occupation is
flat, another may be picking up. This uncertainty and unpredictability requires
a high investment in spiritual security, aid, and protection.
When people are rebelling against some aspect of their existence, alterna-
tive sensory modes such as prayers to foreign spirits, possession-trance, sacri-
fice, casting destiny via divination, and creating magical objects for protection
and empowerment allow for epistemologies alternative to those of the domi-
nant or hegemonic order (Howes and Classen 2013). Ewe Gorovodu priests and
adepts have learned to resist political control and repression in many covert
ways. Many people come to Bisi’s shrine because of government oppression,
seek out the vodus to help them avoid the police, warn them of imminent
search and seizures, and protect them from arrest.26 The number and variety
of magical objects and material culture that people use to escape persecution,
evade police or warn of their approach, and bring protection against state vio-
lence are the material culture of ritual-first politically repressed society. Ritual

26 Ventkatachalam (2011) observed among Ghanaian Ewes that many of the Gorovodu/
Brekete Hausa spirits are consulted and invited to deal with political oppression at the
national level of government.
212 CHAPTER 5

and the deployment of magic are not non-rational solutions to uncertainty,

but the fabric of morality and reciprocity that creates and maintains the social
relationships crucial to ensuring security against uncertainty. Gudeman and
Hann (2015) argue, “Rituals are related to economy through the social connec-
tions they make and break. Rituals express, reiterate, and sustain social ties.
They can make and recognize commitments to others or sever them . . .” (7–8).
Rituals are social connections that tie together people, gods, ancestors, and
spirits. The pouring of libations, the covering of fetishes with animal blood,
the gifting of kola, libations of gin, are all expressions of a symbolic language,
spoken in practices of mutuality and gifting that are core to mundane every-
day life that communicates and affirms relationships between kin, neighbors,
and gods. Through these relationships, economic and physical security is
materialized.
According to Venkatachalam (2015), the pre-Christian contact Anlo-Ewe
did not have a word for religion. Rather, religion was defined through activity
or “act of service” to numerous spirits, gods, and ancestors (48). From these
acts of service, the gods intervene in various domains of human struggle and
existence such as fertility of land and person, safety, travel, health and healing,
work and money, love and sex. These interventions or supports do not result
from service, but are rather the rewards for service and obeyance to the gods
(see Deren 2004, 198 for a similar argument in Haitian Vodou). We argue here
that these “acts of service” may be viewed as multi-dimensional relationships
that are created and maintained through ritual exchanges of service, sacred
goods, or other symbolic and material means between people, ancestors, spir-
its, and gods. Exchanges or acts of service occur through mutual consent and
may be defined as gift and counter-gift if we recognize these open terms as
metaphorical of socio-sacred materials and processes. Making sense of vodu
involves understanding the service and gift giving between people and gods,
forming the foundation of vodu religious life. The transfer of goods or services
for purposes of maintaining social networks and social ties establishes rela-
tionships between giver and receiver that are affirmed and re-affirmed through
the ongoing exchange (Geary 1986, 173). In exchange for spiritual or physical
aid or blessings, individuals or collectives (e.g., communities, lineages, trade
associations) will give to the gods via ritual matrial offerings such as offer-
ings, sacrifices, and libations, or non-material offerings such as prayer, drum
rhythms, or the singing of hymns. Adepts also give their bodies in possession
trance for the gods to dance the rythms of the drums and give voices to the
gods to bring messages to the community.
Sofo Bisi raised this relationship between people and gods when explaining
the religious differences between the south and the north, “In the north, one
The Shrine At Gbedala 213

person receives the vodu for the entire family, normally the eldest male. Spirits
are collective there. Here there is a more personal relationship with the vodus.
We go to the vodus for more personal problems.” A market woman in Gbedala
put this exchange more pragmatically in 2005,

Vodu helps me get money. If I’m not making money [in the market] the
vodus will tell me they need something. If I don’t have money for sacri-
fices then I borrow money and return it once I make more. When I get a
lot of money I buy gin and kola and sometimes even an animal to sacri-
fice if I have enough.

The balanced aspect of exchange is vague and determined by Afa divination

and communication with the gods, and the amount one gives to the shrine is
mostly indicative of what they can afford. Most adepts (e.g., tronsis, bosomfos,
bokonosofos, drummers) gift a portion of their income to gods and spirits in the
material form of medicines, animal sacrifices, kola nuts, chalk, gin, schnapps,
and direct cash. Most often, poorer folks purchase a few kola nuts and maybe
some chalk on a weekly basis and around ten to twelve animals for the gods
each year. Some priests and others of modest means will purchase animals,
gin, and kola on at least a weekly basis and wealthy individuals may offer sac-
rifices daily. The pouring of gin, the giving of kola nut, chalk, and other gifts is
part of mundane routine life in Gbedala. Drummers make vossa to drums to
give thanks for their ability to keep rhythms and to ensure the quality of their
drumming in a ceremony. Visiting anthropologists show their commitment to
the community in which they live and study. Every time we arrive in the village
of Gbedala, we head first to the shrine with kola nuts and gin in hand. After
this, we normally go to the head priest’s compound and distribute gifts to him
and his family. We return to the shrine and dutifully make sacrifices to each
god. It is good to salute these gatekeepers whenever arriving or departing.
Energy, vitality, and good fortune are the outcomes of caring for the vodus.
Those who can afford purchase libations, animals for sacrifice, and other ritual
commodities to appease and feed the gods, which returns in the form of power
(nuse). The vodus may be harsh to judge and quick to punish but they also
reward those who give and venerate them. Gifts to the gods demonstrate pious-
ness, commitment, respect, and affirm the ongoing mutually beneficial rela-
tionship. One’s standing in the community is also linked to the giving of gifts
to the gods. The gods also share with those present. The more gods eat or are
wetted with the blood of sacrifice, the more the gods will confer blessings and
good fortune to the community as a whole. Hence, those individuals or groups
that sponsor the much larger turning-of-the-year ceremonies (Fetatrotro),
214 CHAPTER 5

thanksgiving ceremonies (Akpedada), or welcoming of the gods ceremonies

(Wizododo) in which immense resources are spent honoring the gods are held
in the highest honor. Those who are wealthy or have found good fortune must
reciprocate back to the community by way of public ceremony. Sponsoring a
ceremony or otherwise providing for the gods in a public manner is an essen-
tial indicator of commitment to the gods and their moral and social order they
represent. Declaring loyalty or paying respects by mere words is rather cheap.
Giving valuable resources to the gods on behalf of the community is a directly
observable commitment (see Neubert 2008, 309). Furthermore, successful
individuals and families give to the gods in both public ceremonies in order
tor ender themselves less vulnerable to witchcraft accusations or allegations
of sorcery. Practices surrounding the shrine and gods unify to minimize the
destructive capabilities and consequences of n’bia, aze, and maso-maso. The
pervasiveness of n’bia means there are no victimless crimes in the community.
For Gorovodu adherents, the continuation of success depends on avoiding
the witchcraft of others and maintaining a good relationship with the spirits.
Between community members, there are persistent expectations of reciproc-
ity and the esteem garnered from the sharing in food, drinks, and shelter with
neighbors is consequential. Individuals seek preventative protections, suffer-
ing victims are treated spiritually and medically, and perpetrators are tried and
punished all in the legitimated physical and social space of religion.
Mobilizing sacred material and non-material culture in order to establish
or maintain ongoing relationships with the gods is accompanied by the expec-
tation of the counter-gift. The relationship between people and the gods is
symmetrical, sometimes having a transactional or contractual feel. Gifts and
venerations are expected to yield results. For a Togolese fisherman, purchas-
ing a bottle of gin with hard-earned cash and then pouring it out as libation to
the gods is considered an investment. A relationship is initiated; the gods are
obliged to counter-gift this demonstration of faith and goodwill towards them.
If a god takes and takes from people and does not assist them or reciprocate,
then people will stop praying to the God, stop giving, and stop sacrificing. A
God can be forgotten. Indeed, many gods rise and wither in power depending
on their ability and willingness to intervene on the behalf of individuals and
the community. Excessive gift giving to the gods without counter-gifting often
leads to frustration. People challenge the vodus, and when they are giving and
still struggling sometimes they will scream at the spirits. One example involved
a man challenging the vodus because he could not find work. He spent all his
savings on sacrifices and other gifts and yet was still unable to find a job. He
even started going to a local Protestant church out of frustration and did not
return to the shrine for over two years.
The Shrine At Gbedala 215

The relationship is always two-way and is resistant to instrumentalization

or simple strategic ends. Adepts are possessed by, but also possess the gods.
They are danced by and dance the gods. They are disciplined by and discipline
the gods. They embody and are embodied by the gods. Spirits require material-
ization and personification to become known through the sensory experience
of adepts. The materiality of the body serves as the vessal for possession. The
material fetishes are the material foci for the receiving of libation, the blood of
sacrifice, and other material gifts. As explained by Wirtz (2014) in her discus-
sion of folk-religious practice in Cuba,

people make offerings of promise to make offerings to spirits, which

serve to activate the spiritual potential of spirits, who reciprocate by
manifesting their power through material interventions including spirit
possession, and who are then thanked with further material offerings
from people, in an ongoing cycle variously characterized as reciprocity or
manipulation, depending on the tradition in question (110).

Relations with spirits, and ritual objects such as talismans that perform spe-
cific services, must be established and maintained through ritual and material
gift giving. These relationships are part of the same cosmological order that
includes the ancestors, slave spirits, spirits of the unborn, and other deities
from other cultural or religious systems. Sacrifices, libations, gifts of kola nut
and chalk, and other material culture given to the gods in ritual are meant to
demonstrate an ongoing commitment to, and subjugation to, the socio-moral
order around which the conditioned relationships with the gods are centered.
The conditions of these relationships are often intense. In addition to giving,
the adept must obey the law, maintain morality, and be in good standing in the
community. To not do so risks turning the reciprocating relations with gods
and neighbors negative. To break the law and behave immorally is a sin against
the social order established and guarded by the gods and can invite reciprocat-
ing violence in the form of physical or spiritual punishment. Disease, madness,
ill fortune, legal problems, poverty or other calamities await the individual or
even their family member if they repeatedly flout the law and moral order of
society. To maintain a faithful relationship can repay an individual “a thousand
times a thousand,” in the words of Amagbe. A life-giving relationship is estab-
lished and perpetuated. Dzatá summed up this relationship with the gods in
2005 as the “service [to the gods] is the rent you pay to the vodu for your life,
and to forget is to die.”
Vodus are understood as power, medicines, keepers of law, and deliverers of
justice. Understanding the vodus as conduits of justice aids our understanding
216 CHAPTER 5

of their origins as witch-hunting gods in the nineteenth and twentieth centu-

ries. Given the cultural values surrounding morality and illness, and the beliefs
and practice of witchcraft and healing are saturated with understandings of
justice. Power, medicine, and justice in Ewe Gorovodu culture are not existen-
tially “there.” They are ever-evolving social processes that have at their base
the conditioned relationships that are the vodus—who are also very real and
very “there.”
The shrine is the physical and social space where these social processes are
negotiated and engaged. An intimate part of these social processes are sacred
vossa that are made to the gods. An essential to ritual economy in Gorovodu,
these offerings establish relationships and commitments that are not only
reproduced in occasional ceremonial events but also embedded in the rhyth-
mic rituals of daily life in the community. They establish stronger reciprocating
relations with the gods, generate status, and reproduce the social and moral
orders of society.
Possession is not just a relationship between individual and spirit, but
includes the community of witnesses that comprises the entirety of the event
in and during which possession occurs. The public nature of ritual economy in
Gorovodu demonstrates that the shrine is also a carnivalesque theatre, where
processes of sacrifice, possession, prayer, and so on are acted out in ceremonial
performance. In these performances possession-trance, the singing of praises,
dancing, and sacrifice allow participants to engage history, Others, and con-
temporary political, economic, and social challenges in ways that reinforce
community and reproduce culture.27 Centerpieces of Gorovodu, carnivalesque
public ceremonies and individual rituals are part of daily life in Gbedala.
They are the social space where gods and people, values and practices, come
together.

27 (Montgomery, 2017). Eric Montgomery discusses performance and participatory photo

voice in forthcoming work in Journal of Ritual Studies and Visual Anthropology.
Glossary

abey Rhythm and dance style

adava “Madness,” or mental illness
adewu, aum Tronsi costumes; ritual garb
adodo Talking drum with tension strings and normally played with a curved
stick
Afa System of divination, also the name of the god of divination
afakaka Afa divination
afavi An initiate of Afa; lit: “child of Afa”
afemeku House death; death by natural causes
agbadza Traditional Ewe drumming style and a type of drum, related more
closely to Alafia Gorovodu
agbama Metal basins in which god-fetishes are put so they may be brought to
the ceremonial courtyard during Fetatrotro ceremonies
agumaga Divination chains used in Afakaka
akpase Witchcraft (typically in reference to men)
Akpedada Giving-thanks ceremony
akpefofo Rhythmic clapping by ceremonial participants
alilo Chalk offered as a typical gift to the Gorovodus
amatsi Sacred herb water, typically carried in a buta
amefeflewo Slaves; lit: “bought people”
amegasi Seer, typically a woman
apia Pitchfork or trident; one of the material accouterments used by Bangede
asesoso Hymn sung at the cow sacrifice during a Fetatrotro ceremony
ata Guinea pepper
atike Medicine; lit: “tree root”
atikewofe “Medicine house;” shrine
atoke Iron bell used in Gorovodu ceremony
awuku Lead drummer
aze Witchcraft (typically in reference to women)
bokono Diviner
bokonosofo Diviner priest
bokovi Diviner-in-training
bopiafu “Attention,” or “hallelujah”
bosomfo Sacrificial priest that also serves as an assistant to the sofo
bovodu Black magic, see also dzoka
brekete A type of large drum beat with a curved stick; alternative name for
Gorovodu in Ghana; drumming/rhythm style
284 Glossary

buta Muslim kettle that carries amatsi to pour in libation for the gods
when they are dancing the bodies of adepts in possession trance
deki Palm nuts often used in divination or determining one’s kpoli
dmedro Stranger
dogbeda Prayer
duko Chieftaincy
dzoka Black magic, see also bovodu
dzogbe Sacred Forest, representative of the northern savanna from where
slaves, Islam, and the Gorovodus originated
dzogbetsi The “north” in the imaginary of Ewe Gorovodu adepts
dzogbedzitowo Peoples from the north
dzonu Necklace for Vodu Da, with red, blue, and white shells or beads
dzoto Ancestor soul, normally determined by Afa
ega Bell (to ring for Bangede, Sacre Bode, and Nan Wango)
ehadzito Song leader of the call and response hymns sung during Gorovodu
ceremonies
enyi Cow, the animal that serves as the sacrificial “anchor” at a Fetarotro
ceremony
Fetatrotro “Turning” ceremony when a large cow and numerous other animals
are sacrificed en masse to the gods
goro Kola nut (Hausa)
kamanou Dance performed by the bosomfo
kodzo Judgment
kossitchi Paddles; a material accouterment of Nana Wango
kpedziga Prayer priest of Gorovodu
kpoli An individual’s system of life signs comprised of songs, taboos,
totems, and so on
kpome “Oven” where the god-fetishes sit in the shrine
kuku Ferryman’s hat; a material accouterment of Nana Wango
latalafi Divination stick used by Afa diviners
madza Chief
mamawo Female ancestor; grandmother
maso-maso Social conflict or chaos
medzi One of sixteen macro-categories of kpoli; also “chapters” or odus of
Afa text.
n’bia The intense emotion that combines jealousy, envy, and greed and
serves as a frequent source of aze and maso-maso
nuse Power
pagne White cloth wrapped around the waist
sakpate Set of three small drums
Glossary 285

Salah Type of Gorovodu ceremony; “prayer” in Arabic

se Destiny
senterua Spirit guides; women who serve and guide a spirit when dancing
the body of an adept in possession trance
sodabi Distilled palm wine, or Akpadeshi in Ghana
sofo Priest of Gorovodu
sofoga High priest of Gorovodu
Tchamba-Hounon Priest of the Tchamba order; “hounon” is term for “Vodun chief”
in Benin, Yewe Vodu (see Rush, 2015).
tikpui Wooden gun; a material accouterment of Bangede
togbui Ancestor; chief; general address of respect
togbui bokono Master diviner
togbuiwo Male ancestor
tro/tron Spirit; Gorovodu God
tronduvi One initiated into a vodu order; lit: “child of vodu”
tronsi Adept of Gorovodu; lit: “wife of vodu”
tronfome Fetish house; shrine
troto Shrine keeper
vasoamlekpui Altar
vodudzoto Identity spirit soul
vodzi bag and various items including shells, metals, plants, rocks, and
sacred objects across the spectrum used to carry materials asso­
ciated with Afa divination
vossa Offering or sacrifice
vumeku Violent or bush death; death by violent or sudden causes
wizo Welcome!
Wizododo Welcoming the gods ceremony
yovo/yevu Foreigner; “white man”
zikpui gun of Bangede
zongo Traditional Muslim quarter of towns
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