Undated: (Erzulie, the Lwa of Love, Beauty, and Feminine Power in Vodou, Whose Rada Incarnation as Erzulie Freda Embodies Romance and Luxury While Her Petro …

Undated: (Erzulie, the Lwa of Love, Beauty, and Feminine Power in Vodou, Whose Rada Incarnation as Erzulie Freda Embodies Romance and Luxury While Her Petro Incarnation as Erzulie Dantor Is a Fierce Warrior Protector of Women and Children): Erzulie is one of the central lwa in Haitian Vodou, and she carries two faces that together capture the full range of feminine spiritual power. In her Rada incarnation as Erzulie Freda, she is the spirit of beauty, love, jewelry, dancing, and flowers. She wears three rings for her three husbands, the most important being Ogoun, and her colors are pink, blue, white, and gold. Her symbol is the heart, and her preferred offerings are perfume, jewelry, pastries, and liqueurs. When she possesses men during ceremonies, she becomes the rival of every woman present. In her Petro incarnation as Erzulie Dantor, she is something entirely different: a jealous warrior, a fierce protector of women and children, whose symbol is the pierced heart and whose preferred offerings are pork and rum. Erzulie Dantor’s visual representation draws from the Black Madonna of Częstochowa, a connection that speaks to the deep syncretism between Vodou and Catholicism forged under slavery. The fact that one spiritual figure holds both the lover and the warrior, the gentle and the ferocious, reflects a theology that does not flatten feminine power into a single acceptable form.