Undated: (Hounfour, the Vodou Temple Where Rituals Are Performed and the Société Gathers, Centered on a Stone Altar That Serves as a Portal to the Spirit Wor…

Undated: (Hounfour, the Vodou Temple Where Rituals Are Performed and the Société Gathers, Centered on a Stone Altar That Serves as a Portal to the Spirit World, With an Attached Open-Air Peristyle for Public Ceremonies): The hounfour is the sacred space at the center of Vodou practice, a square temple presided over by a houngan or mambo where the société meets and rituals are conducted. At its heart sits the pé, a stone altar about three feet tall that serves as the portal between the physical world and the realm of the lwa. On and around the altar are the essential items of worship: money, food, candles, jewelry, rum, images of Catholic saints, and most importantly the govis, small clay pots that hold the souls of revered ancestors and connect practitioners to their lineage. Attached to the hounfour is the peristyle, a roofed but wall-less shelter where public ceremonies take place. A perpetual fire with an iron bar representing Ogoun burns on the earthen floor, and a model ship symbolizing Erzulie hangs from the roof. The peristyle is open to outsiders in a way the inner hounfour is not, which means Vodou simultaneously maintains a sacred interior and a public face, a structure of access that confounds the Western assumption that religion is either fully open or fully secret.