Moreau de Saint Mery writes down the word vaudou

Moreau de Saint Mery appears to have been the first writer to put the word vaudou on paper, around 1789, and his account is the only detailed description of the colonial ceremony. He set the scene at night in a closed place safe from prying. Each initiate wore sandals and a number of red kerchiefs. The king wore the finest and the most of them, with an all red one bound round his forehead as a diadem and a blue cord to mark his rank. A box holding the snake stood on a kind of altar where every member could see it through bars. After the oath of secrecy the queen stepped onto the box, was entered by the god and spoke as an oracle. A candidate was then placed in a traced circle, given a packet of herbs, hair and horn, tapped on the head with a wooden paddle and sung over. The war cry in that song was later set to rhythm by the men of letters at King Henry Christophe’s court.