The Lord of the Cemetery

Baron Samedi is the head of the Gede, the family of lwa (spirits) who govern death and the cemetery in Haitian Vodou, and he is the master of the graveyard and the guardian of its dead. He is instantly recognisable: a black tailcoat and a black top hat, dark glasses (often with one lens missing, so that he can see both the world of the living and the world of the dead), and cotton plugs in the nostrils, dressed as a Haitian corpse is dressed for burial. His emblem is the kwa Baron, the cross set at the crossroads of the cemetery to mark the meeting point of the two worlds, and the first man buried in any burying-ground belongs to him. He is at once the receiver of the newly dead, who cannot pass into the realm of the ancestors unless the Baron digs the grave, and a spirit of ribald life, foul-mouthed, lewd, a lover of rum, tobacco and obscene jokes, for in Vodou the grave and the generative power are held close together rather than set in opposition.