Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Sources

Deren, Divine Horsemen: The Voodoo Gods of Haiti (book), Vanguard Press, 1953

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Maya Deren's own ethnographic account of Haitian Vodou, published with an introduction by Joseph Campbell, and the text the 1981 film's narration was later adapted from. Its strength is unusually close access, written by someone the community had accepted far enough inside to be initiated during her research. Its limit is that Deren was an experimental filmmaker and participant rather than a trained anthropologist, so this entry cites it for the film's own origin and Deren's documented relationship to the tradition, not as a substitute for disciplinary ethnography.

Facts
Assessment
Reliability Tier
2
Reliability tier 2: a trade nonfiction book from Vanguard Press, written by a practitioner and filmmaker who was herself an initiate of the tradition she documents, valuable as a firsthand account rather than an outside academic study.
Notes
Confirmed via multiple secondary accounts of the film's production history. While filming in Haiti between 1947 and 1954, Deren became initiated into Vodou; this entry names that fact and does not describe what the initiation involved, which is closed knowledge under the tradition's own restriction.
Citation
Author
Maya Deren
Publisher
Vanguard Press
Publication Year
1953
Source Type
book
Claims Backed By This Source (10 claims)

This source backs 10 claims across the atlas. As facts: 9 well-attested. Plus 1 entities citing it as a general reference with no single fact or relationship attached.

Disposition By Topic

  • Sources, 7 claims: 7 well-attested.
  • Screen Works, 2 claims: 1 well-attested, 1 general references.
  • Articles, 1 claims: 1 well-attested.
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