On the night of Sunday, Aug. 14, 1791, about 200 enslaved coachmen from dozens of plantations across the northern region of present-day Haiti secretly gathered in a wooded area surrounding an alligator swamp. Together, they aimed to finalize plans for a major insurrection. These enslaved Africans had been meeting regularly, conspiring with free maroons to overthrow their European captors.

Dutty Boukman, an African forcibly transported to the Caribbean from his native Senegambia years prior, presided over the ceremony as the maroon leader and Vodou priest. Alongside him stood a Vodou high priestess named Cécile Fatiman, who was the daughter of an enslaved African and a white Frenchman. Together, they called on Vodoun lwas, or spirits, for guidance. Beneath the rains of a violent thunderstorm, participants sang in choruses, performed ritual dancing, and sacrificed a black pig. Everyone in attendance played an active role. In ceremonial closing, Boukman recited this final prayer:

The God who created the sun which gives us light, who rouses the waves and rules the storm, though hidden in the clouds, he watched us. He sees all that the white man does. The God of the white man inspires him with crime, but our God calls upon us to do good works. Our God who is good to us orders us to avenge our wrongs. He will direct our arms and aid us. Throw away the symbol of the god of the whites who has so often caused us to weep, and listen to the voice of liberty, which speaks in the hearts of us all.

Within a couple weeks, 15,000 enslaved people joined the mass insurrection, burning 184 sugar plantations and poisoning drinking wells across the north. The Haitian Revolution was underway, and frenzied slave owners retaliated with harsher punishments and restrictions on spiritual gatherings.

While the exact details of the Bwa Kayiman ceremony, such as the number of attendees and exact location, remain contested among some historians and scholars, its role as the catalyst for the most radical revolution in modern history stands widely accepted. Without the power garnered through Vodou, there would be no Haitian Revolution. Nonetheless, Euro-centric narratives lure many into viewing Vodou as the source of Haiti’s perpetual plight rather than its source of freedom. In honor of the 229th anniversary of Bwa Kayiman, here are seven key facts about Vodou to shed light on the true nature of the practice:

1. The term "Vodou" originates from the word for “spirit” or “god” in the Fon and Ewe languages of West Africa. The practice started among enslaved Africans on the island of Hispaniola, and it encompasses beliefs on religion, philosophy, medicine and healing, as well as justice.

2. Vodou is a syncretic religion, meaning it unites two or more belief systems to create a new faith. It combines various West African religions from Dahomean, Fon, Ewe, Kongo, Yoruba and other ethnic groups with elements of the Roman Catholicism French captors forced upon their captives. Many syncretic religions surfaced across the Americas from the 1600s through the 1800s as a result of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, including Santería in Cuba and Candomblé in Brazil, among others.

3. Vodou developed as an oral tradition since enslaved people could not learn to read or write under the control of European colonizers. Therefore, Vodou does not have a foundational text. Customs, rituals and beliefs are passed down orally through generations of houngans and mambos—priests and priestess— and families inherit familial spirits and devotional practices from elders.

4. The primary aim of Vodou practitioners is to sevi lwa—serve the spirits—through prayers, dancing, singing and other devotional rites directed at God in exchange for health, protection and good fortune.

5. Vodou recognizes neither heaven nor hell as afterlife concepts. Humans exist as spirits who navigate the visible world in physical vessels. Ancestors serve as spiritual forces in the unseen world who guide their descendants through various signs, symbols and dreams. These ancestral spirits dwell in a place called Ginen, which for those forcibly transported across the Atlantic, represents the African homeland to which they yearn to someday return.

6. Some Vodou rituals involve animal sacrifices, but this practice receives undue stigmatization when associated with Haitian Vodou despite the fact that blood-letting rituals can also be found in Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Hinduism.

7. Contrary to popular perception, the widely misunderstood concept of zombies lies on the outskirts of Vodou, as they are not included in the everyday serving of spirits. The zombie archetype surfaced in Hispaniola as a symbol of enslavement on the island. Believing that death would free them from their misery and into Ginen, many enslaved Africans turned to suicide; however, those who took their own lives wouldn’t be allowed to return to Ginen, but would rather be doomed for eternity to endlessly roam the plantations. These souls of the walking dead gave way to the concept of zombies in Haitian folklore.

“They were under the heel of the French, you know,” Pat Robertson said in a television interview following the 2010 earthquake that shattered Haiti and galvanized the world. “They got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French,’” the white American televangelist continued. “And so the devil said, ‘okay, it’s a deal.’”

This “pact with the devil” stands as Robertson’s twisted interpretation of Bwa Kayiman. By citing this event, or so-called pact, as the origin of Haiti’s long, tumultuous history of instability, he not only places the blame of something as unforeseen as a 7.0-magnitude earthquake on the shoulders of the Haitian people but also erases the effects of relentless imperial and neocolonial conquest led by Western powers. Unfortunately, this dangerous rhetoric surrounding Vodou does not live between Robertson’s ears alone, and it’s up to Haitians to take the lead in changing this narrative both within and beyond our communities.