"The Serpent and the Rainbow"; Possession and Voodoo in Haiti

Wanted to do a post on this one for a while, this is mostly pasted from Illuminati Formula, supportive evidence of this going on in Haiti is also found in Cathy O'Brien's book.

Australian Rainbow Serpent [modern artist versions], check out the ritual.[click images for wiki]

From wiki: The Serpent and the Rainbow is a 1988 American horror film, directed by Wes Craven and starring Bill Pullman. The film is very loosely based on a non-fiction book by ethnobotanist Wade Davis, dealing with his experiences in Haiti as he investigates the story of Clairvius Narcisse, allegedly poisoned, buried alive, and given a herbal brew whose effects mimicked zombification.

"In Haiti, Voodoo, called Vaudou, is the religion of the majority of the people, about 90% of the people. This is interesting because it gives us an example of what the situation is like when an entire nation regularly seeks to be demon possessed. Possession behavior in the various black occult groups, such as Umbanda (brazilian satanism), Haitian Vaudou, and the St. Vincent Shakers (also called Zeckeeboom people) is a learned behavior. Candidates for mediumship in Sao Paulo Umbanda are given special training in trance & possession. They use dissociation techniques such as focusing on a lighted candle, or turning the person and snapping the fingers to put people in trance.

In the U.S., because demon possession seems rare to psychiatrists, they have labeled demon possessed people as "crazy". However, in Haiti, an entire nation regularly conducts rituals to become demon possessed. Since the norm is to be demon possessed, it fails to be abnormal behavior. Many of the other labels and explanations that psychiatrists find easy to give concerning demon possession in the U.S. obviously just don’t explain what is happening in Haiti. Some of the explanations given by psychiatrists for demon possession in Voodoo is:

a. repressed personality is coming to the surface,
b. that the voodoo trance is an act to impress a crowd,
c. it stems from hysterical nervous disorders, and
d. it stems from psychopathy, neurosis, or schizophrenia

a. In Haiti, demon possession of people can not be a repressed personality because the person being possessed of a demon must behave according to rigorous rules of how each demon is supposed to act. Far from expressing himself, the victim of demon possession tries to personify some mythical spirit whose character on the whole is foreign to himself.

b. In Haiti, most people who go into the demon possessed state are not observed closely because it is the norm for people to become demon possessed. People at the ceremonies may cast absentminded looks at the people being possessed, but the entire scenario gains the possessed person very little attention. Nor does an entire crowd in Haitian Voodoo get possessed, or go into a collective delirium. The excitement is quite varied with the crowds.

c. If explanation c. were true, it would mean an entire nation is hysterical and mentally deranged. 40 years ago it was shown that the Haitian people are not all hysterical, but that demon possession in Haiti was the normal means of communicating with supernatural powers. If demon possession trances were genetic in origin, then why do some groups of blacks from the same gene pool but living in other nations have absolutely little to do with the occult?

d. Investigators in Haiti have had to discount demon possession as a neurosis. According to one investigator the number of schizophrenics and psychotics is very small within cults like Voodoo. "Here the very marked lack of response to the cathartic therapies employed in possession cults in the case of seriously disturbed individuals...is itself a testimony to the robust mental health of the majority of participants....The latter have no difficulty at all in communicating their problems. They operate within a culturally standardized medium of communication. Nor in contrast to the true self-insulated psychotic, do they miss their "cues." They respond in the expected way, and others react equally predictably."

A Brazilian psychiatrist said that no "frankly schizophrenic person would be able to pass the probationary scrutiny" involved to join this religious group. (These last two quotes come from a study of Black Religious groups.) Interestingly, studies made of W.W. II war criminals show no personality differences between them and the normal population. Could it be possible that there really is a demonic element in the lives of people that helps move them in the direction of evil?

So what is demon possession in Haiti’s Voodooism? According to the Haitians a spirit which they call "loa" joins a person like a rider mounts a horse. The spirit then controls the person like a rider. The possessed person is called a "chual" which means horse, and the spirit is said to mount or saddle his victim. Blood sacrifices are often associated with the demon, and the possessed person will drink the blood from the sacrificed animal. Polished stones, and herbs, and trance and dissociative states are used to attract spirits. While the Monarch slaves have trauma-based dissociative states, the practitioners of Voodoo have ritually induced dissociative states. Voodoo rituals will involve chanting, drums, at times handclapping and frenzied dancing to induce the dissociative states. [This is what we should all be doing in Church ^^]

In fact, several features have been identified which bring about dissociative states in the black religions of the Caribbean and South America. First they have dancing to a pronounced and rapid beat. Next, the induction into the dissociative state frequently follows a period of starvation and/or overbreathing (hyperventilation). The beginning of the demonic possession is characterized by a brief period of muscle inhibitions, or a collapse. The person who is experienced at being possessed acquires a specific behavior pattern for the deity that is supposedly controlling it. And finally, the head and limbs may tremor under trance, and the person may become dissociative enough that they can pick up red hot irons. The possessed can be conscious, semiconscious, or unconscious.

Studies made of this situation where an entire nation like Haiti actively seeks demonic possession allows us to discount some explanations and get a better picture of what demon possession isn’t. It also helps to understand what is involved in demonic possession. The first major authoritative work on Haitian Voodoo written in 1884 by Spencer St. John reported on the terror, the blood rites, and the cannibalism of Haitian Voodoo. This has been too much for some people to believe. Still, if people stop to realize how Voodoo came about it, it makes sense.

Conservative estimates of the number of slaves brought into the port of Saint Dominque while it was a plantation colony are 900,000. The conditions on the island for the slaves was like a Nazi work camp. The cruelty on the colonial Haitian plantations was beyond comprehension.

The Africans brought in as slaves already practiced JuJu. Under the crucible of the severe torture of slavery, the slaves formed Haitian voodoo, which is a conglomeration of African Voodoo, masonic rites, and European magic and Catholic saints and symbols. For 2 centuries, their African vaudou was these slaves only power against their cruel plantation owners, and is partly credited for helping Haiti become the first free black republic in the revolution of 1804.

In Haiti, Cuba, Brazil, Trinidad and other areas of the New World, where JuJuism has transformed itself into black occult religions, the old gods of Africa: Damballa, Erzilie, Legba, Obatala, Ogun, Oshun and others have been equated with Catholic saints and given the names of these saints.

The ritually induced dissociative states of Voodoo are generally accompanied by amnesia, that is lost time. During this lost time, the person acts as if he is a spirit (god). This is a ritual based dissociative state rather than a trauma-based dissociative state. The Illuminati Monarch programming at times attempts to combine the two bases--ritual and trauma--to create a dissociative state. This is why is it difficult to separate out the religious factor."

And from earlier in the book, delving into the drugs used in mind control:

"The Haitian satanic Vodoun cult, which has been manipulated by the CIA/Illuminati, has sorcerers called bokors. The Vodoun cult in Haiti is being used for trauma-based mind control [see Trance-formation also]. One of the items of the cult is to take the plant Datura stramonium and add this plant with other things. The plant is the active ingredient of a potent psychoactive drug, the "zombi cucumber" which produces amnesia and a pseudo-death of the victim [shown in the movie]. The brain doesn’t die, but the mind is shut off. The victim is brought back to life as a zombie--a slave of the bokor. The powder to create a zombi is called zombificant in French-creole. The ceremonies to kill and resurrect the zombie are full of magic and demonology also.

Magic, drugs and demonology have always gone hand in hand. Drugs remove the part of the will that prevents demonic possession. Drugs are considered powerful demonizing substances by the those skilled in Demonology. If demonic possession is seen as part of mind-control, then cocaine, hashish, crack, and some of the other drugs are part of the effort to enslave people. (The power of magic to kill, just as the power of faith can heal, will be discussed in chapter 10.) In Basutoland in Drakersbergs, the Zulu witchdoctors use drugs and trauma to create tokoloshes (mind-controlled zombie slaves). It is said that in recent years, they are using less children and more baboons and monkeys to get tokoloshes. The point is that drugs have been and continue to be used by the occult world for controlling people."