Medicine and Mythology: The Unique History of the Voodoo Doll

When one thinks of a voodoo doll, they almost immediately go to a dark and evil place thanks to Hollywood, literature, and the masses spreading ideas on topics they don’t quite understand. As with many things, people saw voodoo dolls being utilized in the voodoo (or vodou) religion in the 1800s and immediately had knee-jerk reactions to a process they didn’t understand. Voodoo dolls were painted as evil. Stories spread that they were used by voodoo practitioners to curse those they didn’t like. These dolls were supposedly used for revenge. Now enter this stereotype into the common culture through the spread of literature and then later the rise of Hollywood, and suddenly a voodoo doll means something specific to the world that it never actually meant at all. Paranoia and ignorance suddenly created a common household meaning for an item that never had that meaning. So, what was the purpose of a voodoo doll if not to curse someone? In this post, we will discuss the actual history of the voodoo doll according to the voodoo practitioners I met with in New Orleans and its use in holistic medicine and in voodoo ritual.

It may seem strange to link voodoo dolls with medicine; however, according to the voodoo practitioners I spoke with in New Orleans, these infamous dolls were actually used as an early form of patient chart, so to speak. Voodoo practitioners would work as holistic healers, and when people would come to see them to find cures, they would create a doll to match the person who came in and put needles in the doll to indicate where the patient was experiencing pain. So, if someone came in with a headache, they would put a pin in the head of that patient’s doll to remember that this patient was suffering from headaches next time that this person came in. They would then use multiple pins to indicate the level of pain. If someone was experiencing extreme headaches, they would put in multiple pins to showcase the level of pain the patient was experiencing. So, according to my source, voodoo dolls were actually used as tools to record patient information and help as a tool to heal rather than as a tool to inflict pain or suffering on anyone.

Thanks to the negative association with voodoo dolls over time, with countless movies and famous stories showcasing them as a tool to inflict harm, they are not prominent in Haitian or Louisianian voodoo anymore. They’ve effectively been denounced by those in New Orleans today and are utilized as more of a gimmick and a souvenir to sell to tourists. 

It’s also important to point out that the use of effigies and figures throughout various cultures and religions is a common practice, dating as least as far back to the Upper Paleolithic period with the ‘Venus figurines”. Doll-like idols have been worshiped, idolized, and used as a part of various rituals with different intentions throughout human history. They’ve been used to heal, for good and bad purposes, and with a variety of intentions. And yes, some were used for revenge.

Revenge dolls were utilized in Assyrian rituals, Greco-Roman curses, and Mesopotamian cultures, to name a few. But the voodoo doll was not created for such a purpose. These dolls likely came from the African religions brought into the new world with African slaves. Specifically, in New Orleans, after combining with Catholicism to create the incarnation of voodoo that we know in Louisiana, a form of Voodoo-Catholicism was formed, and these fetish dolls were still utilized in ritual as they were in Africa. Just not in a negative way as was believed by many. Aside from the use as a medical chart, voodoo practitioners were also known to make dolls as a way to help people heal and as a way to communicate with the spirits of those who have passed on. Supposedly, when hung from trees, practitioners believed they opened lines of communication with those who have recently passed away.

Pwen dolls were also hung in rituals to attract certain loa (the spirits who are believed to intervene in the daily lives of humans in the voodoo religion), and a pwen doll could potentially also look like a voodoo doll and confuse those who don’t understand the religion which could also have helped to spread the negative connotation of the voodoo doll.

All in all, I found this history and use of the voodoo doll to be unbelievably fascinating, as it fully reverses the meaning of what we believed it to be. The voodoo doll being used as an early form of patient chart by holistic healers is just one of many ways in which we, as humans, see something innocent from another culture that we don’t understand and begin to spread stories and rumors rather than trying to understand and ask questions.