Standing Without a Central Hierarchy

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Vodou has no equivalent of a bishop, a synod or a national seminary that certifies who may hold the asson. Each houngan asogwe answers instead to the lineage of the priest who initiated him, and to the standing his own peristyle and sosyete (temple congregation) give him within his own community; two houses can differ in practice, emphasis and even in which spirits they serve most closely, and neither has authority to correct the other. This is not disorganization so much as a different organizing principle, authority carried person to person through initiation rather than issued downward from an office, and it is one Vodou shares in outline with other African diaspora traditions that formed under conditions, slavery and later state suppression under Haiti's twentieth century anti-superstition campaigns, that made a centralized, registerable clergy dangerous to maintain. The absence of a single governing body has made estimating the number of practicing houngan asogwe difficult and has left oversight of ethical conduct, when it happens at all, a matter for individual sosyete rather than any wider institution.