Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent unused condition. Images are beautiful bright and vivid. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Kafou means crossroads in Haitian Creole. The crossroads a key concept in Haitian Vodou is where the mortals go to meet the immortals or ‘the invisibles’ as the lwa (Vodou spirits) are known. To the Vodou believer (which most Haitians are) the line dividing the material and spiritual is thin and frequently traversed: the gods take on the bodies of servitors during possession or seen the other way men and women become gods while possession lasts; in a similar way the spirits of the dead are ever present amongst the living. Kafou is himself a lwa a relatively obscure but powerful one-the Petwo counterpart to the better known more benign Legba the gate- keeper who gives mortals access to all the other lwa. Kafou like Legba is ‘master of the crossroads. The Petwo are more militant spirits who came into being in Saint-Domingue during slavery while the ‘cooler’ Rada nation of lwa can be traced back to West Africa. The Petwo gods are believed to have stoked the fires of the Haitian Revolution giving the former slaves a sense of invincibility in the face of much more powerful forces. Haiti is located at the crossroads of Atlantic experience – especially black Atlantic experience. The world changed after its ‘unthinkable’ Revolution of 1791-1803. Vodou itself is a vast supernatural synthesis of theological and cultural material expressive of this extraordinary history. (MP)