To understand the ghede, the voodoo spirits of death and fertility, it is necessary
to have some understanding of voodoo itself. But that is not easy.
It is a religion whose ancestors hail from the indigenous religions of West African peoples,
born in their camaraderie as slaves in the Caribbean, and finding its way to North American among
the refugees of the Haitian Revolution. It is a gallimaufry of ancient African spirits and deities,
old world European lore and myth, Catholic symbolism and litanies.
The name itself has a swath of spellings and origins. In West Africa,
the Ewe word vodu means ‘fear of the gods,’ and in Dahomey, vodun
was used as a name for all deities.
The spelling changes depending on the context, region, or inclination of the author,
but is generally referred to as vodou in Haiti, vodun in Benin, West Africa
(formerly Dahomey), and voodoo in New Orleans