• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Anyone been possessed by loa?

Spiderman

Veteran Member
So I been studying Haitian voodoo and I guess it is very common to see people get possessed by loa and their whole personality changes.

Christians who attended ceremonies with every intention of not being open to any spirits still got possessed , so it isn't like a person needs to practice much disciplines , meditations, or exercises to make it happen.

I'm assuming fasting and emptying out the mind increases the likelihood of it happening.

Another spirit literally takes control of them , often so that they don't remember what happened.

Anyhow, just wondering if you have seen or experienced this phenomena. Allegedly it happens in Haiti on a regular basis.
https://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/voodoo3.htm
 

George-ananda

Advaita Vedanta, Theosophy, Spiritualism
Premium Member
Allegedly it happens in Haiti on a regular basis.
I suppose the world of Haiti can be quite different than the logical left-brained western countries. Something not understood by materialist science is quite likely going on there. I have heard enough evidence of paranormal things to convince me.
 

Unveiled Artist

Veteran Member
I was looking more into Vodou recently in the past week or so, if you wondering why Im replying etc. Hopefully others are able to join. Im trying to think of a better place to post your questions to get a more rounded response if thats your intention?

So I been studying Haitian voodoo and I guess it is very common to see people get possessed by loa and their whole personality changes.

Christians who attended ceremonies with every intention of not being open to any spirits still got possessed , so it isn't like a person needs to practice much disciplines , meditations, or exercises to make it happen.

I'm assuming fasting and emptying out the mind increases the likelihood of it happening.

Another spirit literally takes control of them , often so that they don't remember what happened.

Anyhow, just wondering if you have seen or experienced this phenomena. Allegedly it happens in Haiti on a regular basis.
https://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/voodoo3.htm

(Anyone?...anyone?....anyone?) No one else here to answer. Oh well.

Anyway, yes. Family spirits. I dont know if its the same in Vodou as in Lucumi... but the family spirits are egun.

Here some things that might be of interest. Read at your own validity. This talks about the Vodou beliefs etc. Its hard to find something that sounds close.

http://www.britannica.com/topic/Vodou

Here's a clip:

The primary goal and activity of Vodou is to sevilwa (“serve the spirits”)—to offer prayers and perform various devotional rites directed at God and particular spirits in return for health, protection, and favour. Spirit possession plays an important role in Afro-Haitian religion, as it does in many other world religions. During religious rites, believers sometimes enter a trancelike state in which the devotee may eat and drink, perform stylized dances, give supernaturally inspired advice to people, or perform medical cures or special physical feats; these acts exhibit the incarnate presence of the lwa within the entranced devotee. Vodouritual activity (e.g., prayer, song, dance, and gesture) is aimed at refining and restoring balance and energy in relationships between people and between people and the spirits of the unseen world.
I used to go to my family's church often. Most are Southern Baptist and pentecostal. A lot of yelling and screaming and things of that nature. A few times I have seen people cart wheel through the ailes. Other times when to-be christians go to the altar for the "altar call" as a Catholic does at confirmation profess their faith, but sometimes the protestant would fall into a seizure and people come to try to get the holy spirit from them.

I think there is a lot of similarities to these religions with other religions and Christianity that many people realize.
 

Unveiled Artist

Veteran Member
haitian-vodou-2.jpg

Vodou
4-GABS-300x300.jpg

Christian

Once the loa or Holy Spirit "possesses" the individual, he or she talks in tongues (pentecostal. I got baptized at, well, kinda). Dont know about Vodou rituals. Just surprised they are similar. Wish it would be a good thread topic.
 

Spiderman

Veteran Member
haitian-vodou-2.jpg

Vodou
4-GABS-300x300.jpg

Christian

Once the loa or Holy Spirit "possesses" the individual, he or she talks in tongues (pentecostal. I got baptized at, well, kinda). Dont know about Vodou rituals. Just surprised they are similar. Wish it would be a good thread topic.
Is there a place this thread should be moved to for more discussion?
 

Unveiled Artist

Veteran Member
Is there a place this thread should be moved to for more discussion?

I looked. Seems General Religious Debates is good; but, you'd get a lot of less focused replies, of course. I actually think there are only what twenty if that people who actually interact on the forums minus the staff. You probably got a couple more informed voudouist or interested readers that may not want their faith attacked.

What did you want to do?
 

Spiderman

Veteran Member
I looked. Seems General Religious Debates is good; but, you'd get a lot of less focused replies, of course. I actually think there are only what twenty if that people who actually interact on the forums minus the staff. You probably got a couple more informed voudouist or interested readers that may not want their faith attacked.

What did you want to do?
I would rather have more comments I guess. There may be people who never practice voodoo or think it is Satanic but still have witnessed this happen.

Missionaries to Haiti claim to see it all the time.

I was reading about Marie Laveau "the voodoo Queen" of New Orleans multiple times yesterday and the fingers began to tingle like a cross between blood flow after losing circulation and getting poked with needles.

That was the sensation I used to always get when fasting, deep meditation and inner stillness, or Pentecostal prayer services, but haven't experienced in a while.

Could be an Angel or Holy Spirit or some other Spirit saying something which was what lead to starting this thread.


But will leave that up to their discretion.

It also is interesting how voodoo has such an ugly dark name because of people that use dolls, bite off chicken heads, drink blood, and create zombies , but that is actually an aberration of the Religion which was to seek good moral conduct, peace, healing, and the defeat of evil through blessings, relics, self discipline, herbs, charity, and detachment from materialism.

Voodoo, at least in it's most commonly practiced forms is not incompatible with Christianity, as it acknowledges a single creator and the Loa are lesser spirits that serve him (like Angels).

If fallen Angels can possess us, why not good Angels or the Holy Spirit?
Actually, baptism of the Holy Spirit where people fall over and speak in tongues looks like Loa possession seen at a voodoo ritual.

But yeah... since there isnt going to be many Vodouisants posting if any so lets move this thread to religious debates. Thanks!
 
Last edited by a moderator:

GoodbyeDave

Well-Known Member
Possession is actively sought in most if not all African diaspora religions: it happens in Spain and the USA, not just in Haiti. The classic account is Maya Deren's Divine horsemen. She went to Haiti in the 1940s to make a documentary film about dance in Vodou ceremonies, but she kept getting ridden by the goddess Erzulie, so she ended up writing the book instead. Possession is also common in Hinduism.
 

Spiderman

Veteran Member
Possession is actively sought in most if not all African diaspora religions: it happens in Spain and the USA, not just in Haiti. The classic account is Maya Deren's Divine horsemen. She went to Haiti in the 1940s to make a documentary film about dance in Vodou ceremonies, but she kept getting ridden by the goddess Erzulie, so she ended up writing the book instead. Possession is also common in Hinduism.
Yes loa rides, they consider possession to be the spirits riding the horse where they become a docile instrument of the spirit.

It would be a very interesting thing to experience at least once in a person's life to be a horse for the dead, but the thing that sounds like it's not worth experiencing is a person often does not remember it ( and who wants an entity controlling your actions? , especially since sometimes they cause people to take off their clothes in public. Eeek!:eek:
 

Unveiled Artist

Veteran Member
Possession is actively sought in most if not all African diaspora religions: it happens in Spain and the USA, not just in Haiti. The classic account is Maya Deren's Divine horsemen. She went to Haiti in the 1940s to make a documentary film about dance in Vodou ceremonies, but she kept getting ridden by the goddess Erzulie, so she ended up writing the book instead. Possession is also common in Hinduism.
Common in Hinduism? Do tell.
 

Unveiled Artist

Veteran Member
So I been studying Haitian voodoo and I guess it is very common to see people get possessed by loa and their whole personality changes.

Christians who attended ceremonies with every intention of not being open to any spirits still got possessed , so it isn't like a person needs to practice much disciplines , meditations, or exercises to make it happen.

I'm assuming fasting and emptying out the mind increases the likelihood of it happening.

Another spirit literally takes control of them , often so that they don't remember what happened.

Anyhow, just wondering if you have seen or experienced this phenomena. Allegedly it happens in Haiti on a regular basis.
https://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/voodoo3.htm

I always wondered about the validity in various religious experiences. Say we may find it exotic that loa possess Haitian citizens where Haitians probably find it quite normal. In the states it feels we are so far removed from that intensity that Americans are going out of the country to get a more overall spiritual experience.

That makes me think. Do the loa dislike the US? What about certain spirits of clans in other countries miss the mark of traveling over the Americas....

Unless the experience of loa possession starts with, in vodoun case, the community or spirit possession in general, by oneself or with others.

I know this is a broader topic but if the loa is only among their believers, the holy spirit only among the believer, and so forth, maybe that sensation you got was not external, it was probably internal.

A more of your mind and body (spiritual gut) saying come or go. As for experiencing it ourselves, I get a lot of hints from santeria. There is a huge initiation process and training etc before getting to that point.

:shrug:
 

GoodbyeDave

Well-Known Member
My theory about African diaspora religions is this.

In Africa, possession occurs but it's not so common as in the Americas. On the other hand, Africa has some very sophisticated divination systems: learning Ifa in West Africa takes several years of study. The slave communities couldn't maintain the divination, but they could keep their religion, disguised as folk Catholicism (obviously not in the USA). The gods, seeing their people now lacked the guidance of divination, resorted to more possession to keep in touch.

On the subject of Hinduism, obviously we aren't talking about possession by "demons" but by gods. People who've traveled in rural India say it's often seen at festivals. It is possible to resist possession, and I expect the sort of intellectual, English-speaking Hindus you tend to meet on the internet wouldn't be the type to welcome it, or experience it.
 

Spiderman

Veteran Member
Are we talking about this kind of stuff?

One of the common signs of Demonic possession is being naked like the nude guy at the tombs possessed by legion.

People were shocked to see him "clothed and in His right mind".

Drug use is a big outlet for possession as well.
 

MNoBody

Well-Known Member
Neuromancer-001.jpg
This was a central theme in this particular book, he has some unique insights you might find germane (relevant)
 
Top