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Liber XXXIV · Vodou & Hoodoo

Liber XXXIV · Vodou & Hoodoo · Chapter V: The Lwa

Papa Legba: Guardian of the Crossroads in Haitian Vodou

Papa Legba, the lwa who opens the gate in Haitian Vodou: his Fon origins, Kalfou, saints and vèvè, his place in ceremony, and the blues crossroads legend.

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Papa Legba is the lwa (spirit) of Haitian Vodou who guards the gate between the human world and the world of the spirits. Because no other lwa can come to a ceremony unless he opens the way, he is saluted first, and he is pictured as a lame old man with a cane, a straw hat and a shoulder bag, a humble figure whose role is nonetheless indispensable.

Who Papa Legba Is in Haitian Vodou§

In Vodou understanding, Bondye, the good God, is distant, and human beings deal with the lwa, the spirits who serve him (see The Lwa of Haitian Vodou). Between humans and the lwa lies a barrier, and Legba holds its key. He is called Papa Legba, Atibon Legba and Legba Lavilokan, the last name associated with Vilokan, the mythical town or crossroads of the spirits. He is described as the master of roads, doors and gates, of the threshold of every house and of the meeting-point of the visible and invisible.

Legba's role is to permit communication. He opens the gate so that prayers can reach the lwa and so that the lwa can come to their devotees. Because he understands all speech, he also translates between the two worlds. Practitioners often say that serving any lwa without first honouring Legba is pointless, since no message can pass.

His appearance in Haiti is that of a poor, old man from the countryside. He walks with a crutch or cane, smokes a pipe, wears a straw hat and carries a makout, a woven straw bag. When he possesses a devotee, observers describe the horse's limbs twisting as if crippled, so that assistants must support the possessed person or hand over a cane. Maya Deren, in Divine Horsemen, explained the paradox that the god of the gate should be so frail: Legba is old because he stands at the beginning of things, and his weakness hides great power.

From Legba of Dahomey to Èṣù of the Yoruba§

Legba comes to Haiti from the Fon kingdom of Dahomey, in present-day Benin. In the Fon religion described by Melville Herskovits in his 1938 study of Dahomey, Legba is the youngest child of the creator pair Mawu-Lisa. Because the other deities each received their own domain and language, Legba alone was given knowledge of all their languages and became the messenger and interpreter among them and between gods and humans. He is closely tied to Fa, the Fon form of Ifá divination, since he carries the messages that divination reveals.

The Fon Legba is far from a gentle old man. He is a trickster, unpredictable and sexually potent, and his shrines, mounds of earth with a crude figure often bearing an erect phallus, stand at the entrances of houses, compounds, markets and towns, where he receives offerings to keep misfortune out. Visitors to Benin and Togo can still see such shrines (see West African Vodun).

Legba's Yoruba counterpart is Èṣù, also called Elegba or Elegbara, the messenger of the orishas, guardian of the crossroads and keeper of àṣẹ, the power to make things happen. Èṣù crossed the Atlantic as Eleguá in Cuban Santería and as Exu in Brazilian Candomblé, where he took on new and sometimes darker forms (see Quimbanda: Exu and Pombagira). The literary scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., in The Signifying Monkey (1988), used Esu-Elegbara as a figure of interpretation itself, a god of the crossroads of meaning, and traced his presence through African American literature.

In Haiti the trickster element has softened. Scholars have long remarked that the vigorous young messenger of Dahomey became an aged father in the Caribbean, perhaps through association with old Catholic saints and through the place of honoured elders in Haitian communities. The trickster did not disappear, however; it moved, in part, to Legba's Petwo counterpart.

Rada Legba and Petwo Kalfou§

Haitian Vodou divides its spirits into "nations" or rites, chiefly the cool Rada spirits of Dahomean origin and the hot, forceful Petwo spirits often associated with Kongo and with the experience of revolt. Legba is a Rada lwa. His Petwo counterpart is Kalfou (from French carrefour, crossroads), also called Mèt Kalfou, the master of the crossroads.

Where Legba opens the gate by day and for good purposes, Kalfou rules the crossroads at night and is described as powerful, demanding and potentially dangerous. Maya Deren reported that devotees associated Legba with the sun and Kalfou with the moon, and that Kalfou controls the passage of the spirits of the night. In Petwo ceremonies Kalfou is saluted first, as Legba is in Rada rites. Some practitioners see the two as different aspects of a single power, others as distinct spirits; houses differ on this point, as they do on many questions of Vodou theology.

The crossroads itself is a sacred image across the Afro-Atlantic world. Robert Farris Thompson, in Flash of the Spirit, connected it with the Kongo cosmogram, a cross that marks the meeting of the world of the living and the world of the dead, and saw in the Haitian veneration of the crossroads a fusion of Fon, Yoruba and Kongo ideas.

Saints, Vèvè and Offerings for Legba§

Like other lwa, Legba is associated with Catholic saints whose chromolithographs appear on Vodou altars. The most common is Saint Lazarus, shown as a poor old man on crutches with dogs licking his sores, an image that fits Legba's appearance closely. Saint Peter, who holds the keys of heaven, expresses his role as gatekeeper, and some houses link him with Saint Anthony of Padua. Devotees generally explain these images as ways of representing the lwa, not as an identification of the lwa with the saint.

Legba's vèvè, the ritual design traced on the ground in cornmeal or flour, is built around a cross, the sign of the crossroads, often with a cane or crook shape at its side and decorative scrolls (see Vèvè and Sacred Symbols). The poto mitan, the central post of the temple, is sometimes described as Legba's road, the axis along which the spirits travel into the ceremony.

Offerings described in ethnographies are simple and rustic, in keeping with his character: foods such as roasted corn, plantains and yams, coffee, tobacco for his pipe and sometimes a little rum, often placed on a straw mat or at a doorway or crossroads. His colours vary between houses, with white, red and earthy tones commonly mentioned.

Opening the Gate: Legba in Ceremony§

Every Vodou ceremony in the asson tradition begins with Legba. After prayers and Catholic litanies, the song leader and the congregation sing to him, asking him to open the way. The best-known invocation is a short traditional song that begins, in Haitian Creole, Papa Legba, ouvri baryè a pou mwen, "Papa Legba, open the gate for me", and asks him to let the singer pass so as to thank the lwa. Benjamin Hebblethwaite's collection Vodou Songs in Haitian Creole and English gathers many such songs and shows how often Legba is named in them.

The priest pours libations, salutes the doorways and the poto mitan, and may trace Legba's vèvè. Only then do the songs move on to other spirits. If Legba is neglected, practitioners say, the ceremony fails: the lwa cannot come, or the wrong spirits come instead. Even in family and private devotions, a candle or a few words for Legba usually precede requests to other lwa.

Legba has travelled widely. Through refugees from Saint-Domingue he reached Louisiana, where his name appears in various forms in New Orleans Voodoo traditions, and modern practitioners there honour him as the opener of ceremonies (see Louisiana Voodoo and Marie Laveau).

He is also often linked to the blues legend of the musician who goes to a crossroads at midnight and meets a "black man" or the devil, who tunes his guitar and gives him mastery. The story was told of Tommy Johnson by his brother and later attached to Robert Johnson. Writers such as Julio Finn have argued that the figure at the crossroads is a memory of Legba; other scholars note that crossroads bargains with the devil are also common in European and Anglo-American folklore, and that the connection, while suggestive, cannot be proved.

In recent film and television, Papa Legba has appeared as a sinister figure who trades souls, an image far from the patient gatekeeper of Haitian devotion. Practitioners and scholars have criticised such portrayals as continuing older stereotypes of Vodou.

Frequently asked questions§

Who is Papa Legba?§

Papa Legba is the lwa who guards the gate between humans and the spirits in Haitian Vodou. He is saluted first in ceremonies so that the other lwa may come, and he is pictured as an old man with a cane, a straw hat and a straw bag.

Is Papa Legba the same as Eleguá or Exu?§

They are related but not identical. All derive from West African messenger deities, the Fon Legba and the Yoruba Èṣù, but Eleguá in Cuba and Exu in Brazil developed their own characters, rituals and stories in their respective religions.

Is Papa Legba the devil?§

No. Vodou practitioners regard Legba as a benevolent father and gatekeeper. The association with the devil comes from missionary interpretations of trickster deities and from popular culture, including the blues crossroads legend.

Why is Papa Legba associated with Saint Lazarus?§

The chromolithograph of Saint Lazarus shows a poor old man on crutches, matching Legba's appearance in Haiti. Devotees use the image to represent Legba on altars, alongside Saint Peter with his keys.

Sources and further reading§