Papa Legba

Papa Legba is the lwa (spirit) who stands at the crossroads and keeps the gate between the world of human beings and the world of the spirits, and in Haitian Vodou no ceremony can proceed until he has been saluted first. Because he holds the key to the barrier between the two worlds, it is Legba who must open the way before any other lwa can come through to be present at a service and to communicate with the living; he is therefore honoured at the very beginning of ritual, invoked to remove the barrier so that the spirits may pass. He is imagined as an old man, often poor and lame, leaning on a cane or crutch, with a straw sack over his shoulder, and he is associated with the sun and with the crossroads where paths meet.

Papa Legba's Haitian Vodou identity is often linked, through the syncretism that developed under colonial-era Catholicism, with Saint Peter, keeper of the keys to heaven, a natural match for a spirit who alone opens the gate between worlds. He belongs to a wider family of related crossroads and gatekeeper figures found across the African diaspora, most notably Eshu-Elegua of the Yoruba-derived traditions of Cuban Santeria and Nigerian Ifa, and Exu of Brazilian traditions such as Umbanda and Quimbanda; while Vodou practitioners, Santeros and other diaspora communities generally regard these as distinct spirits belonging to their own separate traditions rather than as one single figure under different names, scholars of Africana religions note the shared underlying pattern, a trickster-messenger who must be honoured first at any crossroads between the human and spirit worlds.

Legba's role as the keeper of the passage makes him one of the most important and most beloved of all the lwa, for without him there is no contact between humanity and the divine world at all, he is the necessary first, the doorkeeper on whom every other communication depends. In the pattern of correspondences between the lwa and the Roman Catholic saints, developed by practitioners over the long history of Vodou as a way of honouring the spirits within a Catholic colonial world, Legba is commonly associated with Saint Peter, who holds the keys of heaven, and in some houses with Saint Lazarus, the poor old man. His origins reach back across the Atlantic to West Africa, and he is closely related to the Yoruba and Fon figures of Elegba and Legba, the trickster and messenger who likewise governs the crossroads and the opening of the way, a continuity that shows how the traditions carried by enslaved Africans survived and were remade in Haiti. Vodou is a living religion practised by many today, and its lwa are honoured with genuine devotion; the old man at the crossroads, lame and leaning on his cane, remains the spirit who opens the door between the human and the divine, greeted first at every gathering so that the way may be made clear.