Vodou Visions by Sallie Ann Glassman: Complete Guide to Lwa, Veves & Sacred Practice

Book Overview and Author Background

Vodou Visions: An Encounter with Divine Mystery stands as one of the most visually striking and practically grounded English-language introductions to Haitian Vodou. Published in its current edition by Garrett County Press (2014, 223 pages), the book grew out of Sallie Ann Glassman's decades of practice in New Orleans, where she has maintained the La Source Ancienne Ounfo (temple) since the early 1990s.

Glassman's path into Vodou is unusual. Born in 1954 in Kennebunkport, Maine, she describes herself as a "Ukrainian Jew from Maine," a background that places her outside the Afro-Caribbean cultural lineage from which Vodou springs. She arrived in New Orleans in 1977 and was drawn into the city's spiritual undercurrent. Eventually she travelled to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where she was initiated as a manbo asogwe (the highest grade of Vodou priesthood) by houngan asogwe Edgard Jean-Louis and houngan asogwe Silva Joseph.

This initiation matters. In a field crowded with armchair observers and sensationalist writers, Glassman writes from within the tradition. She is not reporting on Vodou from the outside. She is a practising priestess who maintains a congregation, runs regular ceremonies, and has dedicated her life to this path. Her other projects include the Island of Salvation Botanica (an art gallery and spiritual supply shop in New Orleans), the New Orleans Voodoo Tarot deck, and the co-founding of New Orleans National Vodou Day at Bayou St. John, an annual public ceremony honouring the legacy of Marie Laveau.

The book itself is organized around the Lwa, the spirits who form the heart of Vodou practice. Each Lwa receives its own section with a full-colour painting by Glassman, a description of the spirit's character, domain, colours, offerings, and the veve (sacred symbol) used to call that spirit during ceremony. Glassman also includes chapters on Vodou history, cosmology, purification rituals, and empowerment ceremonies that practitioners can adapt for their own work.

The Lwa: Spirits of Vodou

At the centre of Vodou stands the relationship between humans and the Lwa. The word Lwa (sometimes spelled Loa) designates the spirits who act as intermediaries between human beings and Bondye, the supreme and unknowable creator god. Bondye is considered too vast, too remote to approach directly. The Lwa serve as the accessible faces of the divine, each governing specific domains of human experience.

Glassman presents dozens of Lwa in Vodou Visions, each with distinctive personality, preferences, and protocols. Some of the most significant include:

Papa Legba stands at the crossroads. No ceremony can begin without first calling upon Legba, because he controls the gate between the human world and the spirit world. Without his permission, no other Lwa can be reached. He is depicted as an old man with a cane, accompanied by dogs, and his colours are red and black. His veve features a cross within a cross, marking the intersection of the visible and invisible worlds.

Damballa Wedo is the great serpent, the oldest and most respected of the Lwa. He represents primordial wisdom, purity, and the creative force that shaped the cosmos. His coils formed the heavens and the earth. When Damballa possesses a devotee during ceremony, the person moves like a snake, unable to speak (because serpents have no voice). His colours are white and green, and his offerings include eggs, white flour, and milk.

Erzulie Freda embodies love, beauty, luxury, and the arts. She is the Lwa of romance and refined sensibility, associated with perfume, jewellery, and sweet things. Her veve features a heart. But Erzulie also carries deep sorrow. In ceremony, she often weeps, because the perfection of love she represents can never be fully realized in the human world. Her colours are pink and light blue.

Ogou (or Ogoun) governs iron, warfare, and political power. He is the Lwa of the forge and the battlefield, of surgeons and soldiers. In the Haitian Revolution, it was Ogou's energy that drove the enslaved to fight for their freedom. His colour is red, his offerings include rum and cigars, and his veve depicts crossed swords.

Baron Samedi rules the dead. He is the head of the Gede family, the spirits of death and the cemetery. Despite his association with death, Baron Samedi is famously irreverent, crude, and funny. He wears a top hat and sunglasses, speaks in obscene jokes, and drinks rum infused with hot peppers. His presence reminds the living that death is not the end but a doorway, and that humour persists even in the grave.

Glassman's treatment of each Lwa is respectful and detailed. She avoids the tendency of some Western writers to reduce the Lwa to archetypes or psychological symbols. In her presentation, the Lwa are real beings with real preferences who demand real attention. This is not metaphor. This is relationship.

Sacred Veves: The Visual Language of the Spirits

One of the most distinctive features of Vodou Visions is its extensive treatment of veves, the sacred symbols drawn on the ground during Vodou ceremonies. A veve is the visual signature of a specific Lwa, a geometric pattern that functions as a kind of spiritual address or calling card. When a veve is drawn correctly and with proper intention, it opens a channel through which the corresponding Lwa can enter the ritual space.

The practice of drawing veves has deep roots in West Africa. In the old Dahomey Kingdom (present-day Benin), priests would trace ritual emblems on the earth using substances like palm oil during ceremonies. This practice crossed the Atlantic with enslaved Africans and evolved into the veve tradition of Haitian Vodou, where cornmeal, wheat flour, coffee grounds, red brick powder, or other powdered substances are used to create the designs on the floor of the peristyle (temple).

Glassman brings an artist's eye to the veves. Each one is rendered in detail, with explanations of the symbolic elements that compose it. Papa Legba's veve, for example, incorporates the crossroads motif, often showing a central cross with smaller crosses or keys at the endpoints. Damballa's veve features paired serpents. Erzulie's includes a heart (sometimes pierced, sometimes whole, depending on which aspect of Erzulie is being invoked).

What makes Glassman's approach to veves particularly valuable is her dual perspective. Some of her illustrations reproduce traditional veves as they have been passed down through generations of Vodou practitioners. Others are original designs that emerged through her own deep trance work, channelled during ceremony. She is transparent about this distinction, allowing the reader to see where inherited tradition ends and living inspiration begins.

This is an important point about Vodou that Glassman handles well: it is not a fossilized tradition. The spirits continue to speak. New veves can emerge. New songs can be received. The tradition grows because it remains in active dialogue with the spiritual world. This sets Vodou apart from many religious traditions that treat their canonical texts and symbols as closed and finished.

For readers interested in sacred geometry, the veves offer a rich parallel. Like the geometric forms found in Hermetic and Pythagorean traditions, veves are not merely decorative. They are functional. The geometry itself does something. It creates a pattern in the material world that corresponds to a pattern in the spiritual world, activating a connection between the two. This echoes the Hermetic principle of correspondence: as above, so below.

Ritual Practice, Altars, and Offerings

One of the strongest sections of Vodou Visions covers the practical side of Vodou ceremony. Glassman provides specific instructions for constructing altars, preparing offerings, and conducting purification rituals that form the foundation of Vodou practice.

Each Lwa has particular altar requirements. Erzulie Freda's altar, for instance, should feature pink and blue cloths, perfume, mirrors, jewellery, champagne, and sweet cakes. Ogou's altar calls for red cloth, a machete or sword, rum, and cigars. Baron Samedi's altar requires a black cross, a top hat, dark sunglasses, rum infused with hot peppers (kleren piman), and offerings of food for the dead.

The specificity matters. In Vodou, the Lwa are not abstract forces to be contemplated from a distance. They are beings with tastes, moods, and expectations. Offering the wrong food or colour to a Lwa can cause offence. Getting the details right demonstrates respect and builds the relationship between practitioner and spirit.

Glassman also covers the role of the houngan (male priest) and the manbo (female priestess) in Vodou ceremony. She describes the hierarchy of initiation, from the uninitiated to the fully ordained asogwe grade, and explains the responsibilities that come with each level. This is valuable context for readers who might otherwise view Vodou as an anything-goes spiritual free-for-all. In reality, Vodou has a structured priesthood, defined protocols, and clear expectations around training and accountability.

The purification rituals described in the book draw on methods from Glassman's twenty-plus years of practice. These include ritual baths (bains), fumigation with specific herbs and incense, floor washes for the home, and ceremonies of spiritual cleansing for individuals and communities. Several of these practices have direct parallels in other traditions. Ritual bathing appears across cultures from Ayurvedic practice to Jewish mikvah to Christian baptism. Fumigation with sacred smoke echoes the Gnostic and Hermetic use of incense, as well as the cleansing practices found in many indigenous traditions.

Glassman is careful to note that some aspects of Vodou practice require initiation and direct transmission from a qualified teacher. She does not pretend that reading a book can substitute for proper training. This honesty is refreshing. Many spiritual authors overpromise what a book alone can deliver. Glassman sets clear boundaries: here is what you can learn from the page, and here is where you need a living teacher.

Rada and Petro: The Two Great Families

A key structural element of Vodou that Glassman explains well is the division between the Rada and Petro families of Lwa. This division reflects both historical development and spiritual character.

The Rada Lwa are the older group, tracing their lineage directly back to the Fon, Dahomey, and Yoruba spiritual traditions of West Africa. They are considered the "cool" spirits: stable, patient, wise, and relatively gentle. Rada ceremonies tend to be dignified and measured. The Rada Lwa include Damballa, Erzulie Freda, Agwe (spirit of the sea), and Legba in his calmer aspect. Their colours lean toward white, blue, and green. Their rhythms are steady. Their arrival in ceremony is usually gradual.

The Petro Lwa are different. This family of spirits emerged in Haiti during the colonial period, forged in the furnace of slavery. They are "hot" spirits: aggressive, urgent, fierce, and demanding. Where the Rada Lwa counsel patience, the Petro Lwa push for action. They include figures like Erzulie Dantor (the fierce, protective mother, in contrast to Erzulie Freda's romantic softness), Ogou in his more warlike aspects, and various spirits associated with rapid transformation and breaking of chains.

The Petro Lwa carry the energy of resistance. It was at a Petro ceremony at Bois Caiman in 1791 that the Haitian Revolution began, the only successful slave revolt in history that led to the founding of a nation. The houngan Dutty Boukman presided over this ceremony, calling upon the Petro Lwa for the strength to fight. This is not abstract spiritual history. The revolution succeeded. Haiti became the first Black republic in the Western hemisphere. The Petro Lwa were present at the birth of a nation.

Glassman's treatment of this division avoids the common Western mistake of mapping Rada and Petro onto a good-versus-evil framework. Neither family is good or bad. They represent different modes of spiritual engagement. A complete Vodou practice requires relationship with both. The Rada Lwa provide stability, wisdom, and ancestral connection. The Petro Lwa provide the fire needed for change, protection, and liberation.

This nuance is one of Glassman's strengths as a writer. She resists the temptation to sanitize Vodou for Western consumption, trimming away the fierce and unsettling elements to make it palatable. She presents the tradition whole, including its fire.

Glassman's Art and Trance Work

What distinguishes Vodou Visions from other Vodou texts is the artwork. Glassman is a trained artist, and the book contains over 100 original paintings depicting the Lwa and their veves. These are not academic illustrations made from a distance. They are devotional art produced by a practitioner who paints the spirits she serves.

Some of the paintings reproduce traditional iconography. Damballa appears as the great serpent. Erzulie wears her characteristic finery. Baron Samedi grins from beneath his top hat. But Glassman also brings her own artistic vision to bear, creating images that feel alive with spiritual energy rather than merely illustrative. The colours are rich and saturated. The compositions draw the eye into the painting rather than letting it rest on the surface.

Several images in the book emerged from Glassman's trance work during ceremony. Vodou ceremony frequently involves altered states of consciousness, including spirit possession, where the Lwa "ride" a devotee's body. Glassman has described her artistic process as a form of spiritual channelling, where the spirits guide her hand. Whether the reader accepts this framing literally or metaphorically, the results are striking. The trance-derived images have a quality that differs from the traditionally-sourced ones: looser, more fluid, less bound by established iconographic convention.

For students of Hermetic tradition, this integration of art and spiritual practice recalls the role of the imagination in Western esotericism. The Hermetic tradition has always maintained that the trained imagination is not fantasy but a faculty of perception, a way of seeing realities that the ordinary senses miss. Glassman's art functions in this way: the paintings are not decorations but windows.

The inclusion of the New Orleans Voodoo Tarot, another of Glassman's creations, extends this visual approach. The tarot deck uses the Lwa and Vodou cosmology as its organizing framework, mapping the spirits onto the Major Arcana and the Vodou nations onto the four suits. For those interested in tarot, this deck offers a doorway into Vodou symbolism through a familiar format.

Historical Context: From Dahomey to New Orleans

Glassman places Vodou within its proper historical context, beginning with its roots in the Fon and Dahomey kingdoms of West Africa (present-day Benin and Togo). The spiritual practices of these peoples, centred on ancestor veneration, spirit communication, and sacred symbolism, were carried across the Atlantic by enslaved Africans and transplanted into the brutal conditions of colonial Haiti.

In Haiti, these African traditions met and merged with elements of French Catholicism (imposed by the colonial authorities), indigenous Taino spiritual practices, and the shared experience of enslavement. The result was not a dilution of African spirituality but a creative synthesis. The enslaved used Catholic saints as masks for their African spirits (a practice called syncretism), allowing them to maintain their spiritual life under the noses of slaveholders who had banned African religious expression.

This history matters because it reveals Vodou as a tradition born in resistance. It was not created in comfort. It was forged under conditions of extreme suffering, and it sustained a people through generations of bondage. The fact that Vodou survived at all testifies to its power and the determination of its practitioners. The fact that it not only survived but provided the spiritual fuel for the only successful large-scale slave revolt in the Americas speaks to something deeper.

Glassman also traces the path of Vodou from Haiti to New Orleans, where it took on additional characteristics. New Orleans Vodou absorbed elements from Congolese spiritual traditions (brought by enslaved people from Central Africa), Spiritualism, hoodoo (African American folk magic), and the particular cultural atmosphere of New Orleans itself, with its French, Spanish, African, and Caribbean influences. The result is a distinct regional expression that Glassman calls "New Orleans Vodou" to distinguish it from Haitian Vodou proper.

The figure of Marie Laveau looms large in New Orleans Vodou history. Active in the mid-nineteenth century, Laveau was a free woman of colour who became the city's most famous Vodou priestess. Glassman honours Laveau's legacy, and her annual ceremony at Bayou St. John continues a tradition that connects present-day practitioners to this historical lineage.

For readers exploring Haitian Vodou for the first time, this historical context is essential. Without understanding the conditions from which Vodou emerged, it is impossible to understand why the tradition takes the forms it does, why certain Lwa carry the qualities they carry, and why the Western demonization of Vodou (from colonial propaganda to Hollywood horror films) represents such a fundamental distortion.

Hermetic Connections and Cross-Traditional Threads

While Vodou Visions is firmly rooted in the Vodou tradition, readers familiar with Hermetic and esoteric teachings will notice points of resonance that cut across cultural boundaries.

The Vodou understanding of the relationship between the visible and invisible worlds parallels the Hermetic doctrine of correspondence. In both systems, the material world is understood as interpenetrated by a spiritual reality that shapes, informs, and enlivens it. The veves of Vodou function much like the sigils and talismans of the Western magical tradition: geometric forms that encode spiritual meaning and serve as bridges between planes of existence.

The Vodou concept of consciousness as a field that can be shared between human and spirit during possession has parallels in the Gnostic understanding of divine knowledge as something received rather than constructed. In both traditions, the highest form of knowing is not intellectual analysis but direct participation in a reality that transcends the individual self.

The role of the houngan and manbo in Vodou also echoes the function of the hierophant in the Greek mysteries and the initiator in Hermetic tradition. All three serve as mediators between the human community and the spiritual world, trained through progressive stages of initiation to handle forces that the uninitiated cannot safely approach.

Glassman's own background, a Jewish woman initiated into an Afro-Caribbean tradition and operating within the broader framework of Western esotericism (she was formerly a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis), embodies this cross-pollination. She does not flatten the differences between traditions, but she recognizes the threads that connect them. This is the approach that Hermes Trismegistus himself represented: the meeting point where Egyptian, Greek, and broader Mediterranean wisdom traditions flowed together.

The Vodou altar, with its specific colours, objects, and offerings arranged to please a particular spirit, also has structural parallels with the planetary correspondences of Hermetic magic, where each planet has its own colours, metals, incenses, and times. The principle is the same: by assembling the correct physical correspondences, one creates a resonant environment that attracts the desired spiritual presence.

Practical Application for Spiritual Seekers

Vodou Visions offers several practical elements that readers from various spiritual backgrounds can engage with, even without formal Vodou initiation.

Ancestor veneration. One of the most accessible aspects of Vodou practice is the honouring of ancestors. Glassman describes how to construct a simple ancestor altar with photographs of deceased family members, glasses of water, candles, and favourite foods of the departed. This practice, which forms the foundation of Vodou spiritual life, requires no initiation and carries value in virtually any spiritual framework. Connecting with ancestral lineage grounds the practitioner in a sense of continuity that the modern world often lacks.

Purification practices. The ritual baths and spiritual cleansing techniques Glassman describes can be adapted by practitioners from any background. The principle of washing away negative energy through herb-infused baths, smoke cleansing, and intentional floor washing is universal. These practices echo the use of sacred water in Christian baptism, the Jewish mikvah, and Hindu river rituals.

Meditative focus through veves. Even without conducting a Vodou ceremony, the practice of drawing or contemplating veves can serve as a meditative discipline. The precise, intentional creation of geometric forms focuses the mind and trains the hand in a way similar to mandala drawing in Buddhist and Hindu traditions or the construction of crystal grids in contemporary practice.

Understanding spirit communication. Glassman's descriptions of how the Lwa communicate (through dreams, through possession in ceremony, through signs in the natural world) offer a framework for understanding non-ordinary perception that many spiritual seekers will find useful. The Vodou approach to spirit communication is remarkably pragmatic: spirits are real, they have preferences, and they respond to attention. This directness cuts through the abstraction that can make other traditions feel remote.

Respect for the unseen. Perhaps the most broadly applicable teaching in Vodou Visions is the basic orientation of respect toward the invisible world. Vodou practitioners do not approach the spirits casually or recreationally. There are protocols, preparations, and obligations. This attitude of respectful engagement with forces larger than oneself is a corrective to the consumerist approach to spirituality that treats practices as products to be sampled and discarded.

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