BARON SAMEDI / LORD OF THE CEMETERY
Acrylic on canvas 22"x28"
Collection of Jacques Bartoli, Haiti

© Vidho Lorville

The Baron Samedi is the first man because it is he who is the first to enter
the afterlife. At the beginning of every November he comes back from the
spirit world to celebrate. He possesses the body of his followers, dances,
sings, and drinks peppered moonshine to remove the chill of the spirit world
whence he came. Even a philosophical lesson for the living is included: he
has been known to say that ‘the human being is nothing but the slip of sperm
in a confrontation between the penis and the vagina.

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