The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2670 page)

 
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WAZ
R
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(d. 1015)
. Prince of Kiev and ‘apostle of Russia’. Brought up a pagan, he invited Greek missionaries to his realm and became a Christian in 988. His motives cannot have been unconnected with the desire for an alliance with Byzantium, and he married Anne, sister of the emperor Basil II, shortly after. Vladimir set about the conversion of his people by enforcing
baptism
by law. He is remembered as pious and even scrupulous, wondering whether the death penalty could be used by a Christian prince. Feast day, 15 July.

 
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Vodou
,
vodum, vodun, voodoo, or voudou

(Fon, in Benin,
vodu
, ‘deity’ or ‘spirit’). The name given to the folk religion of Haiti, developing since the 18th cent. among the rural and urban poor, but despised by the other classes until intellectuals began to defend it in the 1930s as the Haitian national religion. French
Roman Catholic
elements are synthesized with African religious and magical elements derived from slaves of Dahomean origin. In 1996, the African origins of Vodou were reaffirmed when the ban on Vodou was lifted in Benin, and its validity as an indigenous religion was recognized. The effective divinities are the capricious
loa
, representing ancestors, African deities, or Catholic
saints
. They communicate through dreams or descend during the cult ritual and ‘ride’ their devotees while in a trance state; to encourage this, the
loa's
own symbolic patterns (
veves
) are laid out in flour on the ground. For the first half of this century the RC Church launched ineffective anti-vodou campaigns, aided in 1941 by the government forces destroying vodou temples. After 1957, the ruling Duvalier family courted vodou for political reasons

 
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AMESA SPENTAS
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NYAT
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