To see oneself in the world. To shape gods and spirits in the image of man. To carve the unknown into something familiar. The Greeks had Zeus. The Yoruba had Shango. The Taíno had Yúcahu. When the Europeans arrived, they mistook these mirrors for blasphemy.
In Haitian Vodou, this mirroring is ever-present. Papa Legba, the gatekeeper of the spirit world, is often depicted as an old man with a cane, standing at the crossroads. Ezili Dantò, fierce and maternal, bears the scars of struggle on her face, much like the women who invoke her name. Ogou, the warrior, takes on the features of the Black revolutionaries who fought for Haiti’s freedom—sword in hand, dressed in red, ever ready for battle.
Even Baron Samedi, the spirit of death, wears his humanity in his grin, in his top hat, in the way he laughs at the line between life and afterlife. These lwa do not exist as distant, untouchable gods. They walk, they speak, they hunger, they rage. They dance with the living, because they are shaped by the living.
In Vodou, divinity is not some abstract force, separate and unreachable. It is immediate, tangible, clothed in human gestures, human laughter, human sorrow. It is a reminder: the spirits are not above us—they are with us.
