tell me about the man he had found. Émile was in his late forties and had been an initiated Fá diviner for more than fifteen years. He practiced the Fon version of Fá and was well known in the area. He had many clients largely due to a radio show that he hosted on a local station where he gave spiritual advice to callers. The diviner seemed perfect—he was knowledgeable and quite established.
I immediately told André that I would be interested in meeting Émile to discuss the possibility of working with him during my stay in Bénin. However, André told me that he did not want the two of us to meet until the day of my initiation ceremonies—yet André would not reveal his reasons. Because I had never heard of anything like this happening, I was suspicious of André’s motives. Several days later—after many lengthy and persuasive conversations—my suspicions were confirmed when André admitted to me that he did not want Émile to know I was “white and rich.” He believed that if Émile knew I was a white American, he would want to charge me double—or maybe triple—his normal fee and “capitalize on my wealth.”
I found myself in an uncomfortable and ethical conundrum. Should I allow André to continue with his plan? Or should I insist that he reveal my identity to Émile? After changing my mind at least a dozen times, mimicking the choice of a typical spiritual tourist, I ultimately decided to go along with André’s plan. One month later, Émile and I met at midnight to begin the ceremonies that would make me a Fá diviner. As André and I had anticipated, Émile was upset. Émile announced, quite publicly and loudly, that he would have asked for a higher fee if he had known that I was white. Nevertheless, Émile agreed to continue with my ceremonies, and over the next several hours we became much more comfortable with each other. He was proud of what I accomplished and eager to tell his friends that he had initiated his first yovó. I began my time with Émile as a “polluting presence”—one whose skin color, and all that my white skin symbolically represented, marked me as an outsider. By the end of my ceremonies, my “difference” had lessened, but it was clear that it would never vanish. Unfortunately, my apprenticeship with Émile was short-lived. He lived more than an hour away from Ouidah and, while I attended several of his ceremonies and even some of his future initiations, I needed a teacher who lived closer.
After searching for several months, a longtime friend introduced me to Jean and the village of Fátòmɛ̀, near Ouidah. When I met Jean, he instructed me that, in order to work with him, I would need to redo my initiations and convert my personal Fá from the Fon Fá to the Nàgó version. Interested in the differences between the two systems and eager to work with Jean, a babaláwo (Yr. Ifá diviner) with experience working both with Béninois and with foreign students, I agreed. This began my fifteen-month intensive apprenticeship that operated on a near-daily basis and continues today over the telephone.11
I was Jean’s fourth foreign initiate but the only one who was able to stay and work with him for an extended period of time. Over the course of my time with Jean, he taught me fragments of his spiritual truths. He taught me how to construct shrines; how to recognize and invoke each of Fá’s 256 binary signs that embodied Fá’s corpus; and how to perform divination for myself and others. Even so, there were certainly ceremonies and magical recipes that Jean held from me just as there were things that he taught me freely. One evening over hot tea, Jean admitted to me that there were things—special medicines and charms—that he would teach his children only. It was clear that some barriers could only be overcome by kinship. “Some things are only for my sons,” he noted. I agreed with—and even appreciated—his sentiment.
After spending just a few months in Fátòmɛ̀, Jean formally accepted me as his apprentice. Within a few days of working with Jean, he took the Fá I received earlier from Émile and converted my Fá from the Fon system to the Nàgó system.12 Doubtless, local practitioners benefit economically as the clients always pay the priest performing the conversion for his time and expertise. However, having participated in both systems, I understood such a process is required for reasons that extend beyond economics. The Nàgó ceremonies take more time, require more sacrifices, and are more involved. It is easy to see why some local people might feel that the Nàgó system is a more potent manifestation of Fá; even as an outsider I caught myself—perhaps stereotypically—favoring the complexities found in Nàgó Fá.
After working with Jean for only a couple of weeks, it became clear to me that becoming a Fá diviner, over being a devotee of any of the other spirit groups that are worshiped by Fon and Yorùbá peoples, would bring advantages. As Jean taught me, Fá diviners tend to have a broad general knowledge of all the spirits, so they can adequately advise their clients of necessary ceremonies and even perform basic sacrifices and offerings to a wide array of spirits on their behalf. In addition, their roles as Fá diviners often facilitate relationships with many different priests, temples, and practitioners—most of which were made available to me, thanks to Jean.
Jean and I began working together only two days after he agreed to serve as my mentor. “I want you here ready to work at 8 a.m.,” he said. “We have a lot to go over while you are here.” Over the next couple of days I reviewed a faded photocopy of La Géomancie à l’ancienne Côte des Esclaves by Bernard Maupoil (1943), which I had borrowed from a local Vodún practitioner just a few weeks earlier. I thumbed through Maupoil’s formative work on Fá divination and used other locally published sources to test my ability to recognize perfectly the 256 different patterns (Fon, dù/ Yr., odù) of Fá that are elegantly interpreted when a diviner, seated on a straw mat, casts a “divining chain” (Fon, akplɛ̀/ Yr., ò̩pè̩lè̩) onto the floor. The complexity of the 256 signs of Fá left me overwhelmed even before my apprenticeship began—but my anxiety also added to my excitement.
On the day we were to begin working, I arrived at Jean’s home eagerly, fifteen minutes early. I was ready to begin, but Jean had other plans. He left me to sit on a low cement wall where I waited for him for nearly three hours. I quickly learned that my training would be on his terms. I was always expected to be punctual, and he never was; his position as teacher and elder, and mine as student and child, was always clear. As the people in Fátomɛ̀ became my close friends, I learned to appreciate the time I spent in the village waiting for Jean to decide to include me in his day. Once I released my contemporary U.S. expectations of what an education should be—or how time should function—I realized the time I spent waiting in the village, seemingly far removed from lessons in divination, was just as important to my training as was learning how to pray, move, and act as a diviner would—a lesson I suspect Jean knew all along. During these times I learned about the prevalence of witchcraft, and I watched children pretend to perform divination with small seeds that they found on the ground. Eventually, I came to appreciate these moments as important backdrops to my formal lessons in divination.
Seeking Divine Power
Secrecy has contributed to, and even encouraged, Vodún’s global expansion. More and more, foreign spiritual seekers are becoming initiated and participating in the country’s growing Vodún tourism industry. As these numbers grow, an increasing number of Béninois Vodún practitioners, faced with the promise of economic success and international networks, have begun to reveal and market Vodún’s secrecy. In Chapter 1, “Touring the Forbidden,” I examine the politics of spiritual tourism in Bénin by showing how and why foreign spiritual seekers negotiate access to Vodún. By interacting with two British tourists, Michelle and Christine, who disappointedly felt little resistance when visiting a “Voodoo village”; with Luiz, a Brazilian man, who did all he could, and failed, to learn how to construct one of Vodún’s more sought-after and dangerous shrines; and with Marcella, an African American woman who was determined to disrupt Vodún’s long-standing rules and become initiated into a men’s-only spirit cult, I document the religious secrecy and the resistance one faces as one attempts to observe or experience Vodún’s secret objects, and also how religious experiences are authenticated for foreign spiritual seekers.
Many tourists
