Vodou, Vodoun, Vudu, and Voodoo has captivated the imaginations of Americans for centuries. Everyone is familiar with New Orleans Voodoo and its images of black candles, chicken’s feet, and skulls meant to invoke fear and awe in outsiders. Voodoo as practiced in the United States has become an amalgam of witchcraft, necromancy, rootwork, conjure, and a catch-all word for any type of magic that seems dark and ominous.

In the Caribbean, however, Voodoo is spelled Vodou and is practiced as an African Traditional Religion (ATR). The Africans who were brought to the New World were able to preserve their religion by concealing their practices behind the veil of Catholicism. They syncretized the worship of their gods and goddesses with Catholic saints and their feast days. They also kept alive the memory of the Arawak Taino Indian spirits who were on the island when the Europeans arrived.

The Vodou that is practiced in Haiti and the Dominican Republic are powerful forms of spiritism and magic that have been continuously practiced since the first Africans landed on the island. But did you know there is another tradition of Vodou that hardly anyone in the United States knows about? It's called Sanse, and it's the Vodou that Puerto Ricans do.