Haiti continued - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 171

Violent physiological symptoms precede these metamorphoses. The first warning of possession is a
feeling of vertigo, a sensation of being thrust over forwards. The subject attempts to regain his balance by
leaning back on one heel, and throwing out the other leg; and falls, losing consciousness completely for a
moment. As he recovers, this is succeeded by the feeling of an intolerable clamping weight at the nape of
his neck which slides down the spine and spreads along the arms and legs. He feels as though he were in
a strait-jacket and, shaking his limbs with violence, struggles to free himself. The possessed is observed,
at this point, to make attempts to tear or wipe away, or to unwrap something which clings to his hands.
Next he feels that he is straightening up, that his eyes are brilliant and his gestures ample and free. All
this meanwhile, is quite unconnected with his actual gestures, which are becoming the first steps of the
signature dance of his temporary inhabitant. It is the moment when the Houngan, the drums and the other
dancers recognize and salute the god.
A Voodooist possessed by Papa Legba, the most ancient of the Lwas, becomes old and lame, and the
dancers, recognizing at once who is in their midst, run to supply him with a walking-stick and a crutch.
Ogoun Agoué Arroyo, the god of the sea, rows indefatigably with invisible oars. Agaou climbs the cent-
ral column or swings from the branches of trees to approach the thunder clouds that are his kingdom;
Maîtresse Erzulie, even when she is perversely lodged in the body of a man, is flaunting, mincing and
vain. Ogoun Ferraille fights desperate and bloody battles. The Petro Lwas, the evil gods of force and
bloodshed and disaster, twist their incarnate servants into terrible convulsions and their faces become
masks of cynicism and wickedness. The Ghédés, half myrmidons of the underworld and half Eumen-
ides, become insanely agitated, ribald and ghoulishly erotic. Zaka, the telluric deity of the woods and the
fields, at once declares himself by his peasant oafishness, his rustic gait, and a facial expression that is a
caricature of bucolic ruse.
The possessed retains a dual awareness of himself and of the Lwa. He knows, though his awareness of
himself and of his surroundings is dim and reduced, that he is both. His limbs react automatically to the
changing behests of the drums, and the bell and açon of the Houngan can also control and direct him. The
Houngan has the power (I imagine it is one of the secrets of his particular degree of initiation) of halting
possession. In many sessions after our first contact with Voodoo I saw this happen, presumably because
an untimely incarnation might interrupt the progress of the ritual. The only observable gesture was the
prolonged Oranges-and-Lemons shaking of the hands, and the use of the açon and the bell. Sometimes
the person on the brink of possession withdrew and fell asleep, or sat down in a coma that took about an
hour to dissipate itself.
The crisis usually lasts between two and three hours. The feeling of immanence dies down, the drums
salute the departing Lwa, and his deserted human palace either returns to normal or sinks into a deep
sleep.
Possession often entails deep disturbances in the sensibility. Adepts have been observed to hold their
hands in boiling water, or to allow molten lead to be dropped on to their naked flesh, without reacting
in any way. (Melancholic Negroes in Africa are able to cut off their own fingers without turning a hair.)
A Haitian doctor records the case of a man on whom a testicular operation was being performed with an
insufficient anæsthetic. The patient suffered atrocious pain until, breaking into a Voodoo incantation, the
pain subsided, and the agonized grimaces on his face grew calm. He had entered a state of possession,
and the operation followed its course in complete serenity. Some adepts have been known to live in a
state of complete possession for days, automatically fulfilling all their ordinary duties but remembering
nothing, or almost nothing, when they emerge.