Voodoo is animism or spiritism. That is, all aspects of the natural world are seen as having spiritual identity immune to physical death. Animism includes belief in a person’s spirit surviving the death of the body. Ancestors’ ‘spirits’ are called upon for inspiration, protection or other influences over the material world. The roots of voodoo in the Americas come from the Fon, Ewe, and Yoruba people of Africa.. The word vodún is the Fon-Ewe word for spirit.

where does it all started to know that we have to travel back to our old ages where they believed they could summon god or demon . we cant fully deny the truth there are some proof that they actually summoned the god or demon with sacrifices .Although its origins are not completely clear, the Voodoo doll originated in people of present-day Benin. The Voodoo religion was created in slave quarters in Haiti and Louisiana, when the faiths of various peoples began to intermingle.

The ceremony begins with a Roman Catholic prayer. Then three drummers begin to play syncopated rhythms. The attendees begin to dance around a tree in the center of the yard, moving faster and harder with the rising pulse of the beat. The priest draws sacred symbols in the dust with cornmeal, and rum is poured on the ground to honor the spirits.

One woman falls to the ground, convulsing for a moment before she is helped back to her feet. She resumes the dance, moving differently now, and continues dancing for hours. It is perhaps no longer she who is dancing: She is in a trance, apparently possessed by Erzuli, the great mother spirit.

It is an honor to be entered and “ridden” by a Loa, or spirit. In Haiti these rituals are commonplace: Voodoo is the dominant religion.

“One common saying is that Haitians are 70 percent Catholic, 30 percent Protestant, and 100 percent voodoo,” said Lynne Warberg, a photographer who has documented Haitian voodoo for over a decade.

In April 2003 an executive decree by then president Jean-Bertrand Aristide sanctioned voodoo as an officially recognized religion.

“It is a religion in the same way Judaism or Christianity is,” said Bob Corbett, professor emeritus of philosophy at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri. “Voodoo doesn’t have a sacred text, a church, or a hierarchical structure of leaders, but it is very similar culturally.”

Today an estimated 60 million people practice voodoo worldwide has this became a fashion , does they really know how to do it, is still a big doubt…..