Às̩e̩’s usefulness is said to depend on “the verbalization, visualization and performance of attributive characters of those things or beings whose powers are being harnessed” (Abiodun 1994: 310). An important factor in initiations, divination sessions, prayer, ceremony, and even in the continuation of life, acɛ̀/às̩e̩ is a dynamic combination of the principles of both animism and animatism. All of the definitions given above are accurate—but, like the incomprehensible nature of acɛ̀/às̩e̩, all are insufficient. Thus I do not attempt to offer a definition as such of acɛ̀/às̩e̩, as that would be, by acɛ̀’s very nature, impossible. Instead, I hope to contribute to our ever-growing comprehension of acɛ̀/às̩e̩ by paying special attention to how acɛ̀/às̩e̩ affects the process of religious secrecy, and initiates’ understanding of their validity as priests, especially in the context of spiritual tourism.
In Bénin, acɛ̀ was described to me in two ways, and while using French, Fɔngbè, or Yorùbá. In one sense, acɛ̀ is perhaps best described as spiritual “power” (pouvoir). Here, Béninois would affirm that initiation, for example, imbues one with the “power” of the vodún, or that some Nàgó (Yorùbá) spirits have more power than Fon spirits, or that some spirits embody powers that are too intense for the uninitiated or the unprepared.4 Conversely, acɛ̀ was described to me as a way of understanding one’s spiritual “right” (droit) or “jurisdiction” (juridiction). In this sense, Fá diviners would argue that priests of other spirits, for example, do not have the right to read the sacred signs (dù/odù) of Fá, or that newly initiated priests do not yet have the right or the power to initiate others. However, even as I bifurcate our understanding of acɛ̀ into power versus right, in all these cases one’s right is given as a result of one’s power—thereby affirming the important relationship between a priest’s right and power to act in Vodún. It is this acɛ̀, or the right and power to initiate, to create spirit shrines, and to perform divination, that many spiritual tourists seek. Acɛ̀ is the spiritual force that, when installed into one’s body by initiation, transforms ritual actions and religious material culture (e.g., bodies, carvings, charms, divination tools, masquerades, shrines) into powerful and meaningful expressions of an initiate’s new identity and authority as a practitioner. As I will show throughout the book, spiritual tourists travel to West Africa to have their bodies become secrets by being imbued with the spirits’ acɛ̀ so that they may then transport the spirits across oceans, housed in sacred objects and sacred bodies that have been transformed ritually by acɛ̀. Simply put, acɛ̀ becomes Vodún’s spiritual—and secret—commodity.
As both a spiritual power and a social right, acɛ̀ is bought and sold on Vodún’s globalizing market. Béninois and international Vodún practitioners alike seek and obtain acɛ̀ through transformative ritual processes, and they continue to confirm acɛ̀’s influence daily through ceremonial action such as prayer, the pouring of libations, and animal sacrifice. As Vodún’s most cherished commodity, the local and international flow of acɛ̀ is controlled through secrecy. Acɛ̀, like secrecy, is shared, embodied knowledge. Paradoxically, acɛ̀ is contained within every living thing on earth. However, acɛ̀ must be bestowed by another who has already been given acɛ̀.
Among Béninois, and between them and foreign spiritual seekers, access to secrecy and authentic forms of acɛ̀ is hotly contested. The historical struggle for regional supremacy between the Fon and Yorùbá peoples manifests in local discourses of power and authenticity—each, at times, laying claim to having access to the most powerful or the most authentic religious secrets or spirit cults. For spiritual seekers such as Christopher, the power that is inherent in “real secrecy” is what is most valuable. Along with consecrating his initiation experiences as authentic and spiritually powerful, ritual secrets serve to validate his status as a priest, regardless of what he truly believes about the secrets he now knows. Like the Ivorian bluffeurs described by Sasha Newell, who are “known for the illusion of wealth they produced rather than what they actually possessed” (2013: 139), Christopher and other foreign spiritual seekers must perform the religious power of the secrets that was revealed to them during their initiations. In both cases, validity becomes “a performative speech act” in which secrecy gives “the objects consumed their imaginative potency, the invisible possibility of authenticity” (148).
Like the vodún who are believed to live at the crossroads, spiritual tourist encounters find meaning at the crossroads of power, secrecy, and globalization. Through the creative manipulation of power, both Béninois and foreign spiritual seekers negotiate access to secrecy, which in turn creates “fluid transnational networks” that have helped to transport Vodún “from local to global audiences” (Hüwelmeier and Krause 2010: 1).
In both local and global spaces, a ritual is efficacious because of the acɛ̀ it confers; a ceremony is powerful because of the acɛ̀ it maintains; objects and bodies are authenticated by the acɛ̀ they contain; and the spirits are made important by the acɛ̀ they bestow—and all of these ritual possibilities are protected, empowered, and made possible by secrecy.
Understanding Spiritual Tourism in Bénin
Since the Béninois government began to make a concerted effort to attract foreign tourists to Bénin in the 1990s, tourists from a wide range of nationalities and racial identities have come to Bénin for what one might call “Voodoo tourism.” While the Béninois government originally sought to attract Haitians with the slogan “Bénin-Haïti: Tous du même sang” (Bénin-Haiti: All of the same blood), its initiatives instead began to attract tourists from all over the world. From my experience, most of the tourists I met were from the United States, France, or Brazil, although Forte mentions having encountered foreign spiritual seekers who were “from France, Italy, Austria, and Germany” (2010: 141). Most of the spiritual seekers I knew came to Bénin alone or in pairs, and they self-identified as white, while, with a few exceptions, the African Americans I met tended to travel in larger groups focused on Bénin’s slaving past (e.g., Bruner 2005; Reed 2014). For specificity, I have been explicit about the racial identities of the spiritual tourists I mention throughout the book. However, Béninois tend to classify all non-Africans, including African Americans, as yovó (Fon) or òyìnbó (Yorùbá)—meaning “white person” or “outsider.” As Kamari Clarke has noted, “Many Nigerian Yorùbá … insist on black American exclusion from Yorùbá membership, citing the popular trope that the transport of black people as captives to the Americas and the many generations of acculturation they endured led to the termination of cultural connections between Africans and African Americans. For this reason, black Americans … no matter what their complexion, are often referred to as òyìnbó” (2004: 14). For these reasons, I never observed a difference in the ways Béninois treated or initiated African Americans, Euro-Americans, or Europeans. To my Béninois informants, all foreigners, regardless of their ancestry, enjoyed “a particular class status, cultural standing, education level, and outlook” (Pierre 2013: 77) that connected them all historically to whiteness.
While I believe that it would be enriching to unpack the different ways European, Euro-American, and African American foreign spiritual seekers internalize their initiation experiences through their own racial lenses and in juxtaposition with each other, that analysis is beyond the scope of this book. Because I focus on the ways in which Béninois have contributed to Vodún’s global expansion, I have decided to do as they have done, so I consider all foreign spiritual seekers to be foreigners—regardless of their race—with similar relative economic and national privilege.
In seeking to provide an ethnographic account of Vodún that attends critically to foreign involvement in the religion, I struggled to find a word to describe those diverse individuals who were traveling to West Africa to become initiated. On the one hand, “tourist” seemed too insubstantial. To many of the foreigners with whom I spoke, “tourist” did not quite capture their sincerity or, in their words, the “sacredness” of their trip. As one American man expressed, “I am here to become a priest. Not to visit a tourist
