I believe that the main point of this chapter was to tell a story about the experience of having a sacred object from another culture. The main point was also to educate people on the purpose of such objects and to say that if you’re going to have an object like the bottle it is better to know how to take care of it and know the purpose of it so as not to fetishize the culture.

I found the idea of the afterlife really interesting. The belief that human souls go essentially underwater for a time after they die is incredibly intriguing. There are many ideas about the afterlife in a lot of different cultures and I find this one to be pretty unique. In the times of the Romans and the ancient Greeks the ideas of the afterlife also involved water but there were different regions of what they called the underworld. What region you went to was based on what you did in life. If you went to the Elysian Fields you were a distinguished person who was righteous and had ethical merit. Those in the Elysian Fields could either stay there or be reborn and those who were reborn and went to the Elysian Fields in each life they lived then after the third time they would be sent to the Isles of the Blessed. Then there were the Fields of Asphodel which were for normal people who didn’t commit any major crimes and didn’t achieve greatness, the souls there had to work, unlike those in the Elysian Fields. The Fields of Punishment were for those who had committed crimes against the gods and those who wreaked havoc while they were alive. Tartarus was reserved for those who committed heinous crimes against the gods and were given specific punishments, like Tantalus who had the gods over for dinner and tried to feed them his son. He was forced to stand in a pool of water under a fruit tree, and when he was hungry and reached for fruit the branches would move out of his reach. When he wanted water the pool would dry up.

The underwater world where Haitian spirits dwell after death is incredibly different from that and I find that extremely interesting. Other religions have ideas of heaven and hell but that doesn’t seem to exist in Haitian Vodou. So I guess my question is: In Haitian Vodou is there any sort of punishment in the afterlife for those who committed heinous crimes? And do any gods decide where people go if that punishment does exist or does everyone end up in the underwater land of the dead?