Zombies
Zombies are one type of “revenant”, –they are the resurrected dead, however, they’re mindless, and have no free will, pr powers of speech, –or any actual power at all on Earth, except to serve the person who brought them back to life. The term is derived from zombi, or zonbi, and the act of actually raising one is part of the Vodou religion, from Afro-Caribbean traditions, still practiced in America today. Zombies are most popularly depicted in fiction, but it should be noted that they do have historical, cultural, and even pharmacological significance.
The Harvard ethnobotanist Wade Davis, for example, wrote two books that are now known in popular culture, and just as popularly ridiculed, or believed to be a type of fictional speculation. He wrote The Serpent and the Rainbow, in 1985 and, Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie, in 1988, explaining exactly how and what materials were used in order to make a living human a zombie. There were two types of powdered poison entered into the bloodstream, and afterward, the former human, now zombie, can then only obey the orders of a bokor, –a malignant practitioner of vodou.
After the books were released, and speculated on, the possibility of “real zombies” was narrowed significantly, and attributed more to the victim’s psychological condition when he or she was poisoned. Based on ethnic beliefs, a poison entering the bloodstream that induced partial paralysis and other extreme side effects, could create the illusion of the living dead, serving a bokor, based on what the victim actually believes has happened to them. The pseudo-zombie, the walking dead, would follow the bokor then not because they were magically compelled to do so, but because they were prepared to do so based on social programming.
