Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica

Content warning: This section of the guide mentions death by suicide.

One of the loa worshipped in Haiti is Guedé. Unlike many other Voodoo gods, he has no counterpart or origin in any African pantheon and is of purely Haitian origin. In aspect and behavior, Guedé is a representation of the common people, a celebration of the Black peasant class. Hurston describes the appearance and rituals of worship associated with Guedé, explaining that the loa’s primary business is in possessing or “riding” his followers and forcing them to speak the truth. Often, this manifests in insults and mockery directed at someone in a position of power.

The speech guided by Guedé is always taken as the absolute truth, whether he speaks of past secrets or future events, and is marked by the opening phrase, “Tell my horse…”. In one instance, a woman known for lesbianism was “ridden” by Guedé, who forced her to confess to loving women and die by suicide. Naturally, people sometimes pretend to be ridden by Guedé in order to excuse themselves for insulting or mocking an enemy. Fraudsters can be distinguished from true “horses” by offering them a particular spicy pepper; possessed people will be entirely unaffected.