At the cradle of humanity stood not Jesus Christ or the Pope, but the gods of Africa. They were the ones who helped the enslaved people sold from the Black Continent to Haiti endure and ultimately shake off their painful fate. The horrifying images that emerged from the terror of the revolution in Haiti, depicting a religion of revenge based on sorcery, murder, and cruel poison mixing, are corrected, making way for a portrayal of an institution that, while foreign, is equally vital and oriented towards ethical goals. The French-Swiss author Alfred Métraux (1902 - 1963) is regarded as the most significant ethnologist of the century. He countered the unqualified horror and sensational literature that presented a misleading image of the Voodoo cult with thorough research. Michel Leiris, a cult figure of the hippie generation, leaves no doubt in his preface: this.