The
Temple of Yehwe is an offshoot of Le Péristyle de Mariani which
was founded in 1974 in Mariani, Haiti by Max-G. Beauvoir.
Both institutions have been dedicated to the understanding and to the
promotion of Vodoun as the Religion and the Culture of the Haitian people.
Vodoun, is the popular system of belief and the religious
practice of the overwhelming majority of the population of Haiti. Its moral
precepts, generally admitted as unfailing, embrace all the many aspects of
life. May them be in the political, the social or the economics' domains, may
them be in the foreign affairs, or else, may them be in the public, domestic
or individual fields of activity, the fundamental tendency is to consider all
vital issues from a Vodoun standpoint.
Family's disagreements, discords between employer and
employee, disputes concerning land ownership, differences of opinion and of
point of views, problems created by birth, education, health, work,
death...find their solutions in Vodoun, for that system of belief is the
interpersonal as well as the collective conflicts mediator of the Haitian
people.
For, implicitly enfolded in the entire Vodoun system, is a
"Code of Ethics" which accurately fits the socio-cultural,
historical, political and economic realities of the community and serves as an
instrument of peace and harmony for everyone.
This gives all Haitians their psycho-social specificities.
Practicing Vodoun, or not, all Haitians are Haitian. That is to say that all
Haitians must accept the standards set by the community. That Religion, thus,
constitutes a motivating factor which conditions the Haitian's views and
attitudes towards the World. One's appreciation is consequently influenced by
the many forms of activities and the fundamental aspects of that collective
human experience.
This finds some of its explanations and justifications in
the fact that Vodoun has its set of Norms and Values to which everyone, by
devotion, conviction, attachment or by simple social conformism, automatically
adheres to because the religion is lived by the majority. The teachings are
revealed to very many Haitians and the precepts are instructive to all who
naturally see the well founded grounds for them. This explains why Vodoun,
whenever and wherever it is practiced, gathers the adhesion of the majority of
the population.
The mode of transmission of Vodoun's precepts isn't limited
to individual and group revelations. There are also, carried through the
Tradition, a whole oral sapiential literature in the form of prayers,
litanies, religious songs, mythological stories, charades, maxims, proverbs
and even some secular and funny anecdotes about boys and girls that everyone
repeats across the country. They too carry the norms of behavior as well as
the philosophical reflections about GOD, the Great Master, or better yet, the
Great Mistress Who govern the Universe; Nature, which is man's environment;
and reflections concerning the human being.
In other words, the Theological, Cosmological and
Anthropological conceptions are continuously expressed in appropriate terms
and in simple language to everyone's cogitation. In the Vodoun sapiential
literature, one always finds, implicitly or explicitly expressed, two main
aspects:
- The first one which deals with the subjects of PRACTICAL
AND MORAL PHILOSOPHIES and exposes the popular wisdom born from individual
and collective experience. It can be defined as containing propositions
which convey the precepts of conduct and of moral standards, objectively
recognized as being valid. Those are willingly followed by everyone who
would like to consider him/ or herself, and who also want to be recognized
by others, as "REASONABLE" and as a "SOCIALLY
ACCEPTABLE" person.
- The other one which treats of problems concerning mainly
Religious and Moral life. Presented as SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY, it deals
with what is generally considered "The INACCESSIBLE" to the
individuals or to the collectivity by means of experiences. It then
concerns three main subjects:
- The existence of God
- The immortality of the Soul
- The Human being seen as Soul in a perishable package.
The Freedom of Will is an important aspect of those considerations.
For about twenty years, Le Péristyle de Mariani held
public ceremonies, services, initiations, counseling and the practice of
Traditional Medicine in Haiti. A group of scholars pulled together their
intellectual resources and insights. They founded a Cultural Center named
Groupe d'Etudes et de Recherches Traditionelles (G.E.R.T) or Group for
Studies and Research on the African Tradition. It quickly became a regular
source of Information to the National and to the International communities,
principally to the press and to the media.
Many movies have been recorded there. Numerous Conferences and
countless of articles have been published by this Organization on African
Traditional Religion in Haiti and in the New World. Max Beauvoir talked to a
large number of campuses in Haiti and in the United States. He also participated
in various countries at conferences of UNESCO on African Culture and Religion.
Unfortunately, since the death of the Emperor Jean-Jacques
Dessalines in 1806, two years after the independence of Haiti, Roman Catholic
priests and Protestant pastors of the many Christian denominations have set up
the social climate in which the Vodoun populations of that country had to live.
Always powerfully seconded by the imperialist and the neo-colonialist Nations of
the Western hemisphere and their financial institutions, explains more than
sufficiently the reason why an atmosphere of intolerance, of absolutism and of
despotism has permeated all the political structures resulting in the condition
of endemic underdevelopment which characterizes Haiti to-day.
Periodically they have launched movements of "Deshoukaj"
or of "social uprooting and cleansing", which were pogroms against a
population greatly composed of Vodoun populations. They have thus perpetrated
the most horrible acts of cruelty against the people. At the time of the last of
such operation, in 1986, The "Groupe d'Études et de Recherches
Traditionelles" created a special body known as The Bòde Nasyonal.
That name came from a Vodoun expression of African origin
which means The National Congregation of Vodoun populations and Vodoun Defenders
for the protection of the people, their culture and their art-of-living.
Having understood that the generic name for all the Lwa is
Yehwe, the decision has been made to name the new Corporation: The Temple of
Yehwe. The purposes for which it has been organized were many, mainly:
- - to allow anyone the possibilities of finding
another way of worshiping God, in the manner that it was established
traditionally thousands of years ago by the African Ancestors;
- - to unite publicly with the Temple in the belief in,
and in the love of, the Divine Power of the Supreme Creator and Ruler of the
Universe;
- - to increase among its members the sentiments of
devotion, fraternity and tolerance, by the practice of the religious
observance of the Vodoun rites and rituals.
The Temple of Yehwe is a private Institution founded in
Washington D.C., U.S.A. in 1996. It holds a Certificate of Incorporation dated
March 5th, 1996. Its character, its purposes, its mode of operation and its
source of support have been determined by the Department of the Treasury of the
United States of America as exempt from Federal Income Tax under the section 501
© (3).
