They cannot have me. We were engulfed by frantic drumbeats. The entire montage of the Voodoo ritual we were witnessing in Cachim n, near the border with the Dominican Republic, created an almost dreamlike atmosphere within the confines of Voodoo priest Manuel S nchez Elie. Without a scrap of hesitation, one of the houngan's assistants delivered a powerful blade-stroke on the neck of a ram, abruptly decapitating the animal while its blood showered everyone present. The ram's head was torn from its body and offered to the gods, while two acolytes stripped the body, which would be served to the participants later.
Voodoo religion is an imprecise mixture of blood, music and esthetics.
Voodoo, like Santer a, Umbanda, Candombl' or Palo Mayombe, is the product of synchretism between African religions and Christianity. The ancestral beliefs brought by African slaves to the New World as their only treasure was forcibly mimetized with the saints of the Catholic onomasticon. The orishas and African loas were disguised as saints, mystics and martyrs in order that their worship could survive in a hostile world, which was that of slave-owning whites. This abstract mixture of witchcraft, paganism and christianity survives to this day. The palm tree was very close to the precipices in which the Tombe River dissolves into the mist in a cascade known as Saut d'Eau, a sacred site for generations of voodooists.