The Divine Horsemen, also known as the "Houngan Asogwe" or "Mambo Asogwe," are the highest level of initiate in Haitian Vodou, a syncretic religion that combines elements of African, indigenous Caribbean, and Roman Catholic beliefs and practices. The term "Divine Horsemen" refers to the spirits or deities that are revered in Haitian Vodou, and the Houngan Asogwe or Mambo Asogwe are the practitioners who have reached the highest level of initiation and are considered experts in the religion.
In Haitian Vodou, the Divine Horsemen are considered to be the intermediaries between the human world and the spiritual world, and they are believed to possess the power to communicate with the spirits and to invoke their presence in rituals. The Divine Horsemen are also believed to be able to heal the sick and to bring prosperity and good fortune to those who honor them.
There are many different Divine Horsemen in Haitian Vodou, each representing a particular aspect of the religion or a specific spirit. Some of the most well-known Divine Horsemen include Papa Legba, who is the guardian of the crossroads and is often invoked at the beginning of a Vodou ritual; Erzulie Freda, the spirit of love and beauty; and Ogoun, the spirit of war and iron.
The Houngan Asogwe or Mambo Asogwe are the practitioners who are responsible for leading Vodou rituals and for acting as intermediaries between the human world and the spiritual world. They undergo a lengthy and rigorous process of initiation in order to become Divine Horsemen, and they are considered to be the most knowledgeable and experienced practitioners within the religion.
In addition to their spiritual responsibilities, the Divine Horsemen also play an important role in the social and cultural life of the Haitian community. They are often called upon to provide spiritual guidance and support to their fellow practitioners, and they are respected members of the community.
Overall, the Divine Horsemen are an integral part of Haitian Vodou, and their role in the religion is one of great significance and reverence. They are the practitioners who have dedicated their lives to serving the spirits and to helping others connect with the spiritual world, and they are an essential part of the rich cultural and spiritual traditions of Haiti.
The Horsemen
Craig Parker Adams, who engineered and co-produced I Used To Be Pretty, was going to have us at his previous studio, Winslow Court Studios on Santa Monica Boulevard, but got kicked out of it by greedy landlords, and we had to go elsewhere. The band had been overreaching, as far as loudness and abrasiveness. She describes the symbolic and mythological significance of the many West African deities found in Haiti, trying also to explain how the New World required new meanings in some cases. Increasingly as the book went on, I became as occupied with Deren's character as much as the book she was describing. Still, one plugs away. The writing in this book is superb. Highly recommended reading for anyone with an interest in Haiti or ethnography in general.
A Rare Look at Haiti: Maya Deren’s Divine Horsemen
I am struggling to finish the last few chapter as it started out good but not as good towards to the end. Are you happy with the new stuff? I had not heard it in years, and the guy who put out my book A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die sent me an MP3 of it. This is definitely more of an academically written book so it's pretty dry. As far as my voice, you just have to tough it out. With unwavering respect for the reality of the religion's assertions for its practitioners, she skillfully demystifies the rituals and meanings of Voudoun - a task which, sadly, remains as necessary today as it was in 1953. So after putting out that record in early 2016 and touring, I pared down to a smaller more acoustic unit. I would say the book shows its age I believe it was written in 1052.
That album existed in the studio only and was never performed live. CD: We toured for about ten days as Divine Horsemen once in mid-1985 through Arizona and Texas, then lost our guitarist, Matt Lee, to another L. Her artistically inflected recollection of personal observation and participatory experience, informed by then-current anthropological literature, conveys the essential cosmological and metaphysical underpinnings of the practices which constitute Voudoun as a comprehensive way of life, as well as the converging historical trajectories through which those practices have come to take their current variety of forms. I love doing this stuff, and I have lyrics for 11 new Divine Horsemen songs, plus a 12 th for the Flesh Eaters, but… the pamdemic! PKM: Where did you record the record, and how long did it take? Deren relates the following exotic incident male pronouns are used when a male lwa is inhabiting a body : He took the blood of the goat and, undressing the child, anointed her with it. Since then, Chris has been a writer, a film programmer, cobbled together various Flesh Eaters runs, while offering up other music here or there for an indie film project or the honorable fuck of it. I did not have the time, did not have the money, and just no longer had the cojones to keep playing scuzzy small clubs with shitty sound systems…. The new material on the album reflects a diversity of sources.
Luckily we had a couple days downtime and were able to do our last couple of shows…. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers. Because of the lack of crowds for Stone by Stone, I started using the Flesh Eaters name again in 1990. Deren simply reports what she has learned and what she observes. Julie and I had been talking about doing Divine Horsemen again since at least mid-2014. Then in 2015 the Flesh Eaters started doing reunion shows. We kept being lumped in with the more hardcore bands.
Although I got along with everyone in the line-up, the other three guys often bickered amongst themselves at the start of each rehearsal. But the clock is ticking. It has long been sitting on my shelf, and I am enormously gratified to have finally gotten to it. I found the book incredibly dense, full of details which I could not possibly remember, yet giving me no quarter, explaining nothing to me in terms that I could come to grips with. We were originally shooting to get it out in April or May this year, but with the pandemic still a problem and the shortage of vinyl pressing plants, we had to push it to August. Chris Desjardins: I was in my last few months of working at Slash Records in late 1983 when I met Julie at a recording session I was producing.
PKM: Was there a moment where you truly thought Divine Horsemen was a completely dead entity? Chris and Craig spent a lot of time meticulously mixing after that. Under that name, we started doing better, between 1990-93, when once again I stopped doing the Flesh Eaters. In addition to this are her incredibly intelligent observations of how Voudoun shapes each Haitian village, the differences between "primitive" and "modern" religions and how that changes its society and vice versa. Thus, this book may very well preserve, in great detail, information that may otherwise never have been known. I was drinking too much, and the volume and gradual erosion of dynamics in the songs burned me out. Anyway, this book gives a real insight to a previously little known world, and it does so from an extremely peculiar point of view, as Deren became initiated to Vodun mysterie This book truly is a gem; I've spent quite some time re-reading it as my thesis was largely based on "Divine Horsemen", the unfinished documentary Deren devolved half of her entire life to her efforts eventually found some sort of public concretization with this book, mainly thanks to J.
He had a little bit of a melody idea, too, but not much of one — there was just the scan of it. With the success of The Flesh Eaters new 2019 record and live shows it seemed natural for Divine Horsemen to also reactivate when The Flesh Eaters members had to pursue their main projects like The Blasters, Los Lobos and X with Bonebrake being the triple threat guy of the bunch and currently the hardest working percussionist in show business. She also describes the role of the houngan, or priest of Vodun, the importance of drums and drumming, the fact of possession. Now she wanted to do something different, something related to her love of choreography and ethnographic research. We had fused into one musical entity, and the creative tension in our vocal styles and slightly different approaches to music proved to be so distinctive, that one without the other seemed impossible.
