Discover · The vocabulary
Thirty-nine terms, as they are spoken in Ouidah. A visitor who knows ten of these words understands a ceremony. A visitor who knows none watches people dance.
What this glossary does not do
It invents no definition. Around ten terms found in our own dossiers are deliberately absent, for want of a definition we can establish with certainty. A glossary that fills its own gaps loses exactly the authority it claims to build.
39 terms
One name, four shores
Guardian of the crossroads in Ouidah, he still opens ceremonies under other names, carried by those the ocean scattered.
Legba
Ouidah, Benin
The guardian of crossroads. Nothing passes without him, no ceremony opens without him.
Papa Legba
Haiti, Vodou
The one who opens the gate between the world of the living and that of the Lwa. Without him, no other spirit can manifest.
Exu
Brazil, Candomblé
The messenger, guardian of doors and paths. No Candomblé ritual begins without addressing him first.
Elegguá
Cuba, Santería
The first orisha greeted in any ceremony, master of paths and destiny.
These equivalences are established and sourced on our Vodun page. A broader kinship is documented by comparative-religion scholars with Eshu-Elegba, a figure of the Yoruba world: we mention it here without claiming it as a fact established in Ouidah, following the same principle that governs this entire glossary.
Are Legba and Exu the same deity?
Same origin, carried by two distinct traditions. As our Vodun page states, Brazilian Candomblé says Exu is Legba: the same function of guardian of the paths, carried across the Atlantic and transformed by three centuries of Brazilian life. It is neither a copy nor a coincidence, it is one civilisation that kept existing under another name.
Who is Papa Legba in Haiti?
In Haitian Vodou, Papa Legba is the one who opens the gate between the world of the living and that of the Lwa: no other spirit can manifest before him. He is directly the Legba of Beninese Vodun, carried by Haitians since the crossing. Haitian Vodou has its own spelling and its own history, distinct from the Vodun of Ouidah, but issued from the same source.
Why does Legba carry so many different names across countries?
Because he survived the crossing in the memory of millions of people, with no single book to fix one spelling. Every society he reached, Haiti, Brazil, Cuba, carried him in its own language. The names change, the function does not: he is still the one through whom everything begins.
Is Legba an evil figure?
No. That is a reading born of American cinema, not of Vodun. Legba is the one who opens the paths and allows all communication with the invisible world: a function of passage, not of threat. To confuse him with a figure of fear is to repeat exactly the confusion this site exists to correct.
Are the Vodun of Benin and Haitian Vodou the same religion?
Haitian Vodou descends directly from the Fon Vodun of Benin, carried by those who crossed the Atlantic. It is one civilisation that kept living on another land, with its own spelling and its own history. We use Vodun for Ouidah and Vodou for Haiti: the only exception admitted to our spelling.
What this glossary cannot tell you
What is addressed to Legba before a Fa consultation, the exact way a Bokonon invokes him, what changes the moment his presence opens a ceremony: that is not written in a glossary. It is passed on in Ouidah, between those who carry it and those who come to learn it.
Go beyond the definition →Established and reviewed
Vocabulary established in Ouidah by Hounon Agbessi Avlessi W. Bertian and the After Vodun Days team, through the fiches of places and with the collectivities that hold each cult.
Reviewed and validated by Vincent Adjaman, FRABO, guardian of the tradition, Ouidah. Verified on 29 July 2026.
Write it to us. If we can have it established by a guarantor, it will join this page. Otherwise we will tell you so, and we will not invent it.