#djab

Hi there,

The answer here can have a lot of gray area depending on who you ask, so it will be kind of broad.

Djab or dyab is literally ‘devil’, Haitian Vodou has no inherent morality or mortal figure that is conceived of as exactly like the Christian concept of the devil, but the terminology wove it’s way in via Christian influence, pre- and post-Middle Passage for enslaved Africans. The word can describe a few things in Haitian Vodou, depending on the speaker and context. 

A djab can be a spirit who does or might do ‘hot’ or harmful work, meaning that they could be asked or influenced to do spiritual work that might be read as immoral or with a goal to hurt someone, or a spirit that is highly volatile. In standard songs sung in many temples (even temples that do not do harmful work), there are a lot of lwa that are referred to as djab and that really speaks to temperament. Mèt Kafou, Mèt Kriminel, Manbo Mayinet, Marie Lwiz, many Bawon, sometimes a lot of the petwo Ezili esko, and many others get referred to as djab…but, how they behave and what they do is very dependent on how you treat them and what you ‘feed’ them in terms of spiritual work. If you always ask Mèt Kafou to go out and murder people, he will embody that and sort of manifest that energy. If you request Mèt Kafou keep all roads open and clear for you and protect them from those who would harm you, then he will embody that and behave accordingly. 

Like, Kafou can be a very difficult and dangerous lwa to deal with because he, like many Petwo spirits, has little patience and do not come to chit-chat or hand-hold…they come to work and deal with critical situations. This does not necessarily translate to bad or evil or whatever, it is simply an orientation towards human existence. So, when we talk personality, djab is really just an indicator of temperament, not necessarily action or moral judgement.

Djab can also be used to refer to spirits who are tied or bound to work and/or are purchased for work. This extends away from sèvis Ginen and moves more towards Vodou-adjacent rites, but there are plenty of folks who do both and have both in the same temple. In this case, a djab is forced to work for a sèvitè through particular contracts or ritual actions. Sometimes these are spirits that are bought and sold (called pwen cho/hot points or pwen achte/bought points) and are essentially bound servant spirits. They are often represented by bound objects–a coffin tied shut with rope or chains, a representation of the spirit chained to a chair, a govi/container chained or tied shut, etc–and, when they arrive in possession (if they are called at all), they can be tied with rope or chains. Not all spirits who arrive bound are in that class of spirits (there are lwa served in the Ginen rite who arrive like that), but it’s something that often represents that class of spirits.

These spirits are bound because if they are not, they can and likely will do all the things that get labeled dangerous and immoral; physical harm, murder, etc. Priests who hold those sort of spirits know that they must meet the agreement they have with that spirit to the letter, because a bound spirit is often an unhappy spirit and break the contract (even by omission and not outright wrong action) will turn the spirit loose. They are often kept hungry, because it is thought that a hungry/starving spirit will work hard or harder to do the work and get fed, and that’s why, if the agreement is broken, they can be dangerous–if you are the hand that feeds and you don’t deliver correctly, you are the food.

A move espri/bad or evil spirit is often open to even wider interpretation. Some people use that to describe a tied spirit or a spirit that moves to harm folks, some people use that to describe lwa (particularly Protestants in Haiti or folks who are scared of Vodou), some people use it to describe a spirit who has been driven crazy or become ill and is now out of control, some folks use it to describe spirits that are sent to harm someone (which might be djab or might be something different), etc. It really depends on context and speaker because it has so many possibilities and it’s not really a specific label within Haitian Vodou.