Five Days in Darkness

My darkness falls suddenly and without warning. One moment I am looking up at the night sky, marveling at the stars scattered like diamonds on a jeweler's velvet, the next I am held from behind with a blindfold across my eyes. Then I am spun three times so I am no longer certain of direction and led into a darkened room, where I will stay for five nights, always in darkness, blindfolded for most of my time there.

This is not a kidnapping. It is a ritual procedure conducted in Haiti as part of the ceremonial process for initiates into Vodou, the Caribbean religion born of African shamanism and carried to the New World in the enslaved hearts and souls of shaman-priests and princes.

A psychologist by training and a writer by profession, I am in Haiti to study Vodou for a book I am writing on traditional spirituality and why it might be needed and important in the modern world. But Vodou is a secretive religion—not surprising, given the harsh treatment of the slaves who practiced it, many of whom were murdered by their masters simply for praying to their own gods—and the only way to know it is to be initiated into it and become a priest. This is what I have chosen to do.

Initiation involves a number of ceremonies and warrior trials, most of which are conducted publicly before the village community. But some, like this particular ritual, are different because, once blindfolded, I am required to spend the requisite days in confinement within the sacred space of the djevo, the heart of the Vodou temple. During this time, the secret teachings of the religion will be passed on to me and I will be visited by the spirits themselves, feeling them as a presence or, more directly, either through the possession of the priests who oversee this process or perhaps through my own possession. Darkness is central to the experience, and it is the darkness that fascinates me most.

I always imagined that being alone in the dark would be isolating, perhaps even frightening. In fact, my body finds it deeply comforting, though I am aware of my mind working overtime, chewing over questions that, on inspection, seem quite meaningless, and chattering on just to save itself from silence.

There seem to be layers and layers of voices in my head, each one with a personality of its own. Psychologists call these subpersonalities. We imagine ourselves to be one consistent person with a stable worldview, but in fact, if we listen to ourselves, we realize each of us is legion.

I can immediately recognize three such voices in myself. The critic is the first. She speaks with a woman's voice and wants to judge me for getting myself into this situation of potential danger and so many unknowns and for not taking my responsibilities seriously. After all, I have children at home who love and need me. The critic delivers a rage of sarcastic comments—"You've done it again, you fool! You've got yourself into another ridiculous mess, lying on a dirt floor, blindfolded, in a jungle hut. It's always the same with you; you never learn!"—before she is silenced by another voice, that of the kindly parent, who answers, "Leave him alone. The boy has to learn. He has to experience the world, because that is what being alive is all about!"

Finally there is the voice of the scientist, the impartial observer who walks between both judgments and offers an "informed" and "objective" view of what is actually happening and why. The scientist thinks himself superior to the others because of his objectivity, but it is this very thing that stops him from feeling and distances him not only from the experience but, to some extent, from humanity itself.

Continued on page 2: My body is lying on a dirt floor, but in my mythological mind I am in a great temple... »