I am studying the Pakèt Kongo for Èzili Dantó on the Haitian Vodou altar. Èzili Dantó is the warrior mother, she is often depicted as a black Madonna and she is always shown with a child. Her colors are red, blue, and green. Èzili Dantó is the perfect mother, she will drop everything to help her children and she is the protector of single mothers, working women, and abused women. I am studying the Pakèt Kongo for Èzili Dantó because I want to find out how the object is used in Vodou, how it represents who Èzili Dantó is and why a Paket Kongo is used to represent her on altars. The goddess Èzili Dantó is sometimes often referred to as Èzili Dantór or just Dantór. She is one of the Petro Lwa and is considered to be one of the “hot” spirits because she can be wild, aggressive, and not easy to control. Èzili Dantó is matched with the image of Mater Salvatoris and with other Madonnas such as Our Lady of Czestochowa and Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
Johnson talked about hybridity in religion and the ways that religions like Christianity and Catholicism mixed with African diasporic religions. Christianity mixed with Haitian Vodou during the slave revolution in the 1800s in Haiti. Polish troops sided with the Haitian slaves which led to Our Lady of Czestochowa becoming an image of Èzili Dantó.
For my research and object analysis I’m going to need primary and secondary sources talking about Èzili Dantó and Pakèt Kongos and their functions on Haitian Vodou altars. I will use the UVM library to look for resources that have information on Èzili Dantó and on Haitian Vodou altars. Duke University’s site on the sacred arts of the Black Atlantic may also be useful in determining the purpose of Pakèt Kongos and how they represent the god or goddess they are for.