The Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti

A theological study of Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti arguing that Haitian religious life developed through a durable symbiosis — not the thin 'syncretism' of mixture-as-confusion-or-disguise — in which Catholic and African traditions coexist, overlap, and become meaningful together. Desmangles provides clear conceptual tools for the logic of possession, the structure of the soul (gwo bon anj and ti bon anj), the nanchon system (Rada, Petro, Kongo, Ibo), and the public life of lwa images and saint identifications. Especially strong on Petro as a New World theological formation born from colonial violence, not a deviant fringe but part of a broader Vodou cosmology.