Erzulie Freda, the lady of love in Haitian Vodou

Haitian Vodou was born on the plantations of Saint-Domingue, the French colony that in 1804 became the independent republic of Haiti. Into it flowed the religions of peoples from West and Central Africa, particularly from the area of present-day Benin, together with elements of Catholicism. Among the spirits the faithful call lwa, Erzulie Freda is the lady of love, beauty and luxury.

The lady of elegance

Erzulie Freda belongs to the family of lwa called Rada, linked to the traditions of Dahomey. She is imagined as a light-skinned, refined woman who loves perfumes, jewels, flowers and sweets. Her colours are pink and white, and in ceremonies elegant objects are offered to her. Her symbol, the vèvè drawn on the ground during rites, is an ornate heart, often pierced or framed by a lattice pattern.

In tradition she is the wife of several lwa, among them Damballah, the great serpent, Agwé, lord of the sea, and Ogou, the warrior, and some male devotees regarded themselves as her husbands too, wearing a ring in her honour. This multiplicity of bonds expresses her nature: Erzulie is love as infinite aspiration, which never allows itself to be wholly possessed.

The tears of Erzulie

One of the best-known features of her figure is weeping. According to the descriptions of many observers, when Erzulie Freda manifests herself in rites through a possessed person, she receives gifts and homage graciously, but often ends up in tears, as though nothing could satisfy her longing for a perfect love. Her tears are interpreted as grief at the distance between the ideal and the real world.

This aspect was described with deep sympathy by the American filmmaker and writer Maya Deren in her book Divine Horsemen, published in 1953 after long stays in Haiti. Deren saw in Erzulie the personification of the human dream of beauty and love, a deity who governs not so much fertility as imagination. Her highly influential reading remains one of the best-known interpretations outside Haiti.

The images of the saints

Like the other lwa, Erzulie was associated with Catholic images. For Erzulie Freda the most common is the Mater Dolorosa, the Virgin of Sorrows with her heart pierced by swords, spread in Haiti through prints and chromolithographs. The heart of the Madonna and the heart of the vèvè echo each other, and the Virgin's tears accord with the goddess's weeping.

Beside her there are other manifestations of the same family of spirits, among them Erzulie Dantor, a protective and stern mother, associated with an image of a black Madonna and Child, often identified with Our Lady of Częstochowa. The spread of this Polish icon in Haiti is sometimes linked to the Polish soldiers who, sent by Napoleon, fought in the colony and in part joined the insurgents, but the connection is not documented with certainty.

Erzulie Freda shows how a religion born in slavery was able to imagine a deity of luxury and beauty, that is, of everything plantation life denied. Perhaps her deepest meaning lies in this contradiction: love as a promise of dignity and grace even in the harshest conditions of human life.