Nan Domi

Like all the great religions Voudou has an external, public practice of rituals and ceremonies--and also an internal, mystical dimension. Before Nan Domi, works about Voudou have concentrated on the spectacular outward manifestations of Voudou observance--hypnotic drumming and chanting, frenetic dancing, fits of spirit possession. But practically all reports on Voudou are outsider accounts, which means that they are stopped at the threshold. Mimerose Beaubrun, educated as an anthropologist, set out to write another such work, but in the process she met the woman who would become her ultimate teacher and guide to the religion's internal mysteries: Tante Tansia, whose knowledge, wisdom, and spiritual power govern the text of Nan Domi. Nan Domiis the only account of Voudou's private, mystical, interior practice that has been offered to the public so far. Its content stands in the same relation to ceremonial Voudou as Zen to conventional Buddhism, Sufism to conventional Islam, the practice of the desert saints to conventional Christianity. Mimerose Beaubrun has been a student of Voudou for half of her life, but she is also an adept, and in this uniquely valuable work, she divests herself of all scholarly apparatus to speak from Voudou's purest heart. Mimerose Beaubrunis a founding member and lead singer of the internationally popular Boukman Eksperyans. Politically and spiritually based from the start, the group is active in Haiti's pro-democracy movement; its members were named Peace and Goodwill Ambassadors by the United Nations in 2002.