Love Spells Under Altar

Southland Times, Issue 22218, 10 January 1934, Page 3

Love Spells Under Altar

A remarkable story of how Voodoo converts in the French colony of Gaudeloupe, after embracing Christianity, have adapted church rites to their own purposes is told by M. Jean Perrigault, the French writer who has been visiting the French possessions in the West Indies. M. Perrigault says they steal holy water for use in witchcraft and burn candles before statues of the Virgin as they pray for the death of their personal enemies. Girls slip notes under the altars so that love spells may be put on their boy friends while discontented wives hide the earth taken from the graves of cemeteries with a view to hastening the death of their husbands. M. Bonge, the Governor of the colony, was noted for his religious zeal when administering the penal settlement of Cayenne. He was transferred to Guadeloupe last June, one Governor after another having resigned or been recalled because of inability to cope with the rising tide of Voodooism among the island’s 150,000 negroes and half-breeds.