Aframrel PDF

PD DR.
Hans Gerald Hödl, University of Vienna, Faculty of Catholic Theology, Institute for
the Study of Religions
Afro-American Religions. Introductory Course. Overview & focussing on afro-
Caribbean Religion (Santería, Vodun, Shango, Spiritual Baptists, Rastafarianism)
Course given at the University of Szeged (October/November 2004) and at the Masaryk-
University of Brno (March/April 2006)
Attention: This text was written with the only aim of providing material for the students who
have attended this course in order to prepare for the exam. It does not meet the standards of a
text ready to be published. There is a bibliography at the end of the text, but there are no
footnotes to tell which passages of these books and essays have been worked into this text or
cited.
Furthermore, the chapter on the history of Santería has been explained in the lecture given at
Brno in more detail, as some other chapters, too. For that, please consult the PPP of the
lecture, also featured at the network of Masaryk-University. Nevertheless, the exam will only
cover data featured in this course-book.
For pictures of objects related to the cult, maps and the like please also consult the PPP.
0. Introduction, Overview
This course deals with Afro-American Religions. These are religions that have developed in
the Americas among the (descendants of the) slaves brought from Africa to the Americas.
One can roughly distinguish five groups:
1. Religions that have preserved and transformed the autochthonous African religions,
mainly of West African (Gold & Ivory Coast), but also of Central African origin (Bantu-
traditions).
2. Christian Churches or denominations characterised by elements of African spirituality
(„Black Churches“)
3. Religious-political movements (many of them sharing a millenarian worldview or a
„Back-to-Africa“ – approach).
4. Specific forms of Catholicism amongst the Afro-American people (Black Catholicism)
5. Specific forms of Islam among these people (Black Muslims).
The course will give a short overview on history and development of these religious
movements and focus mainly on the first form, also getting a short grip on group #2 & 3.
Geographically, according to the circumstances of transatlantic slave trade there have been 2
main places of origin of Afro-American religions with a strong foundation in the African
heritage (group #1), Bahia in Brazil and the Caribbean islands. Nowadays these religions (the
main ones being Candomblé and Umbanda in Brazil, Vodun and Santería on the West Indian
islands) have not only spread all over the Americas, but have also found adepts in other parts
of the world. This process brings with it a vivid development of cultural transformation. The
course will give an introduction to this field of study in 4 parts:
1) Overview on the history of the transatlantic slave trade and the history of preserving and
transforming the West-African heritage under the circumstances of slavery in the
Caribbean.
Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 1

2) Worldview and ritual in Cuban Santería (regla ocha) compared to traditions of the Yorùbá
in West-Africa, which this religion stems from.
3) Worldview and ritual among the followers of Haitian Vodu (Voodoo), compared to Ewe
and Fon traditions of West Africa, which are the main sources for this religion (religious
cults). Short description of the other religions mentioned.
4) Material culture and „syncretism“: systematic interpretation of cultural change; evaluation
of the theories brought forth by diverse scholars seeking to explain the role of Christian
elements in Afro-American religions.
1. The transatlantic slave-trade.
1.1. A few sketches of West-African History

1.1.1. Overview on early history of West-Africa
West-Africa is, amongst others, one of the places in Africa, where rich cultural traditions have
developed long before there was contact with European conquerors. It is said to be one of the
seven places on earth, where urban culture has developed on its own, without being
stimulated by contact from already existing urban cultures. In other words, the West-Africans
managed the transformation of pre-urban society to urban society. According to Paul Wheatly
(cited by Davíd Carrasco), the seven places where we can find primary urban generation,
are China, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus Valley, West-Africa (the place, where we find Nigeria
on the maps of our time), the Andes (the place of today’s Peru) and Mesoamerica (México).
One remarkable feature of this basic kind of cultural transformation lies in the fact, that in
each of the places we find important ritual and religious centres, such as temples, pagodas,
pyramids, shrines or other forms of religious places separated from everyday world.
Normally, we define cultural progress in terms of techniques of civilisation. Therefore, we
divide, according to the use of tools, the cultural history of mankind into stone-age
(kókorszak), bronze-age ((bronzekor) and iron-age (vaskorszak); in different parts of the
world the techniques of using tools made out of stone or produced by the method of melting
metal and shaping it into different forms, apt for special purposes like cultivating the land,
have developed in different times. Special achievements of culture and civilisation are said to
be linked to these periods. For example, according to Gordon Childe, in late stone age, the
period called Neolithicum in Latin (literally meaning: new stone age, but, what one would call
“old” stone age is called “early stone age in English), the so called Neolithic revolution took
place. This cultural turn consisted in the establishing of settlements linked to the new cultural
technique of raising plants systematically, making the step from hunting and gathering to
cultivating the land. Because iron is a relatively hard metal, the invention of iron tools brings
with it a progress in cultivation and, on the other hand, in making arms. Therefore, in many
societies, we can find myths concerning cultural heroes who are considered as the inventors of

the techniques of forging iron and become Gods of iron, like it is the case in West-African
religion. We will talk about that later. In many cultures, smiths are considered as somewhat
holy or magic persons for that reason. There is a book by Mircea Eliade on this theme
[Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, second
edition, 1978)].
Be that as it may, for the sake of the radiocarbon method of dating finds, we do know
nowadays, that the West−African iron-age dates around 700-500 bc. (and not as late as 300
bc., which was the old dating). And, if that is right, it cannot be the case, that it has been
stimulated by the East-African iron age of Meroe, but has to be looked at as a development of
its own.
The first iron-age-culture of the West-African region is called “Nok-culture”, named after a
little village in the central part of Nigeria. It is famous for the finds of little terracotta figures,
that show human faces in a significant style. It is also important for our field of study, since
there are suggestions, that Yorùbá culture may have been influenced by Nok-culture.
During the first millennium a.c. urban development took place in West−Africa, kingdoms
where founded and later, through Trans-Saharan trading after 700 a.c. relatively stable contact
with Muslim culture and religion was to be established. In this context, the kingdoms of Gana,
Mali and Songhay have to be mentioned. There had been contact across the Sahara long
before that time, as we know from rock-paintings found in the Saharan desert, showing horses
and carriages. It has to be mentioned here, that the Saharan desert has grown since the 3rd
millennium b. c. We also know about contact with Sub-Saharan Africa from the time of Old
Egypt, where accounts had been made on expeditions to the Yams-country (Yams is an
African nodule, similar to the potato; it has been cultivated in Africa since the days of old).
Trade with Sub-Saharan Africa centred around the exchange of salt, brought by Northern
traders for gold, which is abundant in West-Africa and plays the main role in the trading
connections with West-Africa during the first millennium a.c. We know about gold coins
made out of West-African gold from around 200 a. c. Trade-routes lead from North-Africa
(Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt) to the first African kingdoms Ghana and Mali. The older
one of these two, Gana, can be traced back to 300 a. c., approximately.
1.1.2. The kingdom of Gana

In the Tariq-As-Sudan, an Arab history-book, which was written around 1650 in Timbuktu,
22 emperors of Gana are mentioned before Muslim times and 22 after the beginning of the
Muslim calendar. If that was right, we could trace the kingdom of Gana back to 300 a. c. The

kingdom of Gana first is mentioned in historical sources in the year 773. It was founded by
the Soninke, a people speaking a language of the Mande-group of the Niger-Kongo
languages. One of the main reasons for coming into existence for that kingdom may have
been trade with Berbers. Gana is the title of the kings of that kingdom, which was named
Wagadu by it’s inhabitants. The King was in charge of exerting control over trade, but he was
also looked at as the representative of the ancestors, being the religious leader of his people.
Al Bakri, a Spanish Arab, gives a description of the Gana Tunka Manin in the year of 1065.
He writes, that Tunka Manin allowed the Muslim Berbers to build a city of their own, but
stayed truthful to his native religion himself. The importance of Gana lay in it‘s function as a
trade-center between the North-African Traders and the inhabitants of the so-called “Gold-
Coast” in the South, who were producing gold and ivory.
Around the year 1000 a pious and strict Muslim, Abdullah Ibn Yasin, started a movement
among the Mauretanian Berbers called the Almoravids (from: Al-Murabethin, the people of
the hermitage), who, in 1056 not only expanded to the north, to Morocco and, later on, Spain,
but also to the south, to Gana. Normally, history books have it, that in 1076 the capital of
Gana was taken by the Almoravids; we cannot even by really sure, that at this time the capital
had been Kumbi Saleh. Nevertheless, this seems plausible, and, what we do know, is that,
with the beginning of the 13th century, the kingdom destabilises and it ends around 1240.
1.1.3. The kingdom of Mali

The kingdom of Mali should not be looked at as a new power that took over control in the
region after the decline of Gana, but rather as a shifting of the centre of power within the same
region. The first king of Mali, Barmandana, ruled around 1050. He became a Muslim and
made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Mali took over the control of the Trans-Saharan-Trade, in a
way an heir to the function of Gana within that region. Between 1235 and 1400 it was at the
height of it’s power, with those outstanding rulers:
• Sundiata (1235-1260), who is looked at as the founder of the empire
• Mansa Sukuru (1298-1308), of whom Ibn Khaldoun, a North-African historian, has
written: “Under his powerful government, the power of Mali became mighty. All the
nations of the Sudan stood in awe of mali, and the merchants of North Africa travelled to
his country”.
• Mansa Kankan Musa and Mansa Suleyman (1312-1360)
The emperor’s title was Mansa, and the emperors were Muslims, but they did not prohibit the
traditional religion of the Mandinka. He made a famous pilgrimage to Mecca, bringing back

with him a number of learned men from Egypt, among them As-Saheli, who built new
Mosques in Gao and Timbuktu. With his reign and the reign of Suleyman, mali was at the
height of it’s power, exerting control over a large region producing many important goods,
such as gold, kola-nuts, and ivory. Around 1400 the empire began to decline.
1.1.4. The empire of Songhay (to be pronounced as “Son-r-ay”)

Songhay is the name of a people from the middle region of the Niger, of nowadays
approximately 600.000 people. During the 16th century, Songhay was the most powerful
empire in West-Africa. It’s rise to power began with the reign of Sunni Ali (Ali Ber, Shi),
who is still remembered as a legendary personality among today’s Songhay. In the conflicts of
religion, customs and law, that arose through the coming of Islam to Western Sudan, Sunni
Ali tried to make concession to Islam without turning against traditional religion at the same
time. His son, Sunni Baru turned against Islam, which led to a revolt under Muhammed
Turay, who was to become Askia the Great after gaining power. He was the first Askia (title
of the emperor) of Songhay. Until the 17th century, there have been 10 Askias, during whose
rule Timbuktu and Jenne became important centres of trade. After the Portuguese had been
defeated in the battle of Al-Ksar-Al-Kabir by Moroccan Muslims, Morocco became a strong
military power under Mulay Ahmed and expanded towards south. Finally, an army, mostly
consisting of Spanish Muslims and Portuguese and Spanish prisoners managed to take
Timbuktu and Goa. After they had lost these cities, the Songhay engaged in a kind of guerilla-
warfare, but the end of the empire already was at hand.
1.1.5. Conclusions
Concerning the topic of Trans-Atlantic slave trade, we should keep in mind, that in Muslim
times, most of the emperors of the West-African kingdoms converted to Islam and the people
in the cities, too. People living in the country remained within their traditional religions. But,
due to the fact, that Muslim contact was focused on the cities, we do not know much about
these religions at this time, since they are very sparsely mentioned in the sources we have on
African history from Muslim writers. But, there was a tradition of slavery both within Muslim
societies as well as in the traditional West-African kingdoms. Captives of war were held or
sold as slaves, and slavery was also a part of the penitential system.

1.2. The transatlantic slave-trade
So, we have to correct the commonly held image, that slavery in West-Africa had begun about
1441, when the Portuguese sailor Antam Gonçalves captured an African prince and princess
on the west coast of the Sahara and gave them as a present to his emperor Prince Henry. In the
15th century, the Portuguese were successful in sailing around the West-African coastal area,
so that they did not have to rely on the Trans-Sahara-Routes of merchandising or on the slave-
and gold-markets in the coastal region of Senegambia, that stood under the control of the
Moors and the Wolof (a West-African people). Instead, they achieved direct access to the
gold found on the so called Gold-Coast of West-Africa and to the bight of Benin, in an area
dominated to that time by the Akan. In exchange for the gold they sold firearms to the Akan,
which was soon restricted by the pope, out of fear, that Muslims could get into possession of
this powerful arms. The expanding kingdom of Benin then was in possession of many
captives of war, which they Portuguese bought to trade them for gold to the Akan. After
Benin had stopped exporting enslaved people, the Portuguese headed for new slave-markets
further east, such as the Delta of the river Niger, Igboland and the kingdom of Congo. The
latter’s emperor, King Afonso Mbemba Nzinga, who became closely linked to Christianity,
like his father before him, soon made restrictions on the slave-trade. In reaction to this the
Portuguese founded a trade centre called Luanda. In the beginnings, slaves that were not
resold on the African continent, were being brought to the Capverde Islands, to the Iberian
Peninsula, to Madeira and the Canaries, from where they were brought to the Americas. In
1532, Portuguese merchants started to export slaves from Africa directly to America. As we
have seen, this Form of slave trade can be looked at as a continuation of former existing
traditions caused by new demands. These demands had their origin in the discovery of
America and in the need of the European emperors for Gold and other riches linked to the
conquest and colonisation of the newly discovered continent. In the West Indies, the original
population soon had been nearly eradicated, and so the need for strong and resistant labourers
rose, that were used to hard work under the circumstances of a tropical climate. Although the
Portuguese had already established a clandestine form of slave-trade with the West Indies
before, it was in the year 1517, that the 350 years of Trans-Atlantic slave trade had its
“official” starting point. In that year, a number of catholic priests, among them Bartholomé de
las Casas, the Spanish Jesuit who became famous as an early defender of indigenous Indian’s
rights, had made a petition to the Pope, concerning the rights and the situation of the Indians.
Among their suggestions was, that Indian labourers should be replaced by African slaves, who

were more apt to the hard working conditions one had to face as a worker for the Spanish
settlers in the Caribbean. Later, de las Casas regretted this suggestion. But it actually gave
birth to what was called the triangular trade. This form of commercial relationships between
Europe, Africa and the New World consisted in trading European industrial goods to the
Africans, exporting slaves from Africa to America in exchange, and finally bringing colonial
produce from America to Europe. Due to this structure of the triangular trade, the transport of
the slaves from Africa to America was called the „Middle Passage“. The enslaved men and
women, who stemmed from different nations and cultures, and therefor were speaking various
languages, were brought to the trade-centres by armed men, tied together with chains. Often
they had no clear picture of the destination of their journey. For instance, since many of them
had never seen sailing ships before, they conceived of the Europeans as a kind of cannibalistic
sea-monsters, who drank the blood of Africans (what they thought that red wine was) and
wore their skin (what they thought that the black leather-shoes were made of). Many of them
died before they middle passage had even begun. The conditions on the slave-ship, were they
had extremely little space for each person (less than half a square-meter) gave rise to all kinds
of diseases. More than 50% of the enslaved died before reaching the destination of the
journey.
The bad situation of the enslaved people was not the only disadvantage that Africa and
Africans had to face as an outcome of this form of commercial exchange. Furthermore, the
slave trade helped to spread war and disorder in West Africa, and weakened the region.
Internal conflicts were nourished, that set apart the various peoples. Finally, these conflicts
resulted in a divided and weakened region, so that it was easy for the Europeans to invade the
countries and build their African colonies during the 19th century and after the end of the
Atlantic slave-trade.
But it also resulted in an Afro-American population in most parts of America. The Africans
brought with them their religious traditions, which they did preserve to a certain degree or
which were being transformed due to the circumstances of slavery.
Until the end of the 17th century, African slaves were mainly shipped by Portuguese
merchants to Brazil, where the region of Salvador de Bahia on the northern coast was the
main trading centre for slaves. After conquering regions in the north of Brazil, the Dutch
entered into the transatlantic slave-trade and sold slaves to the sugar-plantations in the British
and French colonies in the Caribbean. The first African slaves had been brought to these
islands as early as 1510, but with the beginning of producing sugar in greater style during the
17th century and as an effect of the so called sugar-boom in Europe during the 18th century, the

need for labourers from Africa increased enormously. In the following period French and
English merchants took part in the slave trade themselves.
During the 18th century the slave-trade reached its highest extension. The main part of the
slaves was brought to Brazil and the West-Indies. Estimated 42% of the slaves were brought
to the Caribbean and estimated 38% to Brazil. It is in these regions, that the Afro-American
religions in the strict sense of the word were shaped as a consequence of the triangular trade.
Significantly, those religions of the African slaves in America that have a strong foundation in
their African heritage came to being among the catholic colonies. We will later try to explain
this circumstance.
The main African influences are West-African, mainly the religions of the Yorùbá, the Ewe
and Fon. We will discuss the reasons for that later, too. But there is also a certain amount of
Central-African impact on these religions, mainly of Congolese and Angolan origin. From
these regions slaves were brought to the Americas during the whole period of approximately
350 years, for which the transatlantic slave-trade did last. Britain prohibited slave-trade in
1807, but, although British ships used to bring up the ships of slave-traders, it took a long
time until slavery was abolished. In Brazil it was not abolished before 1888. But during these
80 years of diminishing exports of slaves, one can find an increasing tendency to change the
traditional attitude towards the slaves, which had preferred to let the slaves work themselves
to death and recruit new ones from Africa. So this could be one of the reasons, why traditions
of peoples whose members were enslaved at the end of the slave-trade-period had a stronger
impact on Afro-American religions.
1.3. The situation of slaves of Yorùbá origin in Cuba

In the late 18th and the early 19th century, the kingdom of Oyo, which had been dominating the
area for the last period, began to disintegrate. Within this process of disintegration, several
wars between Yorùbá peoples and between Yorùbá and their neighbouring ethnic groups, like
the Fulani and the Fon, some of them vassals of Oyo, led to the enslavement of a great
number of Yorùbá people, who were brought to Brazil and the Caribbean, mainly Cuba.
Between 1800 and 1840 the main part of the exported slaves from the Bight of Benin were of
Yorùbá origin. Because of the English troops occupying of Havana for one year in 1762,
Cuba opened up for foreign markets, aside its traditional connection to Spain, by which it had
been colonised. Meanwhile, the so called sugar-boom, based on the new obsession of
Europeans with sugared food, had increased European demands for sugar. In 1792, the
Haitian slaves led a successful revolt against their masters and made themselves the rulers of

their country. Therefor, Cuban sugar-industry evolved with the help of the infusion of foreign
capital and Cuba’s economy changed from being dominated by farming and harbouring to one
of the leading sugar-industries in the world. The hard work and the cruel conditions in the
sugar-mills, accompanied by the greed of the owners made it impossible to employ contract
workers for the job. Out of that reason the need for slaves in Cuba had increased enormously,
exactly during the period of increased enslavement of Yorùbá people.
The slaves were organised as members of the church in so called cabildos, according to their
naciones, their true, or constructed African ethnic origin. Cabildo literally means “town
council”. They were structured in a hierarchical way, with titles borrowed from Spanish
institutions. As there was a social difference between so called “negros de nación”, which
meant African-born Africans and the so-called “negros criollos”, people of African origin
born in Cuba, they were not socially organised in the same institutions. The cabildos de
nación were headed by hereditary or elected rulers. They had special houses as meeting places
and were dedicated to a specific catholic saint, who functioned as their official patron. The
cabildos provided help to their members and organised dances and feast on the official
festival days and Sundays. Church and state tried to use them as a means to exert social
control over their members, and they were, from time to time, subject of missionary attempts
of the churches. One could detect a kind of “divide and rule”-attitude in decrees of state
authority like the one by de governor of Santiago de Cuba in 1843, who called for separation
of the different groups of inhabitants of his town, demanding, that whites should not join the
gatherings of the blacks, black creoles should not join with the Africans (botales, the newly
arrived). But instead, those of each nation should have their own cabildos. The governor said:
“A careful government should foment the principle of disunion, better through efficacious and
indirect methods”. What we do know as the outcome of this policy, is that social niches or
frameworks for the building of neo-African groups emerged, that acted as places, were
cultural knowledge could be preserved and transmitted between the generations. They also
gave the Africans the opportunity, to stick to their African religious tradition under the
disguise of Catholic cult of the saints. This was the case especially in the grand street
processions on epiphany, the 6th of January, a festival dedicated to the three holy kings in
catholic countries, el día de reyes in Spanish. The favour of the enslaved Africans for this
festival has been ascribed to the fact, that, iconographically, one of the three kings – the wise
men or Magi from the east of biblical tradition (Mat 2) – was depicted as a black king,
Melchior. The heads of the cabildos also were black kings, in a way. After 1792, the cabildos
had their place outside the city-walls of Havana. The procession of the members of the

different cabildos came from the outside of the city into the inside. In a way, they took
possession of the city. It is said, that bourgeois white families indeed stayed at home at this
occasion. One description of their procession by the American physician J.G.F. Wurdemann
has it as follows:
“el dia de reyes, almost unlimited liberty was given to the negroes. Each tribe, having elected
its king, and queen, paraded the streets with a flag, having its name, and the words viva
Isabella painted on it. Their majesties were dressed in the extreme of the fashion, and were
very ceremoniously waited on by the ladies and gentlemen of the court, one of the ladies
holding an umbrella over the head of the queen. They bore their honours with that dignity
which the Negro loves so much to assume, which they, moreover, preserved in the presence
of the whites. The whole gang was under the command of a Negro Marshall, who, with a
drawn sword, having a small piece of sugar-cane stuck on its point, was continually on the
move to preserve order in the ranks. But the chief object of the group was an athletic Negro,
with a fantastic straw helmet, an immensely thick girdle of strips of palm-leaves and other
uncouth articles of dress. Whenever they stopped, this frightful figure would commence a
devil’s dance, which was the signal for all his courts to join a general fandango.”
We can learn a lot from this depiction of what supposedly has been the adaptation of an
African danced religion in the new context of slavery. The ritual of turning down the
established order of society could be described in terms of what Victor Turner has called a
liminal experience. The event resembles African traditions in a new social context, African
forms of balancing power in a society, the typical confrontation of various cult-groups, are
performed in the setting of colonial slave-holder society. Within the framework of Spanish
government, “multiple miniature monarchies” are unfolding, as David Brown puts it. In a
way, the slaves are using the symbol-system of their oppressors to balance power in the way
they are used to. On the other hand, for the white spectator, this black performance clearly
goes way out of the boundaries set by civil and religious establishment for the slaves. In his
eyes, the dignity, chiefdom and royalty are only assumed by those he calls the “Negroes”. The
dance of the central figure of one cult-group can only be looked at as “devilish”, the athletic
figure is described as frightful. In other words, one has to have fear. Now we can better
understand the “divide and rule”- attitude towards the building of social groups among the
slaves. We can also find a double symbolism of tension between the world within the city-
walls and the outside world. From the point of view of the slave-holder, slaves represent a
power, on which society rests, since the fundamental economic exchange is based on their
labour. But, conscience of this dependence has to be kept out of the city. On the other hand,

intruding the city from the outside is some way of taking over control. It must be mentioned
here, that during the 19th century, there have been reportedly 9 uprisings of slaves in Cuba,
but, in contrast to Haiti, they have not been successful.
In another description of the día de reyes, from 1830, the differences between the ethnic
groups in their behaviour are stressed:
“there marched in perfect order Congos and Lucumis with their great sombreros of feathers
[...] Araras with their cheeks covered with scars [...] bedecked with shells and teeth of dogs
and alligators [...] Mandingas very elegant with their wide trousers [...]” They would march
on to the palace of the captain and, until the end of day, dance their way back through the
streets of the town.”
What we can say, is, that the carnival dances, connected to the veneration of the saints, gave
an opportunity to the African slaves to perform their rites within the framework of Cuban
society, showing that they were members of this very society. There has been a discussion
about the role of the cabildos for the shaping of Afro-Cuban religions. One has to admit, that
in urban society, there were free Africans, due to the institution of coartación, the legal
process by which a slave could purchase his freedom in a notarised exchange. The freed
Africans, called “gente de colór”, coloured citizens, played an important role in establishing
Afro-Cuban religion, too. As I already have mentioned, Yorùbá people came in large numbers
to Cuba and Brazil during the final period of the slave trade in the 19th century. It was in the
cities that Yorùbá slaves, who came from a culture with an old tradition of urbanism, met with
freed Africans, providing support to their countrymen. And they came to a country, in which
serious attempts were made by the Catholic Church to integrate them into Christianity.
Roughly speaking, we can distinguish the protestant attitude towards Christianising the
enslaved Africans from the Catholic by their different concepts of conversion. Whilst in
protestant thought the stress is put on the personal experience of conversion, in catholic
thought we can find a more “ritualistic” approach. But in Catholicism, we also can find a
differing way of conducting this more formal kind of conversion. For example, in the first
half of the 17th century, the Jesuit Pedro Claver is said to have baptised more than 300.000
slaves. His methods in teaching them the truth of the gospel and central Christian doctrines is
described as follows:
“He taught them, too, with pictures, and especially with one: a representation of Christ on the
Cross, with his blood being gathered by a priest below, who, in turn, poured it over Negro
neophytes. On one side of the picture were the happy Negroes who had accepted baptism; on
the other the miserable ones who had refused it.”

This may seem strange to us, imagining what kind of idea the so baptised may have built in
their minds about Christian doctrine. But one has to attest that this was a kind of humanistic
approach to converting slaves, compared to another description of baptism of newly arrived
slaves given by Ralph Korngold:
“A hundred or so Negroes freshly arrived from Africa would be herded into a church, whips
cracked and they were ordered to kneel. A priest followed by the acolytes and carrying a basin
of holy water walked slowly down the aisle, and with vigorous swings of the aspergillum,
scattered water over the heads of the crowd, chanting in Latin. The whips cracked again, the
slaves rose from their knees and emerged into the light, converts to Christianity.”
We can see, that baptism was thought of as a vehicle, which, by the power of the sacrament,
automatically turned the heathens into Christians, whatever their spiritual disposition might
have been. The process of acculturation, which protestant baptism required, was not found in
the catholic way of “converting” the slaves. It seems that one of the main targets of this
procedure was the integration of the slaves into the structure of Cuban society. But there were
attempts being made to strengthen the Christian mind of the slaves, too. Whilst the general
attitude towards the cabildos was to leave them on their own, as an outlet for the slaves and
freed men not causing too much harm to Cuban society, for example the 18th century bishop
Pedro Augustin Morel de Santa Cruz went to each of them personally to administer the
sacrament of confirmation and to pray the rosary with the slaves before an image of Saint
Mary. He left them the image, with the aim that they should continue with their worship and
devotion before that image. Furthermore, he installed a specific priest who should come to the
cabildos on Sundays and on the Holy Days to instruct the slaves in Christian doctrine. He also
gave a particular virgin to each cabildo that should be venerated by their members. There are
different places of veneration to the virgin mother of Christ, and different names given to her.
So the adoration of Mary leads to a multiplicity of virgins or Ladies, like the “caridad de
cobre” or the Lady of Regla, which have been associated with different Yorùbá deities during
the evolution of Santería in Cuba. In the folkloristic Catholicism of Cuba the main part of
religious attention was paid to the adoration of Saints. God was thought of as somewhat
remote, and much veneration was given to his intermediaries, the saints, whose statues and
pictures were housed in special shrines and kept at home. In the churches much ornamental
work was done, like robes for the statues or flowering and the like. Candles were burnt before
the statues and pictures of the saints, the believers kneeling down before them to pray. As
Joseph M. Murphy has stated, this rich ritualistic and symbolic form of religiosity provided

opportunities for practitioners of Yorùbá religion to adapt its symbolism and its ritual forms to
their needs. So we have to take a look at Yorùbá religion, first.
2. The religion of the Yorùbá and Cuban Santería
2.1 The religion of the Yorùbá in Africa
The religion of the Yorùbá of West-Africa is very well documented and has been subject to a
great amount of scholarly work. It proves to be a sophisticated system of thought of much
refinement, which is worth to be studied in detail. The reasons for our good knowledge of
Yorùbá religion are mainly its influence on Afro-American Religion and the rich cultural
tradition of Yorùbá city-states. It has also to be mentioned, that from the very beginning of
Yorùbá-studies there has been a strong participation of scholars of Yorùbá origin in this
research, which is not the rule in African studies.
I will give an outline of Yorùbá-religion, being the basic worldview for Afro-Cuban and
Afro-Brazilian cults and playing an important role in recent tendencies of Re-Africanising
among Afro-Americans. As this outline is based on relatively recent field-work (not my own),
it has to be taken into account, that in Nigeria, there has been social, political and religious
change in the last centuries, that will have had an impact on the form of traditional religious
worship.
2.1.1.
A brief history of Yorùbá culture:
Yorùbá culture originates from around the 8th- - 9th century of the first millennium a.c. All the
kingdoms of the Yorùbá (their traditional number is 16) trace themselves back to their
mythical city of origin, Ifé (Ile Ifé). In the cosmogonic myths of the Yorùbá people, this town
is looked at as the place where mankind came to existence or the task of ordering the cosmos
and bringing the world into its present-day shape has been fulfilled. Other tales have it, that
Odùduwà, a cultural hero and the progenitor of all the Yorùbá kings, being the first king of
Ifé, had come to this territory from a remote country in the east and settled in Ile-Ifé. His sons
came to be the kings of the different kingdoms of the Yorùbá people. The name Yorùbá is a
name given by outsiders to these people, who prefer to call themselves after the kingdoms
they inhabit, like Oyo, Ekiti, Ijebu, Owo and so on. Today, the common opinion is, that there
might have been two groups of immigrants who mixed with the people who already had

inhabited the territory. One of the groups settled around Ekiti, Ife and Ijebu, a tropical
landscape characterised by dense rainforest, the other settled around Oyo, a more open land
north to the rainforest. The early culture of the Yorùbá, centring around Ilé-Ifé, has become
famous for its fine terracotta-figures and its artful bronze-statues. They came to our
knowledge through archaeological fieldwork, that had begun at the end of the 19th century.
There are hypotheses, that Yorùbá culture stems in some way from the early iron-age culture
called the Nok-Culture (around 500 b.c.) that flourished in a territory north of the confluence
of the rivers Niger and Benue. Because of the mastery of bronze-melting with the method of
the lost wax, some scholars have thought of an Egyptian influence on Yorùbá culture. Indeed,
Yorùbá sculptors are famous for having used a special alloying which reduced the amount of
tin in the bronze to a minimum. The language of the Yorùbá belongs to the Niger-Congo
stratum of African languages (the Kwa-subgroup), and it seems to have originated some
millennia ago. Most likely, the Yorùbá are immigrants from northern Sudan and were being
influenced by the cultures of the Nile-valley.
They have become important for West-African history through their urban cultures and their
systems of government. They had a great variety of forms of settlements, villages, small
settlements, little towns, but their big cities (ìlú aládé) became outstanding places where
powerful kings were ruling. The general name of these kings was oba, and they all traced
themselves back to the first king of Ifé. Odùduwà, as we have already mentioned. Only 16
kings had the right to wear the classical and typical conical crown ornamented with beaded
strings. Each king had his own title, too, f. e. the Alafin of Oyo or the Òóni of Ifé. The old
system of government was called “ebi-system”. A kingdom was being looked at as a kind of
a wider family, the unified land was seen as a union of kingdoms, whose kings were all
members of one kinship or lineage. Supremacy was linked with the age of the kingdoms,
therefor Ifé was the place of supreme power.
2.1.2. Yorùbá Cosmology

The Yorùbá conceive of the world as divided into two spheres that tightly fit together. This is
very often exemplified with the symbol of the calabash, that has an upper and a lower half.
The upper half is òrun, the invisible spiritual realm of the ancestors, gods, and spirits, while
the bottom half symbolises aye, the visible, tangible world of the living. Yorùbá spiritual
precepts conceive of existence as a cyclical trajectory, of life as a journey. The central concept
in Yorùbá cosmology is the concept of aşe. This term means the power of life, that is given by
Olódùmarè, the highest divinity and which is possessed by every individual in its own way.

All things have aşe, the gods, ancestors, spirits, men, animals, plants, stones and even words
like songs, prayers, curses, and everyday conversation as well. Aşe is at the centre of Yorùbá
religious activity, being conceived of as a performative power, increasing with activity and
diminishing with passivity. This is why religious activity, prayers and sacrifices are of high
importance, because without it the gods would become merely idle idols. One has to feed
them, or they will die. The place to meet the gods is the shrine. At the shrine, there are many
objects to be found, most of them not portraits of the gods, but rather objects relating to them
and objects that show the ones who venerate the gods and what it means to be related to a
certain god. Those who venerate the gods, kneeling before them and giving sacrifice, are
strengthened by the gods.
2.1.3. Olódùmarè
The emperor of Òrun is Olódùmarè (also named Ọlorun, Odumare, Ẹléda, Ẹlémi), who is the
deity of creation, a “deus otiosus” (this means, after having set the world into motion, being
the one principally responsible for its creation, he retired and went to some place far away,
without interacting directly with the world). Olódùmarè has no definite gender, he does not
care about worldly or heavenly affairs, but he is the one who gives the breath of life to
mankind. There is no certainty on the etymology of his name:
Apparently, it is a composition of the prefix ol (from oni) and the two words “odù” (or: odú)
and “maré”
• ol, from oní, is a prefix, that denotes the possessor of a certain thing or ability. Ol is
generated from oní by elision of the vowel „i“ before the vowel „o“. This leads,
according to Yorùbá phonology, to the alteration of the “n” to “l”. For example, olóko
is composed out of oni & óko („farm“), so the word means the possessor of the farm,
the farmer; in the same way, (without vowel change because of linking two identical
vowels) onile stems from oni & ilé (house, home, building), the word for the
housekeeper.
• So it is made clear, that olódù is a name for the owner of ódù.
• Unfortunately, the second part of “olódù” might have been the word odù or òdù; in
composing with “oni”, its first vowel has changed its pitch (Yorúbá being a tonal
language, pitch has a definite semantic value in the language):
• odù (with middle tone on o) means a chapter (in the corpus of Ifá-divination, we
will deal with that later), or an emperor, authority or the sceptre.

• òdù (with low tone on the o) signifies a big and deep pot; it also stands for the cell
in a game called ayo, a board game similar to Backgammon. It is played by two
players who try to fill their cell with seeds (stones, beads, beans, shells or other
objects the like), that are distributed at the beginning among the 12 little cells of
the board. Metaphorically, by saying that someone has “a filled òdù” (òdù-kàrì),
you mean that he is blessed in abundance, that he is doing fine.
• So, there are two possible meanings of olódù:
• the one, who owns supremacy in power, the owner of the sceptre and authority
• the one who contains fullness and perfection, a perfect being.
• There are several ways of explaining the meaning of maré
• Maybe the word stems from ọmọèrè literally meaning “the offspring of the Boa” This
has to do with a myth concerning the rainbow. In Yorùbá traditional myth, the
rainbow is said to be produced by a very large boa, which brings forth a sulphureous
matter out of its inside. This matter produces a reflection that is the rainbow
(oşúmarè). The substance causing the rainbow is considered to have the power to
make people prosperous and wealthy. The problem with it is, that one cannot easily
get into possession of it, because on the one side, the boa swallows it up again, on the
other side, the one who would approach the spot, where it is, runs into danger of being
destroyed immediately. This myth has to do with the name of the highest being,
Olódú, the offspring of the primordial Boa. In his early years, Olódú already proved
to be a person of high prowess and goodness. He became such an excellent being, that
the earth (aye) could no longer contain him, and so, he went to the sky (orun). There
he went on prospering and acquiring good qualities. Nevertheless, before leaving he
entered into a covenant with his progenitor, the boa. The covenant said, that they
would never forget each other and that they would communicate with each other from
time to time. The rainbow is the sign of this covenant. In the bible, we also find, that
the rainbow serves as a sign of a covenant (Gen. 9, 8-17).
• marè could also be a negated imperative, if we divide it into two words: má rè; rè
means to go, má before a verb denotes a ban, so that má rè would correctly be
translated with the imperative: „do not go!“; it could also be translated as a descriptive
sentence, meaning the one, that does not go, move or change; in other words: the one
that remains.
• m’árè („m“ derived from mó) could also mean a combination with àrè; in that case,
Ol-odù-m’árè would be the one combining odù and arè, arè being the special sign

featured on the crown of the Ộni of Ifè. It is not found on any other crown throughout
Yorùbáland, and only the Ộni of Ifè is allowed to wear that crown. Therefore, it is the
sign of supremacy and spiritual leadership of Ifè.
• There is yet another theory on the name of the highest God of the Yorùbá, looking at it
as deriving from a combination of oni and odù-kàrì. As we have already seen, odù-kàrì
signifies a filled cell in the game called ayo. Thus, it is a sign of perfection; a filled
odù is perfect, its perfection would not only be disturbed by taking away one element,
but also by adding another one. This state of perfection is called kàrì.
• To sum up our etymological reflections, we can thus distinguish between four possible
meanings of the name Olódùmarè:
(1) Olódù, the offspring of the boa.
(2) Olódù, the one that does not move or change, the one that remains.
(3) The one combing the sceptre and the crown.
(4) Ol-odù-kàrì, a name for the in possession of the highest state of perfection.
Other names given to Olódùmarè are:
• Olórun: the owner of órun, derived from oni and órun, with the typical elision of the
vowel and the change from n to l mentioned above.
• Eléda: the creator and progenitor
• Elémi: the one who gives émi, the breath of life (one of the components of the human
person in Yorùbá system of thought, which we will take a look on later).
2.1.4. Communicating between aye and òrun

In a way, Yorùbá religion deals with communication between aye and orun in its main part.
Principally, there are 3 main ways of communicating between aye and orun:
2. Directly with a certain òrìşà through possession-trance.
3. By using the Ifá-divination system
4. Through ancestor-worship: egungun
2.1.4.1. The òrìşà

But it is not Olódùmarè who stands in the centre of Yorùbá religious activity. As we have
heard, he is thought of as a “deus otiosus”, a remote Godhead not caring too much about
everyday life of the inhabitants of the cosmos he created. The spiritual beings really important
for Yorùbá religion and therefore for Yorùbá-derived Afro-American religions are called
òrìşà. This word is pronounced like orisha, in the Brazilian version it is written orixa, in

Spanish it is known as Oricha, but it is always pronounced like orisha (like a Hungarian word
written “orisa” or a German word “orischa”). It is not easy to give a short-hand definition of
what an òrìşà actually is. It is best to talk about spiritual beings, that integrate various aspects
of spiritual power on the one hand and represent the different forces that are acting in the
universe. Thus, a given òrìşà can be a deified natural force, a deified cultural hero or a
prominent ancestor. But one could not divide the group of òrìşà neatly into these sub-groups.
For example, the main òrìşà of Oyo, Şàngó, combines all these elements. He is the God of
Thunder and lightning on the one hand, a historical person on the other, being the fourth
Alafin of Oyo, and he is a cultural hero, known for his experiments with fire and electricity.
Òrìsà literally could mean ohun-tí-a-ríşà „(what was found and gathered“, we will relate to a
myth about Obàtálà later on, explaining that aspect) or it could be derived from the words orí
(„head“) and şè („start“) meaning the „source of orí“ (we will describe the meaning of orì in
Yorùbá thought later on, too).
With respect to Şàngó, there have been some attempts to clarify the way, in which this òrìşà
came to combine these different aspects in one person or figure: how did the “cosmic” Şàngó
mingle with an emperor of Oyo to one òrìşà? C. L. Adeoye distinguishes between two Şàngó,
making his starting point from the idea, that, initially, there have been 2 kinds of spiritual
beings that later were brought together in the concept of òrìşà: irunmole (spirits directly
descended from òrun) and òrìşà (deified human beings). Other scholars, as E.B. Idowu, R.
Dennet or R. Canizares take into consideration, that the deified king Şàngó, in the course of
his growing cult, might have been syncretized with an older òrìşà named Jàkùúta, the thunder
deity, whose qualities he attracted. An argument for that version is, that in the New World
Yorùbá-derived religions, mainly in north.american nordamerikanischen Candomblés, Şàngó
is named Şàngó-Jakuta or Xango-Djacuta. The priests of Şàngó in Oyo still celebrate the day
dedicated to Jàkùúta, but linked to revering Şàngó
2.1.4.1.1 The multiplicity of òrìşà

Another important feature of the òrìşà is, that there are so many of them. And there are even
varying numbers of them given, ranging from hundreds to thousands. Scholars of Christian
background, like Idowu (an Anglican bishop of Yorùbá origin) tend to label the belief-system
of the Yorùbá as „polytheistic“ and to explain this polytheism as a derivation from an initial
monotheistic religion, that centred around Olódùmarè, the òrìşà being the “ministers” of the
supreme divinity. Another approach looks at the òrìşà as the different aspects of the deity, or
of reality. This theory is fostered by a traditional myth narrated by Yorùbá people, that Ulli

Beier has written down: it deals with Orìşànlá (this means: the great òrìşà, another name for
Obàtálá):
“In the beginning there was Orisha. Orisha lived alone in a little hut which was at the foot of a
huge rock. He had a faithful slave, who cooked his food and looked after him in every way.
Orisha loved this slave, but the slave secretly hated Orisha and decided to destroy him.
One day the salve waylaid Orisha. He waited for him at the top of the rock, and when he saw
Orisha return home from his farm, he rolled a huge boulder onto the hut. Orisha was crushed
into hundreds of pieces and they were scattered throughout the world.
Then Orunmila arrived and he wondered whether he could not save Orisha. He wandered all
over the world and gathered the pieces together. He found many – but hard as he tried, he
could not gather all.
Orunmila put all the pieces he had collected into a large calabash which he called Orisha Nla,
or Orishanla, and deposited them in a shrine in Ifé.
But hundreds of fragments are still scattered throughout the world today. And this is why
Orishanla is the most important of them.”
This tale illustrates, that the different òrìşà are different aspects of the one reality man
experiences. These aspects are “beyond good and evil“, since the òrìşà do not only symbolise
the “good”, comfortable and sympathetic sides of reality. Since Òrunmìlà is the òrìşà of the
Ifá-divination, being a main tool to communicate with òrun, we see, that this figure is not
introduced to that myth deliberately. Rather, it shows, that Ifá is a pre-eminent way of
gathering deeper knowledge of the forces at work in the universe.
2.1.4.1.2 òrìşà funfun and òrìşà gbigbona

Not only the hierarchy of the òrìşà differs from town to town, but also their character and their
family relationships. Therefor, trying to give an overall system of the òrìşà in form of a
pantheon will always lead to contradictions. For instance, Yemoja (Yemoo) is looked at as the
wife of Obàtálá in Ifè, but in Ayede she is revered as the wife of the òrìşà Oko, the òrìşà of
farming. The same òrìşà can even differ in sex (gender) from town to town. Despite of that,
mayn scholars are trying to give a division of the òrìşà into groups, more or less establishing a
fixed pantheon Without doing the latter, we can make some basic distinctions between the
main òrìşà that are revered throughout Yorùbàland. One can divide the òrìşà into two groups,
the cool (white) and the hot (red), according to their temperament and character.
The most important of the òrìşà funfun, which is the Yorùbá name for the cool or white òrìşà,
is Obàtálá (Òrìsànlá). He is closely linked to the first king of Ifè, Odùduwà, and to the

creation myth, in which he plays as central role as well as in the political (hi)story of Ifè, as it
is rendered in the cities founding myth. Another important òrìşà among those who are
considered to be “cool” is Òrunmìlà, who was the founder of the Ifà divination system ,
according to Yorùbá tradition. It will be treated in more detail later on. The name Òrunmìlà
can be read as a contraction of Òrun-l’-o-mo-à-ti-lá: “only òrun knows the way of salvation”
or of Òrun-mo-óòlà: “only òrun can bring deliverance”. He is also called Ifá, his wife is Odù,
which is, as we might remember, the name of the chapters of the texts referring to the Ifá
oracle. The two most important òrìşà among those considered to be hot or red (òrìşà
gbigbona) are the trickster-deity Eşu and Şàngó. Eşu is the divine interpreter, translating
between the òrìşà, between aye and òrun, the lord of the crossroads, also in charge of bringing
sacrifice to the gods and an intermediary in the divination system.
Another hot-tempered òrìşà, Ogún, is of major importance throughout Yorùbáland and
also to the Afro-American religions derived from Yorùbá world-view. He is the God of iron
and warfare, whose veneration is most widely spread among Yorùbá societies. Oral traditions
have it, that he is one of the oldest òrìşà, among those òrìşà who fulfilled the principal tasks of
ordering the world after its creation and principal structuring. On their way they came to a
place called “no way”, where they could not go on any more. Obàtálá tried to make way with
his sword, but since it was of plumb, it was not apt for that task. It was only Ògún who was in
possession of an appropriate tool in that situation. Before solving the problem, he asked for a
reward, which the other òrìşá promised him to give him. After he had successfully cut a way
through the dense wood, and they all had arrived in Ilé Ifè, they handed out the only crown
that they had brought with them to Ògún. Some of his priests are convinced, that he is the true
king among the òrişà. The wide-spread cult of Ògún led to several different local traditions, so
that the opinion arose, that there were several, namely seven Ògún, among them Ògún of the
blacksmiths, the warriors, the hunters or Ògún Onire. The latter name has to do with a town
called Ire (onire obviously meaning: Emperor/ruler of Ire) in Yorùbáland, where Ògún is said
to have led a group of warriors into battle. Driven by furious wrath he had fought successfully
against a great number of enemies and then had sunken to the ground. Another tale has it, that
Ògún could not integrate into society because of his wild and furious character, and therefore
he went to live on a remote place called Orí-Òkè, „up on the hill”. There he lived as a hunter,
a warrior and a conqueror. When this kind of life began to bore him, he sought for a town
where he could live, but his fiery looks (he was dressed in fire and blood) made it impossible
for him to enter a settlement. So he borrowed the leaves of the palm (they play an important
role in the veneration of many òrìşà, being used to decorate their shrines). Dressed in palm-

leaves he entered Irè and immediately was declared king of Irè, Oni-Irè. Since that time, he is
Ògún On’Irè, Ògún, the king of Irè. Ògún is the „patron“ and master of forging, and because
of his mastery in this cultural technique he is also the òrìşà of the hunters and warriors, whose
tasks are closely linked to forging as they depend on the quality of they tools used. One of the
meanings of the story about the place called “no way” is to express this relationship. Today he
is the òrìşà for all those who have to do with iron, steel and metal like smiths, mechanics and
even taxi-drivers.
We can also name Oya, the wife of Sàngó and the òrìşà of the tempest and Obaluaye, the òìşà
of smallpox, whose realm is the earth. Another name of his is Şòpòná1, which corresponds to
the name of the Vodun of the earth „Sakpatè“ in Gê (Ewe). In the context of Afro-American
religions he is also called Omolu (a name of Yorùbá origin) or Shopona, in Cuban Santería
his name is Babalu Ayé. The latter obvously is derived from Oba-’lu’aye (also: Olùwa Ayé
or, shortened: Olùwa), meaning the king, who is the ruler of the earth.
The òrìşà come to the world through possession-trance (mediumistic trance). The media for
the òrìşá have been trained through a time of initiation, and in trance, the òrìşà are talking
through them. No really coherent theory of that state of mind has been brought forth to our
days. In traditional Yorùbá religion, a person cannot choose deliberately to become an adept
of a certain òrìşà. She will be called by an òrìşà, this “call” manifesting itself, for example,
through the means of a life-crisis. The oracle will find out, which òrìşà she has been called by.
Ifá and Eşu (who is also called Elegba) are the òrìşà that stand at the frontier between the two
realms of reality, òrun and aye, who are mediating communication between these realms. Ifá
is the name of a system of divination, that has been installed by the òrìşà Òrunmìlà, who is
also called Ifá. His wife is Odu, that name also being the name for the whole of the ifá-„texts“
as well as for their chapters and the signs in Ifá-oracle (we will look at that in more detail later
on). There are really many odu, texts handed down from one generation of babaláwo (priest of
the Ifá-oracle) to the next by oral tradition. Eşu, the trickster deity and lord of the crossraods,
who brings sacrifice to the òrìşà and watches ritual, also guarantees communication in Ifá-
ritual. Therefore his face is carved into the divination trays and not that of Òrunmìlà.
2.1.4.1.3. Şàngó and Obàtálá

Şàngó and Obàtálá are the main òrìşà of Oyo and Ifè. A hot tempered and a cool òrìşà, they
are interrelated in a way, that illustrates the world-view of the Yorùbá people, who look at the
1
Şọpọná (das ọ jeweils mit Tiefton; leider habe ich keinen Weg gefunden, dies graphisch darzustellen).

universe as a place of relationships of power. The forces active in the cosmos have to be
balanced in order to achieve fulfilment in life and a smooth order of things.
One Yorùbá myth expresses this relationship:
• The Myth of Obàtálá and Şàngó:
“Obatala decided one day to visit his friend Shango, whom he had not seen for many years. Before
undertaking the journey, he went to consult the babaláwo (priest of the Ifá-oracle). The babaláwo
consulted the Ifa oracle and declared that the journey should not be undertaken, for it would result in
Obatala’s death. But Obatala longed to see his friend and he asked whether there were not any
sacrifices he could bring to make the journey possible.
The babaláwo finally agreed that Obatala could undertake the journey without risking death, but that
in any case it would turn out a disastrous journey, in which much suffering would come to Obatala’s
way. The only way to avoid death would be never to complain about anything, never to refuse a
service, never to retaliate. He would have to carry three white garments, black soap and shea butter.
Obatala set out. He walked slowly, because he was old and he supported himself on his pewter staff.
After some time. He met Eshu, sitting by the road. He had at his side a large pot of palm oil. Eshu
asked Obatala to help him lift on his head. Obatala did so, and Eshu poured the red oil over Obatalas
head.
But Obatala remembered the babaláwo’s advice. He did not complain, went to the river, had a bath,
rubbed his body with shea butter and put on a clean gown. He resumed his journey, but eshu played
the same trick on him twice more. First he poured charcoal over him, and then palm-nut oil. Again
Obatala tolerated Eshu’s mocking laughter without complaint, took his bath, donned his new robe and
walked on.
Finally he arrived in Shango’s kingdom. Shango’s horse had run away on that day. Obatala recognised
the royal horse-strap and he caught the horse. Just as he was feeding it some ears of corn, Shango’s
servants appeared and they accused him of stealing the horse. They dragged Obatala into the city and
threw him into prison.
Seven years of misfortune followed in Oyo. Drought was ruining the crops. Epidemics killed off the
domestic animals. The women were barren. Shango finally consulted Ifa and was told that the cause of
all this was that an old man had been wrongly imprisoned. He investigated and finally Obatala was
brought before him. Shango immediately recognised his friend. There was a joyful reconciliation.
Shango ordered his servants to go and wash Obatala, observing absolute silence as a sign of respect.
He dressed him in white robes and sent him home with rich gifts.”
• Interpretation of theMyth:
Historically seen, this myth could symbolise the tension between the two main cities of
Yorùbáland, Ilé Ifè, and Old Oyo: Oyo was the leading military power during the time, when
the Yorùbá were dominating the region, but it had to accept the spiritual leadership of Ifè.

On another level, the myth is concerned with the different personalities of Obàtálá and Sàngó,
the first being patient and humble, triumphing in the end through his patience, the latter being
furious, impatient and quick-tempered like the servants in this story, who quickly throw a man
into prison without further investigation. But, as this tale shows, Sàngó is also a generous
character, ready to see a mistake and to reconcile. The two are seen as opposites by the
Yorùbá worshipper. Because of their complete opposition, they also attract each other. They
have to go their separate ways, but when they meet, exciting adventures arise. On yet another
level, this story explains, that, as òrìşà, both of them are constituents of reality: the patient
Obàtálá is imprisoned, and the world goes down the drain with the hegemony of Sàngó alone;
on the other side, Obàtálá’s humbleness causes the trouble, too: he could have identified
himself to the servants of Sàngó to avoid imprisonment. So neither of the two forces they
represent should dominate the world, but they both are essential to an balanced cosmos. But
there is a third òrìşà playing a prominent role in this little narrative, Eşu. His character as a
trickster deity is clearly depicted in this myth. Ironically, he is the one who mediates in the
process of Ifá-divination, too, so he is the one who has brought the initial messages, when
Obàtálá was consulting Ifá. And it is him who acts as the transmitter of the problem’s solution
when the latter was consulting Ifà, too. In a way, he causes all the trouble, too. Furthermore,
this story also illustrates the central role of Ifá-divination in Yorùbá religion.
The myth is situated in-between the position of the two òrìşà as kings of their respective city-
states and their role as cosmic forces. It can be read on either level. There are other tales about
them, that are more or less restricted to one of these planes of existence.
• Civil myths on Obàtálá and Şàngó
The “secular” or “civil” myths about both of them are both dealing with a story of defeat and
triumph. The historic person Şàngó is said to have been the fourth Alafin of Oyo, and Obàtálá
is said to have been the fourth Òóni of Ifè. Despite of his central role in creation myth (more
on that later), Obàtálá was not the first king of Ilé-Ifè, but Odùduwà. Obàtálá, who only was
an officer in the army of Odùduwà, started an uprising, but failed and was driven out of the
town. He went to exile to a friend of his with the name Obawinni, and he and his people
(called the Igbo, not to be confused with the Igbo people that live in south-eastern part of
Nigeria) tried to bring the town under control by raiding it in the night-time, giving the
impression of being ghost from the bush. Finally, through mediation of a woman who saw
through the trick, peace was won and Obàtálá and his people came back to town. Obàtálá
managed to become the fourth king of Ifè, thus achieving a successful age and fulfilling his

plans through sticking to them patiently and not giving in after being defeated. This myth (to
which there are more details) is re-enacted in the yearly festival of Obátàlá, held in Ifè.
Sàngó, the historic person is the 4th ruler of Oyo, an the “civil” myth with respect to him says
that he was a grandson of Odùduwà and followed his brother Ajaka, who was a weak ruler
whose weakness everybody took advantage of. Sàngó was quite another kind of emperor,
brave-hearted, tough and strong as ruler. The myth has it, that he was experimenting with fire
and electricity and that in the end his palace burnt down. After that, he fell in disgrace and had
to leave the town. After his favourite wife Oya had left him on their way it exile, he hung
himself. His enemies were shouting: “Şàngó şo” (Şàngó hangs), whilst his friends and
followers were claiming that: Şàngó ko şo (Şàngó does not hang). In Trinidad Şàngó is now
revered under the camouflage of the catholic saint John, and is called St. John Abakuso which
is derived from Oba ko şo (the king does not hang). Other versions of the myth describe Oya
as a faithful wife, going with Şàngó to exile and starting the revering of Şàngó. Be that as it
may, as a matter of fact the cult of Şàngó, originally located at Oyo, did spread all over
Yorbùbáland. The „orthodox“ priests of Şàngó, who belong to the priestly house of kòşo (!!)
in Oyo do not believe that Şàngó killed himself. According to them, Şàngó got angry because
of adverse circumstances (two of his wives were always quarrelling, people complained about
his way of ruling). So he mounted his horse and rode into the wood. After he had not returned
for a long time, the people of Oyo decided to search for him. During their search they called
out: “King, where are you? Did you hang yourself?” and he shouted back from a long
distance: “no, I did not hang myself”. But he did not want to go back and so he went to òrun
climbing up a chain. And there he lives now, ruling with thunderbolts and lightning.
• Şàngó as òrìşà of thunder and lightning

This is a nice explanation of how king Şàngó came to be a god of atmospheric phenomena. In
this respect, Oya is looked at as his wife, too, and the atmospheric phenomenon that she is in
charge of is the wind. There are stories about that relationship between the two. One of them
tells us about a kind of contest between Şàngò and Oya, in the course of which she proves to
be the stronger one. She manages to hinder Şàngo to come down to earth by driving away the
clouds that he piles up in the sky with the power of the wind. Another story deals with a
powerful medicine that Şàngó once possessed, with the help of which he could let come out
fire from his mouth. Oya, who should keep the medicine for him, took a portion of it for her
own purposes, and Şàngá grew really angry with her. So she had to flee him, and he went

after her. Although he forgave her in the end, she still keeps fleeing Şàngó every time that he
goes after an enemy. This is why Oya (the storm) always precedes Şàngó (the thunderstorm).
• The role of Obàtálá in creating men

Obàtálá, in his aspect as an òrìşà that has descended from òrun in the beginning of creation, is
closely linked to the process of ordering the world as such. In the beginning, when Olódùmarè
decided to create a structured cosmos, he sent 16 òrìşà from òrun to aye (which consisted of
an amorphous watery plane at that time). Each of them had his special task to fulfill in the
process of creation. Among them we find Odùduwà and Obàtálá, togteher with Olókun and
Yemoja, who became their wives later on. Obàtálá was the one to create the land and
mankind. He brought with him earth and a cock with five toes. In the region that now is Ilé-
Ifé the òrìşà climbed down on a chain. Still on that chain, Obàtálá took an amount of earth and
put it on the water. He then put the rooster on that island and the animal started to scratch the
earth, so that it was scattered all over the surface of the sea. In this way, the land widened. An
etymology connected to this myth accordingly reads Ile-Ifé as Ilè yi fè: this land is widening. ,
The other òrìşà climbed down the chain and began to fulfil their respective tasks. Obàtálá
formed human beings out of the rest of the earth he had brought with him. After having
formed the bodies, he brought them to Olódùmarè, who breathed life into them, giving them
their soul, èmi (as we might remember, one of the names of Olódumàré is Elémi, the one who
owns émi. But it was hard day’s work for Obàtálá who became thirsty and started to drink,
but instead of water he drank palm-wine, which he was not used to drink so much of, ans so
he got drunken. As an outcome of that, his abilities as a craftsman diminished, and he formed
strange figures like albinos, cripples and hunchbacks. He could not concentrate on his work
anymore and fell asleep. Odùduwà continued his work and completed it according to the
commandment of Olódùmarè. The people of Obàtálá became the Ìgbò, the ones formed by
Odùduwà became the Ifè. The story has a social meaning as well: handicapped or “strange”
people (like albinos) were made by Obàtálá, (one of) the main òrìşà. They are under his
shelter, insulting or hurting them means to insult Obàtálá.

2.1.4.2. Ifá-Divination
2.1.4.2.1. Yorùbá anthropology
So, we have seen, that Obàtálá is the one responsible for the body, the material part of a
person, and that there is a soul, èmi, that is given by Olódùmarè . There is a third component
to the human being in Yorùbá thought, ori. Ori literally means head, but it can also mean the
“inner head” of a person, something like the destiny, that a given person has. Yorùbá myth
has it, that a human being, formed by Obàtálá and having received a soul (which can be a part
of an ancestor or a newly given soul), before coming down to earth to be born, goes to the
house of the potter of Ori (whose name is Ajala) and chooses his or her ori. This is, roughly
speaking, the part of the person, that is its individual destiny. Destiny is not looked at ina
fatalistic manner in Yorùbá thought, so this choice does determine a person in his or her
entirety. It is rather a kind of individual character, that one is in dialogue with throughout the
course of life. Depending on ori, one has to manage certain things in liefe in a certain way in
order to prosper and live a successful life. Now, how can one find out about his ori? This is
one of the main tasks of the Yorùbá diviners, the priests of Orunmila (or Ifá), the babaláwo.
2.1.4.2.2.
First, lets take a brief look at the technical side of this divination system. In the Ifá-corpus of
texts, there are 256 main chapters (odu), each of them including a variety of texts,
interpretations and verses. The babaláwo knows them by heart, since there are no written
sources on that tradition (nowadays, there are some, mostly written down by scholars of
Yorùbá world view).
As a system to memorise these texts and as a clue to divination, the babaláwo uses a binary
code. A binary code rests on two possibilities (e.g., “yes” or “no” “I” or “2” “black” or
“white”) that can be the outcome of or the program for any operation within the code. In
reducing every operation to a series of this simple decision, one can create complex programs
for complex operations, like computer-technology that also rests on a binary code. Depending
on the number of possible positions in a code (e.g. 4, 6, 8 and the like) one theoretically can
achieve an infinite number of combinations of I and II. We have already seen, that the number
16 has some significance in Yorùbá thought (there are 16 kings, 16 òrìşà came to earth in
creation process). There are 16 possibilities of combining I and II in a series of 4. Within the
Ifá-divination system, they are used to mark the 16 main Odu:

Eji Ogbe Oyeku Meji Iwori Meji Edi Meji Irosun Meji Oworin Obara Meji Okanran
Meji Meji
I I II II II II I I I I II II I I II II
I I II II I I II II I I II II II II II II
I I II II I I II II II II I I II II II II
I I II II II II I I II II I I II II I I
Ogunda Osa Meji Ika Meji Oturupon Otura Meji Irete Meji Oşe Meji Ofun Meji
Meji Meji
I I II II II II II II I I I I I I II II
I I I I I I II II II II I I II II I I
I I I I II II I I I I II II I I II II
II II I I II II II II I I I I II II I I
Please note, that there are regional differences in the names given to the respective odu. Meji
means “two times”. As you can see, all the odu are written down two times. In combining two
Odu, you get 16² possibilities, which is the same as 256 or the number of possibilities one has
to write down a row of 8 using just “I” and “II”. So, if you get, for instance, 4 times “I” and
than 4 times “II” you have a figure called “Eji Oyeku”. So, with remembering not more than
16 names and the figure they are represented by, a babaláwo knows the names for 256
different possibilities. The odu given above are the “main” or “major” odu, the 16 possibilities
that result in a symmetrical figure when written down in the above way.
In a given situation, the babaláwo finds out the odu referring to that situation by “casting Ifá”
and than he interprets the texts found out by that process in order to give advice to the client.
There are different ways to do that. The most prominent and elaborate of these is using a
device called opon ifá (a divination tray) with the ikin (sacred palm nuts).
• opon ifá
the opon ifá is a wooden divination tray, in most cases it is round, although there are some
square opon ifá to be found, too. It has two main areas: the centre being the place, where the
result of the divination process is marked on a special powder, that is dispersed on the surface
at the beginning of a divination ritual, and the border area (the edge), that is carved with
figures and ornaments. They do not have a strict iconography, but represent the forces active
in the world, among them often animals that live in different areas (e.g. amphibious animals),
symbolising the passage between òrun and aye made in Ifá-divination.

It is divided into 9 sections, the most important being the “head” (1), opposite to the diviner,
the foot (2) next to the diviner and the center (9), that “holds the crown”. There is always at
least one face of Eşu (at the top or head) carved into the border, being the òrìşà, who manages
the transgression between the realms of the universe.
• The ikin
The diviner uses 16 palm nuts (ikin) which he rapidly moves between his hans, until two or
one nuts are left (if two are left, he writes down one and if one, two – because you can’t trust
Eşu). One Yorùbá myth has it, that in older days Orunmila moved easily between aye and
orun. But this boundary became a nearly impassable after he retired to òrun. While on earth,
Orunmila had had eight children, the youngest of whom, Olowo, became king of the Yorùbá
city-state of Owo. Orunmila's omniscience made him uniquely qualified to serve as a wise
counsel to his children, and, in return, he expected to be honoured by them. Olowo rebelled
against doing so, precipitating Orunmila's departure for òrun. After he abandoned his
children, they petitioned him to return. Instead, Orunmila provided each one of them with
sixteen palm nuts as a means of addressing questions to him. Since that time, the ikin have
facilitated dialogues between Orunmila and individuals seeking to clarify their destiny.

• The iroke ifà (divination tapper)
The divination tapper (iroke Ifa) is an
essential tool for Yoruba diviners, used to
initiate the Ifa divination ritual by invoking
the god of fate, Orunmila. At the beginning of
a consultation, the priest gently taps the
divination tray with the iroke Ifa as a form of
greeting. By attracting Orunmila's attention
through this action and through the tapper's
pleasing visual form, he opens the necessary
channels of communication with the spirit
world.
Ifa tappers are sometimes made of copper
alloy or wood, but are usually carved out of
ivory. Most of them are composed of three
distinct sections: a middle section that
frequently features a sculpted image of a
human figure, in contrast to the pointed and
hollow ends, which feature animal images or
geometric patterns, or may be without any
exterior design or decoration at all
Kneeling women can be found in the middle section of the Iroke ifa and in agere ifá (the
receptacles for the ikin), on opon-ifá (or Şàngó dance-wands as well). Images of women in
attitudes of reverence are believed to act as ideal intermediaries with òrìşà, since women are
regarded as being receptacles for life force (aşe). Representations of nude female figures in a
kneeling position are conceived of as women praying and serve as a visual metaphor for all
suppliants who seek Orunmila's wisdom in order to clarify their understanding of their
personal destinies. The figure's nakedness suggests the state in which one communicates with
the Creator. This is reinforced by the fact that kneeling in deference is associated with the
beginning of a person's existence, when he or she kneels when receiving his or her personal
destiny—an action that is subsequently repeated in consultations throughout that individual's
lifetime to obtain guidance in fulfulling that destiny. As an appropriate attitude for saluting
the òrìşà, the kneeling position is also associated with childbirth and the procreative power of
women, on which all human life depends
• agere ifá (receptacle for ikin)
These are used to keep the ikin. Mostly, they are made of wood, but there are some of ivory,
too.
• Other devices for Ifá divination:

The odu can also be found out using the opele (a chain with eight stones, that have “I” or ”II”
craved in on each side, or the (merin)dilogun, 16 cowrie shells, that have a “male” and a
“female” side. The sixteen main odu are related to the possibilities 1 to 16 “female” sides up.
If there is no female side up, the cast is “Opira”. Opele are only used by babaláwos, cowrie
shells are only used by initiated priests. Another device are obi, cola-nuts split into four parts,
which on can use to find out the odu or for simpler divination processes, that seek an answer
for a question that can be answered with “yes” or “no”. In New World Yorùbá-derived
religions, coconut shells (sometimes with cowries fixed on them) are used for that purpose.
• Use of the Ifá-divination
Although Ifá can be consulted in every situation of daily life (for example, before undertaking
a journey or the like), there are three main rituals linked to the use of Ifá-divination, that have
to do with the building of the personality of a given person. They are initiation-rituals,
performed at the time of birth, a few months after birth, and as a puberty-rite:
• Ikoşe w’aye: centring in the world
• Imori: knowing the ori
• Itefa:: establishing the self
The first two are performed for girls and boys the like, the third only for males. There has
been a puberty rite for girls as well, but it is scarcely performed today, if ever. For more
details on these rituals see the book by Margaret Thompson Drewal listed in the bibliography

or my (german) text for the course “Afrikanische Religionen II Einführung in die Religion der
Yorùbá“.
2.1.4.3. Ancestor-worship:
The worship of egungun has historically been linked with family lineages. These Egungun
function either individually in the interest of their particular families or collectively in the
interest of the community. When they function collectively they transcend family and lineage
alignments. Egungun are invoked individually or collectively either:
• On the graves of ancestors
• The family shrines
• The community grove
The masquerade societies called egungun society (or ara orun: inhabitants of orun) served the
purpose for bringing down the ancestors to aye, this means, they visit the earth physically
through masquerade. The masquerade of the egungun works with masques that cover the
entire body. This has some relationship to the construction of gender in Yorùbá society, as
the members of egungun-societies are male, men being conceived of as the contained, whilst
female power is thought of containing. So men are the ones to mask, whilst women become
the mediums of the spirits. Men becoming mediums of the spirits are referred to as “wives”
of the spirits/deities. On the other hand, there is some cross-dressing to be found in Yorùbá
ritual, as men as women in their respective roles can portray male and female powers/entities.
2.2. Santería in Cuba

We have already taken a look at the history of the African slaves in Cuba, so that we now can
start with describing the religion of Santería on its own. Usually, one distinguishes between
two main lines of Santería, the regla de mayombé, in which the Nganga (ancestor) cult of
Congolese people is of greater importance and the Yorùbá-derived regla de ocha (from: regla
de oricha). The term “regla” refers to the naciones mentioned above. I will focus my attention
on the regla de ocha.
The main features of Yorùbá religion can be seen in 1. The cult of the orisha, 2. The Ifá-
divination system and 3. The cult of the ancestors, egungun
2.2.1. Ancestor cults

There is some discussion, whether the cult of the ancestors has survived in Cuba- Joseph M.
Murphy, in his “Santería. An African Religion in America” denies that. But, we should rather
say, that it survived, although going through significant changes. On the one hand, a
community-wide cult of the ancestors ceased. Ancestor cult became a merely domestic affair.
So, in a way it is right to say, that the egungun cult, as a public cult in Yorùbá society, did not
survive. On the other hand, veneration of ancestors was widened in Cuban Santería. One of
the sad effects for Africans being brought to the Americas, is, that, as a rule, the linking bond
with the kinship, bearing such great importance in African systems of thought, was
interrupted. But, most Africans share in the idea of the importance of kinship and are
convinced, that the lineage stretches back into the remote past and forward into the future,
despite differences in their world-view. So, even Yorùbá people living alone and separated
from other Yorùbá would have taken part in some kind of ancestral ritual. The orisha cults in
Brazil and Cuba gave less importance to the ancestor, cults, that became less elaborated and
of lesser significance. What was of great importance in these groups, was mutual aid, co-
operative work and communal authority. These features, a public affair in Yorùbáland now
became restricted to the cult-group. The idea of ritual kinship blended with ancestral worship,
so that, in addition to the bodily ancestors, now ancestor worship was directed towards the
“ritual ancestors”, too. These are at first hand, the “padrinos” (fathers) who had been the
“godfathers” in the initiation process of a given person into the cult and those who had been
the “padrinos” in initiating these, looked at as spiritual “grandfathers” and so on.
There is a certain reluctance among the followers of Santería to call ritualistic activity
directed towards the ancestors “ancestor worship” or to speak of an “ancestral cult” or
“ancestor veneration”, respectively. They rather prefer to call these activities “honouring the
ancestors”. When we compare this, for example to European attitudes towards the departed,
there is no general difference between ritual libation (spilling of drinks or parts of the drink in
honour to the ancestors) and decorating graves with flowers. In every society we can find
patterns of remembering those, who once belonged to that society and on whose work and
lives the present state of the society still rests, although they are no more amongst us. African
traditional societies normally pay a big amount of attention to their ancestors, considering any
given community still being linked with those who have gone to the netherworld. We have
seen this, for instance, in the way that Yorùbá people conceive of the individual as being
partly determined in its essence by some impact from an ancestor. We will see the, later on, in
the concept of the person, that traditional Fon thought holds, too.

As a matter of fact, in Cuba the egungun cult ceased to be exercised by the santeros during the
19th century, for various reasons, as it seems. But coincidentally, at the same time, Spiritism
began to spread around the world and it came to Latin-America, too, in a specific form, called
Kardecism which is still being exercised in Latin-American countries in our days, namely in
Brasil and Puerto Rico. Aside of being a religio-philosophical tradition on its own, it has also
played an important part in shaping Afro-American religions.
2.2.1.1. Kardecism
Hyppolite Rivail (1804-69), was a French academic with a background in many fields of
studies. He founded his own form of spiritualism in the 1850ies and 60ies, after having come
into contact with spiritualistic circles and practices. He adopted the name “Allen Kardec”, the
name of a Gaelic druid of which he thought of to have been an incarnation of the same spirit
that he himself was. In many books he gave a systematic outline of a spiritualistic world-
view. His main works are written in a dialogical style: in numbered paragraphs spirits give the
answers to more or less fundamental questions concerning world-view. The latter can be
described as follows:
There are souls, or spirits, who are capable of communicating with the living by the means of
mediumistic phenomena. They belong to an invisible but natural world. Kardec does not
discuss concepts like magic, miracles, or the nature of the supernatural in his works. Rather,
he gives an outline of the universe of being a place with different planes or levels of
existence, where spirits incarnate due to their karmic energy. He divides the world into the
visible world of everyday phenomena and the invisible word. The latter is part of the natural
world and can be investigated like the former, but, in difference to this visible world, it is
thought of as eternal, intrinsically good and pre-existent. It is, therefore, the place of
goodness, wisdom and purity. Kardec describes a spiritual hierarchy reaching from the
material plane on the one side to the plane of perfect spiritual fullness on the other. There is a
God, who is the primary cause of all that is to be found in the world. The general law within
this world is that of universal progress. The main actors in this world are the spirits, who are
brought forth initially by God, but, despite of being submitted to the law of universal
progress, are endowed with a free will. In terms of the spiritual world, progress means
constant evolution towards a higher spiritual perfection. This progress unfolds in a series of
incarnations, but due to bad karmic energy, one given spirit can also be drawn back to a lower
level of existence. Earth is not the only place where this is thought of to take place, but there

are several planets in the universe that are filled with incarnated spirits, being places of
different grades of perfection.
Kardec apparently adopts the Indian conviction, that existence is influenced by so called
karmic energies to his world-view. But, in significant difference to Indian thought, Kardecism
rests on the concept of continuos progress, a central idea of the philosophy of Enlightenment.
For example, within the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, we find that there is no theoretical
proof brought forth for the eternal existence of the soul. Kant renounces the idea, that such a
proof for an indestructible part of the human being can be brought forth. Rather, he prefers to
look at the idea of the “soul” as to, what he calls a “regulative idea”, one that has to be set
according to our way of constructing a consistent world-view, but cannot, exactly for this role
of founding a world view, be looked at as an object inside this world. But, practical reasoning
forces us to postulate the existence of such a soul that is not destroyed in its entirety by death,
in order, that the idea of approaching the goal of moral perfection as fundamental to practical
reason has not be given up in the face of the human world’s injustices and moral imperfection.
If we take out that idea of its Kantian context and bear in mind the speculations about life on
other planets widely undertaken by key-thinkers of Enlightenment, we see, that Kardecism is
clearly to be judged as a spiritualistic version of this European period’s favourite
philosophical trend.
During the 19th century also Indian thought was introduced to Western Europe’s higher
educated classes through the work of romantic scholars like the Schlegel Brothers and
Schopenhauer, by Friedrich Max Müller, one of the founders of the scholarly study of
religions, and others. Now Kardec takes the idea of Karma out of its original context in Indian
thought and situates it within his framework of reincarnation, that differs significantly from
the concept held in Indian thought. Roughly speaking, the concept of Karma means, that a
given existence is fundamentally determined by the moral quality of deeds fulfilled in a
former life, out of that the being in question results in some way:
• This may be done by transferring an indestructible (and in fact, essential) part of the being
through death from one existence to the other, a process called metempsychosis.
• It can also be thought of as a kind of impulse that stems from the former existence and
determines the latter, without being conceived as a kind of transferring an “essence”,
which is, roughly spoken, the Buddhist version.
• African thinking (at least traditional Yorùbá philosophy, to which I stick here - but one
can say, that the idea of [parts of] ancestral souls that play a role in the formation of a
given individual is widely shared in traditional African systems of thought) hold to a

concept of “reincarnation” that differs in two main points from the ones so far given.
Firstly, what is “reincarnated” is a part of an ancestor. The contribution to the shaping of
an individual by an ancestor can be conceived rather as a stimulus than a transferring of its
“essence”, because a) the ancestor is thought of as existing for himself in Orun and b)
there can be more than one individual that has received the “emi” of a given ancestor.
Than, there is no such idea as that the moral quality of a former life determines a given
existence.
• In Kardecism, the idea obviously deals with incarnations of basically spiritual entities,
that, due to their moral decisions, are bound to different planes of existence, more or less
mingling with the material plane. Kardec, being trained in the natural sciences of his days,
applies the law of cause and effect to his conception of spiritual development. In this
sense he introduces the idea of karmic energy to his system of Spiritualism.
So he can be looked at as a forerunner of parapsychology, as far as he is convinced, that the
supernatural is subject to natural laws and therefore can be investigated with methods similar
to those used in the natural sciences. Thus, the law of cause and effect explains human
happiness or misfortune as a consequence of the good and bad deeds exercised during a
former existence. Christian charity is the highest value in Kardec’s system. Christ is
considered to be the most elevated spirit that has ever incarnated. Charity is the main means
for spiritual evolution. Kardec only holds wisdom in a similar high esteem. The social world
being the place, where the morally free spirits are striving for development and also the
product of their evolution at a certain stage, can thus, despite of its injustices and inequalities,
be looked at as intrinsically just. So Kardec also solves the problem of theodicy within his
system.
Kardecism rapidly spread to Latin-America and became very popular up to our days, namely
in Brazil, in Cuba and in Puerto Rico. In Puerto Rico, one can distinguish between two forms
of Spiritism: Kardecism on the one side, and a form called “espiritismo popular” (popular
Spiritism) on the other side, that is sometimes claimed to be of autochthonous origin, but has
also integrated some elements from Kardecism, and from Santería as well. In Brazil,
Kardecism has a place of its own in the religious stratum of society, but has also had impact
on the Afro-American Religions, in which veneration of the ancestors plays an important role.
Not only ancestors of the practitioners, but, for example, also those of the Indians, who once
owned this territory, are included in the rites for the ancestors.
2.2.1.3. Kardecism and Santería in Cuba

In the second half of the 19th century Kardecian seances were being held by members of the
upper classes in Cuba. This coincided with the loss of the egungun traditions among the
population of Yorùbá origin. When Lucumi house-servants were watching these seances, they
noticed that their white masters were communicating with the spirits of the deceased. So
Santeros appropriated the technical and mechanical aspects of Espiritismo, namely prayers,
paraphernalia and invocations, to their cultic needs. Kardecism still exists in Cuba as a
tradition of its own, whilst in Santería its philosophical background is ignored.
In modern Cuban Santería, the deceased are honoured through the catholic mass that is held 9
days after the dying day, but through a misa espiritual as well. This misa espiritual (spiritual
mass) is basically a Kardecian séance. The focus of attention to the ancestors can be found in
the bóveda espiritual, an altar made by covering a table with a white cloth and placing a
number of clear glasses of water on top of it, each glass representing an ancestor or a spiritual
guide. Also a crucifix and a portray of the deceased will be placed on that altar. Spiritual
guides can be Lucumi or Congo spirits, but also spirits of plains Indians or gypsies.
For a typical misa, a bóveda would be set up at the home of a medium as the focus of the
gathering. Mediums and visitors, dressed in white, sit in chairs that have been placed in that
way, that all of the participants can see the glasses on top of the bóveda. Holy water from a
catholic church, herbal water and eau de cologne will be used as spiritual cleansers for the
attendants’ bodies, in order to get rid of negative vibrations, preparing to receive spirits of the
dead. After opening prayers are read, the spirits begin to possess the mediums. Elevated
spirits give advice, while the spirits of the deceased are supported by the prayers and
incantations of the participants.
2.2.2. The four ways of Santerían ritual.

Besides the cult of the dead, we can distinguish four ways of ritual in Santería,
• Divination – ifá
• Initiation – hacer el santo, hacer ifá
• Trance – receiving an òrìşà
• Sacrifice - ebbo
2.2.2.1. Divination in Santería

The divination system is of great importance in Cuban Santería. As we have already taken a
more or less close look at it, we do not have to say much more about it. There must have been
master babaláwos, who were shipped from Africa to Cuba and who kept the tradition alive.

They must have found communities to support them and passed on their knowledge through
time. Ifa divination is widely used in Santería nowadays. The diviners are still called babalaos
and have to be initiated. When one has mastered the knowledge of Ifá, he gets handed out the
fundamental tools of Ifá-divination we already know, the opon ifa, ikin, opele and so on. Then
he has made Ifá. Sometimes it is said, that there are tensions between orisha-worship and ifá-
centered religious practice in Afro-American religions. Namely, in the USA forms of Santería
are emerging, that are “babaláwo-free”, where the priests of “lower initiation”, the santeros
and santeras, do work, that is restricted to the babalao in traditional Cuban Santería. Ifá-
divination is looked at as one of the ways to communicate with the orisha.
In Santería, the Obi, the Meridilogun (dilogun), the casting of cowrie shells and Ifá-divination
with opon-Ifá and ikin are used. Ifá-divination is restricted to the “high-priest” of Santería, the
babaláwo.
• The Obi-Oracle
In Santería, instead of parts of kola-nuts, as in Yorùbáland, coconut-shells are used for
Obi-divination. There are five basic figures to the Obi-oracle:
All white Alafia Yes; cast again: Alafia, Etawe or Eyife in the second
cast mean: definitely yes
3 white / 1 dark Etawe Maybe yes; it is possible; cast again
2 white / 2 dark Eyife Best case; definitely yes, balance of powers in the world
is perfect
1 white / 3 dark Okana Sorde No
All dark Oyekun No, meaning danger; a dead person may be calling the
person who put the question
Simple yes/no questions can für example be used within rituals to find out, whether
everything has be done perfectly, or if the orisha concerned would ask for something else to
be done. Or, to find out, whether a sacrifice has been received by an orisha. If the answer was
no, it could be recommended to make another sacrifice and afterwards ask again. A negative
answer could also lead to a new question to find out what had been done wrongly or what
ingredient of ritual was missing. But the obi-oracle can also be used for putting questions
about the life of the questioner, even to certain orisha.
• The pataki about the origin of obi
Pataki is the name for the legends or myths about the life of the oricha in Santería. To a
certain degree, the differ from the myths told in Yorùbáland, although some of them have
their counterparts in traditional Yorùbá mythology. The pataki about Obi gives an explanation

for the use of Coconuts within New World Orisha-cult. It tells the story of the orisha obi, who
is thought to be the orisha of the obi-oracle. To my knowledge, there is no such orisha in
Yorùbáland. According to the pataki, Obi was on of the sons or mortal creations Obatala, a
prince all white, full of perfection, so that he shone in clear white. After a certain amount of
time, he became proud and snobbish, chasing away beggars from the door of his palace. In
one version, he does not give entrance to Ellegua, dressed as a pauper, to a feast at his palace.
In another version of the pataki, he sends away mendicants from the door of Olofi’s palace,
where a feast is held. According to the first version, Ellegua goes to tell Obatala, and after Obi
has resented to give entrance to both Ellegua and Obatala, Obatala shows him whom he has
rejected. In the other version, it is Olofi, whom he finally rejects. Both versions agree in the
outcome, that Obi from that day on has to wear his whiteness inside and to be covered by
brown, filthy stuff, to fall down from the coconut-tree to the earth and to be split into pieces,
no longer adored, but used as the simplest of all oracles.
• The story of Yemaya & the diloggun
There is also a pataki to explain the use of the diloggun by adherents not babaláwos,
especially by women. According to that story, Yemaya once was married to Orula (Orunmila,
the Orisha of the Ifá-oracle). When he was away, she tried out the oracle, and soon became an
expert diviner. Once, when Orula returned home sooner as Yemaya had expected, he found
her practising the oracle, and, according to one version, cried out: “Stop!”. This version
explains, why normal adherents can only divine up to the 12th basic figure of the diloggun,
whilst the last four are reserved for babalawos. Another version only tells about the anger of
Orula, who now goes to invent a new oracle (the Ifa-divination with ikin and opon-ifá) which
cannot be used by everyone, because, after Yemaya has used the diloggun, they have become
somewhat like public domain. There are two related stories in Yorùbáland. According to the
first, Oshun once was married to Orunmila and received the Merindilogun from Orunmila.
Practicioners of the Merindilogun (male or female) are thought to be wives (!) of Oshun, who
has received power from her husband. There are also female practitioners of the Ifá-oracle
among the Yorùbá in West-Africa. Whilst the itéfa-initiation-ritual, which one has to have
passed as a necessary prerequisite to becoming a babaláwo, is restricted to men, there are alos
female Ifá- diviners, as a rule, women or daughters of babaláwo. A story from the Ifá-corpus
explains that through mentioning a twin-pair of children (of both sexes) of Orunmila, who
both became diviners. It says:
“So long as Orunmilas firstborn child
Who is female studied Ifa

From then on women
Have studied Ifa” (from Eji-Ogbe)
In Santería, the Ifá-oracle is traditionally only used by babaláwos.
Divination, essential to all ritual, opens ways for ashe, the divine power. So it is commonly
used to solve problems of either spiritual or physical nature. Problems in life are interpreted in
Santería as signs that show, that the orí, the inner head of a person, is in trouble or confused.
Divination, as the art of finding out the meaning of random events, provides followers of
Santería with information on the spiritual plane of life and the linking of their everyday
problems to this spiritual plane. For example, if they are the result of enemies, of confusion in
ones own life or simply God-sent to learn. The casting of Ifá gives the santero knowledge of
his or her destiny and of specific models to handle it. Destiny is something that I can take
advantage of, if handling it the right way, in Santerían thought.
Like sacrifice, divination is not only a ritual on its own, but also used in other contexts, be it
to find out, what kind of ritual has to be conducted, or as a part of initiation rituals.
2.2.2.2. Initiation rituals in Santería

Initiation is central to Santería. To become a follower of Santería, one has to be initiated step
by step, slowly moving from the outside of the religion and an outside view on the religion to
the inside.
According to Raul Canizares, we can find a hierarchy in Santería that starts with outsiders:
• Interested observers, that can be scholars of religion, but remain outside the framework of
Santería proper.
• Occasional clients, that seek help for their psychological or bodily problems, just as they
would consult a physician. They often are unaware of the distinction between Santería and
Catholicism.
• Habitual clients, who are aware of this distinction, but do not consider themselves part of
Santería. It is said, that many prominent figures in Cuban life would not make a step
without consulting a Santero.
• Amulet recipients- people who has been given an amulet to by a Santero (in most cases,
they bought it), in order to achieve certain goals, like improving ones situation, must have
a certain amount of commitment to Santería, because amulets or other physical objects
have to be treated ritually from time to time in order to be “filled” with ashe.

Next to that circle of person loosely linked to Santería, we find three groups of initiates, that
are not to be considered as priests:
• Ellegua initiates. Ellegua is the name of the Yorùbá orisha Eshu in Santería. Because he is
the guardian of the crossroads, the divine messenger, the one who has control over
people’s destinies, he is the first orisha to be revered. A figure of Eleggua, is conferred to
guerrero initiates (next) but it is often given alone. It is mostly a head made out of clay or
cement with mouth, eyes and nose made of cowrie-shells. It is kept inside a small cabinet
behind the houses main doorway. It can be conferred by a Santero or a Babalao; some
people think, that only the Ellegua conferred by a Babalao is appropriate.
A person that an Eleggua has been given to, cannot consider him/herself as a occasional
participant in Santería. It is crucial, that Ellegua be propitiated every Monday, hat special
offerings are given to him. The orisha will open the doors for those, who do this the right
way, and close the door for those, who fail to propitiate him responsibly.
• Guerrero Initiates. Certain orishas are known as the guerreros, Ellegua, Ogun, Ochosi, the
lord of the hunt, and Osun, a minor oricha, a protective deity warning people when in
danger, associated with Osain, the oricha of herbs. These are able to protect a person.
Guerrero initiation and collares initiation are the two most important before becoming a
Santero. Apart from the function of being defended against spiritual and all other enemies
by these powerful warrior-gods, guerrero-initiation is the first initiation on the way to
become a Santero. In traditional Cuban Santería, it takes a Babalao to do this. 3 objects are
given to the initiate, a pot with the iron tools of Ogun, iron items symbolising the arms of
Ochosi, the Oirsha of hunting, and a chalice with a rooster symbolising Osun, a “little”
Orisha who is a guardian spirit.
These warriors are, like Eleggua, propitiated on Mondays.
• Collares Initiates: this is an important initiation, because by wearing the necklaces given
to the initiate in this ceremony, the collares or ileke or elekes, a person shows to be a
follower of Santería. It is a complex ritual, where the initiate is bathed, prayers of African
origin are made, the necklaces are washed and prepared ritually. The string must be of
material able to absorb sacrificial blood and keeping its ashé this way. The necklaces are
given one after the other. Whilst the guerreros have to be given by a man (the padrino of
the Initiate), the eleke are given by a woman (the madrina of the initiate). They are each
dedicated to a special orisha, normally five are given, but there can be exceptions to this.
• The first is Elleguas necklace, red and black beads

• In some ilés (houses) the all-white Obatalá is given first, since he is the greatest of all
orisha.
• Oshun, yellow and amber beads
• Yemaya, white and blue beads
• Shango, red and white beads
Finally, two grades of priestly initiation are found in traditional Santería:
• Santeros: although sometimes followers of Santería are called “Santero”, this is the name
for a priest or priestess of Santería, who has undergone a lengthy and costly initiation. One
has to pay from 5.000 to 50.000 $ in the USA, for example. In traditional Santería, only
followers, whose head has been claimed by an Orisha, undergo this initiation called
kariocha, that follows a time of preparation that can last up to three years. During the
initiation, the orisha, that the adept is linked with, is “seated” in his head. This process is
called “hacer santo”, “making saint” or asiento. During this time, a three days feast, the
orisha first takes the head of the initiate by possessing him or her in possession trance.
This trance is induced by the playing of the sacred drums, the bata drums, that have to be
prepared carefully with rituals including animal sacrifice for sacred use. The initiates then
are called “iyabo” (Yorùbá for bride), and are considered novices for a period of one year,
obliged to wear white clothes and to observe several taboos. Some of them have to be
observed during a lifetime, depending on, which orisha has been seated and the special
taboos linked with that orisha. A divination called itá which is conducted by a special
Santero, the Italero, tells the neophyte which taboos he will have to respect and what the
future a s a Santero will bring for him. These last year of initiation is also dedicated to
learning technical skills like casting the cowrie shells for divination or learning enough
Lucumi (Yorùbá) for ritual purposes.
• Babalaos: Only Santeros can become Babalaos in Cuban Santería. Only men can become
Babalaos and you cannot become a Babalao deliberately, but the itá-oracle has to tell you.
Only Babalaos can sacrifice four-footed animals and the use of the Ifá-divination system
is restricted to them. In a one week ceremony without contact to the outer world, the
Babalao is initiated, a process called “making ifa”. This process was a secret, until a
Cuban ex-Babalao turned communist revealed it to a wider public.
Here is a part of the description he gave, as rendered by Raul Canizares:
“Some of the individual rites emphasise the babalao´s identification with the legendary first
16 kings of Yorùbá. One of these is “receiving of Orula” (= Orunmila, hgh), probably the
most important part of the seven-day ceremony, which takes place on the first day. The

initiate has been shaved, painted, and crowned with a head-dress of coconut shell, beads, and
red parrot feathers. One of the senior babalaos paints the names or symbols of the sixteen
kings on a long block of cedar that is laid before the initiate, and the five senior babalaos then
paint their symbols on the block to show that they witnessed the event. After this, twenty-one
palm nuts are taken from a gourd filled with river water or rainwater and placed on each of
the twenty-one symbols; they are then coated with the feathers and blood of two black hens
that are sacrificed. The padrino then dresses each ikin with a mixture of honey, cocoa butter,
palm oil, and small pieces of coconut pulp. He says: “This is the great truth of our faith:
behold Orula, make him part of your soul”. The initiate, with his hands behind his back, must
use his mouth to take up each ikin, clean it by swallowing the stuff that covers it, and spit the
ikin back into the water-filled gourd. By doing this he has taken Orula’s ashé into his soul and
is now considered a neophyte babalao. This ceremony is followed by the “pact with Death” in
which, accompanied by ritual dances and songs, the babalao makes a deal with death that he
will not touch his head without permission of Orula himself.”
Note: There are emerging babalao-free versions of Santería in the US in our days.
2.2.2.3.The worship of the orisha.

2.2.2.3.1. Orisha hierarchy
As the name Santería indicates, the special feature of orisha-worship in the Americas is that it
has blended with the cult of catholic saints. We have already mentioned that in the beginning
of this course.
Furthermore, there has been, commonly speaking, a certain transformation of the stories about
the orisha, itá. We have seen, that in Yorùbáland stories about the orisha differ from region to
region and that there are more important and less important orishas in different parts of the
country. Because of that fact, one cannot give something like a Pantheon of the orishas.
Furthermore, orisha-worship is subject to historical change.
But in Santería one can find a relatively stable hierarchy of the orisha. The main difference
between the groups of the orisha are the orisha that can be “seated” and those, that are
received, and not seated. An orisha that is seated, is installed in a Santero’s head.
On top of spiritual hierarchy in Santería we find Olodumare/Olorun. Only Obatala and
Ellegua know the abode of him. Olofi is thought to be the aspect of God, that can be reached;
it is extremely rare, that he is seated. The same holds for Oddua/Odduduwa. The seven orisha
that can be seated ore “made” during the kariocha ritual are referred to as “las siete potencias
africanas” “seven African powers”, they are Obatala, Eleggua, Oshun, Yemaya, Shango,

Ogun and Oya. Furthermore, Ifá (Orula) is seated, in the Babalaos head. Then we have the
orisha that are received (temporarily): Olokun, Babalu Aye, Aggayu, Yewa, Obba, Dada,
Orishaoko and Ochosi. A third group consists of the minor Orisha, that can be received
together with an aspect of one of the seven powers, Osun, Aña, Iroko, Obi.
• Orisha that can be seated (las siete potenciás africanas):
For their attributes and the saints that they are connected with in iconography, please look up
the Power-Point-Presentation, sheets 89-99 & 110-128.
• Orisha that cannot be seated, but received temporarily
For them look up the sheets 100/135;
For the stories about Yewa and Obba, look up sheets 102-103
For description of the Ibeyi, look up sheets 101 & 138-140
• Minor orisha
For them, look up sheet 104/136
2.2.2.3.2. The bata drums

In Santería ritual the Orisha manifest themselves in possession trance. They are evoked
through drumming and dancing. There are special rhythms played for each of them. The
drums that are used for this purpose are called the bata drums, two headed drums of different
size and tone. The heads are made of goatskin. 3 drums make up an Ensemble, they are
played in a polyrhythmic language, so that each of 6 hands involved plays a particular phrase;
woven together, this results in the special rhythm of the special orisha being honoured by the
drums.
The names of the drums are iyá for the large one, the mother drum, that calls the changes for
the others; itótele for the middle drum and okónkolo for the smallest of the three; those lay
down the basic rhythms, while the iyá does the talking. The drums have to be consecrated in a
process that involves 3 ceremonies, the first one accompanying the construction of the drums’
bodies, the second being held before the fixing of the goatskin drumheads and the third, called
the “blessing of the drums”, when they are to be played for the first time.
1. Choosing the wood (it is always mahogany)
This ritual starts with propitiating Osain, the Orisha who rules over the plants; the chosen
pieces of wood are washed in a herbal infusion, called Omiero. A rooster is sacrificed to
the drum spirit Aña.
2. 3 Babalaos and an Alaña (a consecrated drummer that owns a batá set) have to take part in
the second ritual, Omiero is used again and the warrior Orishas (Eleggua, Oshun, Ochosi
and Ogun) are propitiated. Only when all of them have given their blessings, the process is

carried on. Ifá is cast in order to find out the odu that characterises the drums. An
individual spirit will possess them and sacrifices have to be made. Sacred herbs and other
magical ingredients are placed inside the drums and finally, the goatskin is fixed,
accompanied by animal sacrifice.
3. The 3rd ceremony enhances the new drums’ ashé. The elder drummers first begin to play
their own batás. The they give their drums to the neophyte drummer to play while they for
their turn play the newly consecrated drumset, so that they can share their ashé with the
new drums. The new Alaña then returns their set to the elder alañas who give back his set
to him. Now the new Alaña plays his properly prepared sacred instruments for the 1st
time.
To sum up, we see, that psychic energy is going into the drums in the process of shaping
them, they are filled with ashé. Therfore, Santeros hold, that batá-drums are very powerful
and that their sound is pure magic. They are proud of having preserved this tradition from
Africa. Nevertheless, as David H. Brown has pointed out, the institution of the sacred drums
did not arrive in Cuba as a tradition that was passed on from Yorùbáland, but rather was
reconstructed and reshaped in a process one best describes as “culture building”.
2.2.2.3.3. Trance
The possession-trance is induced by the sound of the powerful batá drums and dancing.
Different rhythms for the orisha are played, starting with Eleggua, who has to open the way.
Joseph M. Murphy describes the moment, when an attendant is falling into trance, as follows:
“The music seems to be coming from imside [the dancers] as if yb their movement
they are liberating the sound from within themselves. One woman in particular is carried
away by this energy, and others begin to channel theirs toward her. The dancing circle clears
for her alone, and the drums focus directly on her.
Her eyes are closed, and she is whirling and whirling. She bumps up against the
human ring that encloses her and gently rebounds back to the circle’s centre. The call and
response between soloist and congregation has become tighter and more intense. For each
praise name of Oshun, the ile immediately responds esho, “hold”: hold the rhythm, hold the
orisha, hold the whirling dancer. Then, with a sharp slap from the iya, she falls to the ground.
The drums are silent, and the room echoes.
Three santeras help her up and begin to escort her from her room. As she parts the
crowd, she is clearly a different person. Her eyes are open now and gigantic, their focus open

to the whole world. Her face is illuminated with an enormous smile, and she moves her
shoulders and her hips with sensuous confidence. Oshun has arrived. [...]
A few minutes later, the embodied orisha returns resplendent in a gold gown. Her hair
is long and unbound, and, like a true African, her feet are bare. She shows the same magical
smile and unearthly eyes. The drummers begin her praises, and all join a litany of her praise
names. She dances her acceptance of these with grace, and even blows kisses to her votaries.
Her dance is sensuous and sweet, moving from deep down her spine.”
2.2.2.3.4. Ebbo- sacrifice

Sacrifice is essential to rites in Santería, as we have seen. To understand the role of sacrifice
in Santería, we simply have to refer to the concept of àşe/ashé; like we have seen in the
context of the batá drums, sacrifice is linked to the transmission of ashé. Often Santería
practicioners are attacked by animal rights activists or civil law. In Florida, a case being held
against a Santero for sacrificing animals was brought before the high-court, that made its
decision in favour of the freedom of religion. Being a vegetarian myself, I find much
hypocrisy in accusations brought forth by members of Western societies against Santeros due
to animal sacrifice in a ritual context, where, in most cases, the animals slaughtered are eaten,
given the way that animals are treated normally in our industrial ways of producing meat.
2.2.3. The relationship between Santerìa and Catholicism

As we have sen, the iconograpy of Catholic saints is used in Santería (and in Afro-Brazilian
cults as well) to depict the Orisha. Many explanations of this circumstance have been brought
forth by scholars, like labelling Santería as „Syncretism“ in a negative sense (an
Africanisation of Christianity misunderstood) on the one side or speaking of „camouflage“ on
the other side. This would mean, that santerìa is wholly African tradition, using the Saints as
mere masking in order to be able the practise the cult within the framework of spanish popular
Catholicism. Mary Anne Clark has described the use of the „siete-potencias-candles“ in north
american Botanicás. A Botanicá is a store, in which one can buy herbs, soaps, candles and
other paraphernelia related (not only) to Afro-American cults. The siete potencias candles are
one example of the so-calkled seven-days-candles, magic candles that burn for seven days. As
a rule, the front side shows the picture of a saint, a religious symbol or the picture of an
Orisha, whilst on the back side one can find a prayer. The siete-potnecias-candles show a very
popular depiction of the seven African powers using catholic iconography:

Here is the description, that Mary Ann Clarke gives:
„The Seven African Powers label on the front

shows an image of the crucifixion with the
title "Las Siete Potencias Africanas" printed
above and the word "Olofi" printed below.
Surrounding the center image are seven
medallions connected by a chain. Each
medallion contains the picture of a Catholic
saint. But at the top of each medallion is the
name of the Orisha generally associated with
that saint. (The Orisha name "Chango" is
clearly visible above the picture of St.
Barbara.) Hanging from the chain connecting
the lowest two medallions is a set of miniature
tools. The typical prayer asks the "Seven
African Powers" who surround Our Lord to
intercede for the devotee to him because "we
received the promise 'ask and you shall
receive'." The prayer asks for spiritual peace,
material prosperity and the removal of
obstacles that cause misery "so that I will
never again be tormented."
She goes on with her description:

“Here we find two symbol systems intertwined in such a way that one need not choose
between them in order to participate in the blessings promised by the candle. One can move
freely and easily between two symbol systems exploiting the strengths of each. In order to
understand this hybridity, let's look more closely at these images. Most prominent is the
crucified Jesus surrounded by a group of objects associated with his passion and death. This
tableau called the Arma Christi, Arms of Christ or Instruments of the Passion, are a group of
objects associated with Christ's suffering, death and burial. The Arma Christi is commonly
found on paintings depicting the Mass of Saint Gregory. As commonly found on the candles
the image includes the cock that reminded Peter that he had denied Jesus, a column and
scourge, the cross, the hammer and nails along with the pliers used to remove the nails, the
sponge used to offer Jesus vinegar to quench His thirst and the lance that pierced His side.
This image focuses attention on one of the most important events in Christian mythology and
places the candle squarely within a Christian milieu. However the title above and Yoruba
word "Olofi" below the image suggest more is going on here. Olofi is a creolization of the
Yoruba word Olofin, a title of Olodumare the Supreme Being of the Yoruba pantheon. The

title Olofin means "supreme ruler" and among the Yoruba is often combined with Orun
(heaven) or Aiye (earth) to designate Olodumare as the sovereign of those planes. Among
Santería practitioners, Olofi is often associated with Jesus Christ as the personal God of
mankind. Thus the image and caption suggests that not only is this an image of the crucified
Christ but also of the Yoruba deity Olofi.
Looking at the individual medallions we find a similar hybridization. Although each image is
of a well-known Catholic saint, the name printed above each image is that of the Orisha
commonly associated with that saint. Thus we find, moving around the label, The Virgin of
Mercy named Obatalla, the Virgin of Regla named Yemalla, the Virgin of Cobre as Ochum,
St. Barbara as Chango, St. Francis as Orula, John the Baptist as Ogum, and St. Anthony as
Elegua. Those who are familiar with Catholic hagiography will note that, with the exception
of the Virgin of Regla whose story associates her with St. Augustine who was born in North
Africa, none of these saints could be identified as an "African" saint.
Below the image, on a chain connecting the medallions, are tiny tools including a sword, a
battle-axe and a lance along with several types of hammers. Santería devotees and others
familiar with the religion will recognise these as the tools of Ogun that many wear on a
similar chain around their ankle. Ogun the Ironworker is a powerful Orisha who is believed to
work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week for his devotees. Including his tools here
not only mirrors similar tools found among the Arma Christi but also invokes the potency of
this Orisha.”
Now, lets us take a look at Oshun, one of the Orisha featured on that candle, being one of the
Orisha that can be seated, as we have already heard. In Yorùbáland she as river-goddess (very
popular in the town of Oshogbo, that lays on the side of the river Oshun), a goddess of
fertility; in Santería he is the patron of love, sexuality and matrimony, and is associated with
money and yellow metals. She is depicted with the image of the Caridad de Cobre, a
„vresion“ of the Virgin Mary, and the patron Saint of Cuba. According to Cuban legend, the
picture of the Caridad was found on the sea by three fisherman in the region of Cobre (a
region, where there is muche copper (cobre) to be found). Te fisherman built a chapel for the
inmage, but it disappeared and was found on another place, thus signifying the vrey spot
where the Vrigin wanted, that a church was built for her. This church became a central place
of religious practice in Cuban catholicism. The black house-servants that were accompanying
their white mistresses to the basilica, were watching waht that coulkd only explain to
themselves as an adoration of a female Goddess similar to veneration of Oshun in
Yorùbáland..This example shows, how these iconographic relationships might have emerged

historically. The question for the scholar of religious studies will be, how one can label or this
process theoretically. As early as 1937 Melville Herskovits took the theological concept of
„syncretism“ and used it in his anthropological work to explain the process described above.
In his eyes, acculturation had taken place leading to a synthesis of African patterns and the
European traditions the black slaves were exposed to. Roger Bastide did a critique of that
explanation. According to him, the process described should be understood as „translation“.
In his opinion, the Santeros are holding, that in the end there is only one God, but God is too
remote to be reached by mankind. For that purpose we have intermediaries, angels and saints
in Catholocism and Orisha in Santería. But one could translate the two conceptions into each
another. The main point of critique against Bastide is, that he is constructing a homogenous
theory of religion out of a diversified field of religious practice on the basis of the idea, that
Santería shares a religious core with the other main religions of the world (although one must
concede, that there are some Santeros who share that opinion). But the term „syncretism“ is
still widely used in the description of Afro-American religions. For instance, George Brandon
explains Santería with that concept, although he „deconstructs“ in later stages of his woirk,
showing, that it has to be looked at as a black-box concept:
„Rather than resolving the problem of syncretism we have come in a roundabout fashion to
the conclusion that the concept of syncretism is a problem for history and anthropology, a
problem which cannot be resolved but only dissolved. In my opinion the concept of
syncretism is a black box concept. The black box contains a number of processes which when
illuminated turn the box white. In every black box there are two boxes trying to get out. Here,
one concerns processes and other states. I believe that processes are the more fundamental of
the two. [...] I believe that the concept of syncretism will dissolve into the study of cultural
and social processes and the effects of problem solving and manipulation, decision-making,
ecology, and creativity in relation to social and historical context[...]“
He shows, how elements of an older „ethnicity“ are being re-formulated and adopted with the
aim „to survive the invasion of a stronger [...] civilisation“ and to foster group-interests. Raul
Canizares is bringing forth similar arguments. In his opinion, the whole question circles
around levels of discourse. The result of his analysis says, that there is a direct proportionality
to be found between Christian and African elements in Santería. The higher level of discourse
– better practical and theoretical knowledge of Santería – will acknowledge more African and
less catholic elements in Santería. But a practitioner of Santería (higher level) talking to an
outsider will use the latter level of discourse, that, for instance, stresses the role of the catholic
saints.

We also have to mention some scholars, like Gerhard Kubik, Henry Drewal, Andrew Apter or
David H. Brown, who stress the transformative character of Yorùbá cultural traditions.
Mary Ann Clarke’s analysis of the use of the „siete-potencias-candle“ supplies the latter
theories. After having noticed, that the candle cannot be found on the altars of santeros, she
asked herself, in which contexts it was used (of course, it was being bought constantly, so
there had to be some use for that item). As she found out, it is used by Santeros, who exert
spiritualistic practices not belonging to Santería proper, or doing ritual work for outsiders.
Furthermore, outsiders of Santería use these candles, when carrying out rituals outside the real
framework of Santería. We can thus see, that herewith we neither find an example for
syncretism in the sense of melting elements of two different religions to a knew religious
movement nor for camouflage, the process of masking original African rites with catholic
iconograpy. Rather we have an example for a cultic milieu, where cults adapt to the needs of
clients.
2.3. A Brazilian parallel: Candomblé and Umbanda

Although the Brazilian religious landscape is full of varieties in the cultic milieu, one can
distinguish the two major branches of Yorùbá derived religions in this country, namely
Candomblé and Umbanda. In Candomblé, there is a bigger amount of traditions of the peoples
of Bantu language. Other denominations or cult-groups that one could mention are Batuque,
Xango, Tambor de Mina oder Nago.
Afro-American religions in Brazil are closely connected to Afro-American culture, like art,
music, dance and healing. For the development of these religions in Brazil, the quilombos,
settlements of escaped slaves, have been of high importance. In the beginning of the slave-
trade, the slaves brought to Brazil were mainly of Central-African origin (Angola, which was
colonised by the Portuguese, where today Portuguese is still the main language spoken).
Later, the number of Yorùbá speaking people of Benin and Nigeria among the slaves reached
a high degree. With the rise of tobacco-industry, urban centres with a significant amount of
inhabitants of African origin arose, the most important being Bahía and Pernambuco. Before
that time, many people stemming from the African continent were already living in St. Luiz,
the capital of the northern state of Maranhao. The merchants divided the slaves into
(fictitious) nations (like Nâgo, Jeje [Yorùbá from Benin], Congo and so on). From the part of
the catholic church, they were grouped in so called “hermandades” (brotherhood) and
“irmandades” (sisterhood). This is a similar process to grouping of slaves in naciones and
cabildos in Cuba..

Brazilian Yorùbá were members of the “brotherhood of our lord of the martyrdom”, and the
“sistershood of our lady of good death”. Women out of that latter group were to found the
first terreiro (as the meeting place is called in Candomblé and Umbanda) in Bahía. Today,
there are more than 2000 cabildos Throughout Brazil, most of them being led by women. As
in Cuban Santéria, the cult centres around the Orixa (as they are written in Brazil), aho are
associated with catholic saints, like
• Oxala (the Brazilian name of Obàtálá, derived from Orìşànlá) as Jesus crucified;
• Yemanja (=Yemoja) as Mary, our lady of conception
• Nana Buruku (a divinty of the Ewe), a godhead associated with water, as Saint Anne
• Yansan (=Oya) as Saint Barbara, because of her relatedness to lightning; legend has it,
that her father was struck and killed by lightning after having slain his daughter for
converting to Christianity.
The leaders of the cults, focussing on the central concept of Yorùbá cosmology, aşe (braz.:
axe), are called pai de santo (men) or mae de santo (women). The initiates are called filha or
filho de santo, respectively, meaning “daughter” or “son” of the orixa; they receive the oirixa
in mediumistic trance. Then there are male supporters, oga, who do not play a spiritual role in
the cult. But give their financial aid. This stems from the time, when the cults were prohibited
by Brazilian law.
The terreiro can be a building on its own, that is owned by a single person or a group, but also
just a single room or a flat in a house. As a whole, it is a sacred place with special rooms
(quartos de santo), the entrance to which is restricted to initiates, whilst in the so-called
barraçaos, where the drumming, singing and dancing is done and also many possessions take
place, one can find many visitors, since this part of the terreiro is open to everyone.
Umbanda has originated in the 1920ies in Rio de Janeiro and has spread all over Brazil since
the 1950ies. Being a religion of the lower classes in its beginnings, it soon attracted many
middle-class citizens and is a religion with members (or participants) from all social levels
nowadays. The main differences to Candomblé can be seen in its more individualistic and
utilitarian approach and lesser significance of preservation or reconstruction of African
elements, so that it can be looked at as more syncretistic than Candomblé, giving more room
to spiritualistic tendencies in the tradition of Allen Kardec.

3. The worldview of the Ewe and Fon of Dahomey and Haitian Vodu
3.1. The worldview of the Fon people

3.1.1. A historical note
The Fon people played the central political role in the former kingdom of Dahomey in the
region that is now called Benin, the neighbouring country to Nigeria in the west. They have a
very similar religious tradition to that of the Ewe, called Vodu or Vodun. The word „vodu“
means the spiritual beings as well as the cult of these beings. The Fon trace their origin back
to a place called Adja-Tado, where their first ancestor is said to have lived around 1300. They
established a dynasty in a place called Alladah or Adrah, which was to become the principle
power in the region during the seventeenth century. During the seventeenth and eighteenth
century they managed what has been called the Fon expansion. Although never a really
centralized kingdom, but more a loosely structured society of lineage grups and extended
families, the kingdom of Dahomey became an important power in 18th century coastal region
in the eastern part of West Africa. A number of wars with the leading Yorùbá kingdom of the
time, Oyo, made them vassals of this kingdom, but finally they could get rid of Oyo’s
dominance, as we have already mentioned before. Through cultural contact, but also through
direct import, Yorùbá religion had a certain impact on the religion in Dahomey, especially
through the Ifa-divination system. In the middle of the 18th century a Dahomean king
imported the Yorùbá
Ifá-system in order to centralise the kingdom’s oracular authority by de-legitimising and
controlling the many vodun possession oracles in the country (Brown 116f).
3.1.2. Worldview and cosmology: Mawu-Lisa, Nana Buruku and Da
As with Yorùbá cosmology and religion, we should not conceive of the Fon worldview as a
unified system of beliefs held in the same way by all of the Fon people. Firstly, the
investigators in Fon religion and worldview had to face a multiplicity of Gods, cults and
myths. This variety results from different reasons: firstly, Fon people have had great ability to
adapt and integrate foreign traditions; then, we find regional differences, but also variations
according to different cult-groups and there own outlook into the world. This somewhat
centrifugal and subversive tendency was fought by the king who introduced Ifa-divination to
his kingdom. As P. Mercier writes, concerning cosmology, we find a common conception

widely diversified in details, and modified in varying degrees among the different groups by a
number of influences.
For the Dahomeans, this present world in which we live in is not the first and only world that
has been created. At the beginning of the present world, there are Mawu and Lisa, a divine
pair, which themselves originate from Nana Buluku, a divinity without a specific cult, but
who is looked at as pre-eminent to the other deities. The myths do not assign any role to him
in the ordering of the world, which is done by Mawu-Lisa, the dual divinity, regarded as
twins, sometimes as an androgynous being (the cult of twins, xoxo, plays an important role in
Dahomean life, but it is still debated, whether their ever was a special cult dedicated to
Mawu-Lisa, or Mawu-Lisa has been looked at as a remote divinity).
Mawu – female Lisa – male

Ordering of the natural world, assisted by Da Ordering of the world of man, assisted by Gu
Moon, Night, Freshness, Rest, Joy Sun, Day, Heat, Labour
Fertility, Motherhood, Gentleness, Power, Strength, Toughness
Forgiveness
In fact, the most significant act in giving order to the world consists in the distribution of
forces among the vodu. But before that, the principal outline of the cosmos has to be given
and established.
Like the Yorùbá, the Fon conceive of the world as a calabash, of which the two halves meet
exactly; the earth, flat, lies in this horizontal plane. The whole calabash floats in another
calabash, surrounded by water, the outside waters being the source of the rain. The task of
ordering the world thus consisted in gathering together the earth, determining the place of the
waters and fitting together the whole. Da, who, in more folkloristic accounts is looked at as
the son of Mawu-Lisa (like the other vodu), in more sophisticated versions is considered to be
more like a force, that manifests itself in a number of ways in the world. His principal
manifestation is Da Ayido Hwedo, the rainbow. Da Ayido Hwedo, which means “serpent”
gives birth to all the other Da in the myths. The serpent is the symbol of flowing, continous
movement. Da Ayido hwedo, by coiling himself around the world, encircled it and made it
stable and firm. He also has a dual character like Mawu-Lisa, but is not conceived as a pair. In
the rainbow, male is the red part, the blue part being female.
3.1.3. The vodu and their abode

Like with the Yorùbá orisa, there are many versions of the genealogy of the vodu, which
cannot be reconciled in another way than by a systematic, projective approach from outside.
Despite of this difficulty, we can say, that the notion is generally held, that Mawu-Lisa gave
birth to all the vodu. When the world was ordered, each of the vodu was given his domain.
Hevioso (Sogbo), the androgynous thunder-God, was made lord of the atmospheric
phenomena, Sakpata, a dual deity, whose weapon is smallpox, was given the earth; Agbe-
Naete, twins of opposite sex, find their domain in the sea and the water, whilst Age is in
charge of the wild, uncultivated land, were no man lives. These are the domains of the
principal vodu; there are two other important vodu, that have no domain on their own. First
we have to take into account, that each domain is subdivided into further, specialised fields of
vodu power. So each domain is a group of vodu. And each domain has its own language,
which is not understood by the vodu of other domains. Legba, the last of the vodu born by
Mawu-Lisa, acts as the intermediary between the groups of the vodu. He is the universal
interpreter between the vodu. Like Eshu, he is a trickster deity. Then there is Gu, who in some
accounts is named as the eldest son of Mawu-Lisa, belonging to a group of sky-gods directly
under the authority of Mawu-Lisa. He is the vodu of iron, with the characteristic features of a
cultural hero, like Ògún, and is considered the lord of the domestic fire-place and the crafts.
He plays a central role as the assistant of Lisa in the second part of the
task of ordering the universe. Mawu is considered of being the force or the part of the dual
deity, that was engaged in ordering the cosmos and creating man, with the assistance of Da.
The week is traditionally divided into 4 days in West-Africa, so that you have for moon-
month, one period from new moon to new moon, 7 weeks of four days instead of 2 weeks
consisting of 7 days, like we are used to. The cosmos was put into order and man was created
on the first day, when Mawu undertook a journey and formed the first beings out of clay. On
the second day, work was interrupted and Gu appeared on the scene. On the third day, man
was given sight, speech and knowledge of the outside world, on the fourth he was taught the
technical skills. So Gu is the one, who is in charge of making the world a place inhabitable by
man. Gu has two aspects: on the one hand he is an instrument in the hands of Mawu-Lisa,
specially linked to Lisa, the strength and the sun; on the first day, the creator, in his aspect as
Mawu, made a journey and formed the primordial men; on the fourth day, it is the creator in
his aspect as Lisa, who travels around the world, accompanied by his assistant Gu, who gives
the technical skills to mankind. The second aspect of Gu is that he is identified with iron, and
with his emblem, the gubasa, a ceremonial sword. In this aspect, he is the heavenly
blacksmith, a cultural hero, patron of all the blacksmiths and inventor of all crafts.

3.1.4. The tohwiyo, the ancestors and Fon Anthropology
Having formed the primordial men of clay, Mawu gave existence to mankind through forming
tohwiyo, the founder of each clan. All the people that share the same essence and join into
practicing the same cult, are of the same tohwiyo. They form a clan. The tohwiyo ensures,
that the clan and its members are still connected to the world of the Gods. He also takes part
in sending souls to the world and calling them back, and is he centre of the clan, also
guaranteeing earthly communication. One can make a distinction between the real clan above
and its manifestation on earth, which is incomplete. The chief of the clan, as an intermediary,
is seen as somewhat in between the two worlds. This connection is established and held
through the ancestor cult, which as given to the clan by the tohwiyo, who also gave the clan
the laws of social life. Aside the ancestor-cults, the tohwiyo has his own cult, which is even
more important than the cult of the ancestors. Ancestor-cult can cause a serious problem to
slaves taken away from their home-soil, where they were linked to their clan. The cult of the
Tohwiyo has its own shrines and initiates as the cult of the vodun. The cult of the vodun, too,
has its different cult-groups and initiates. The organisation of Fon and Ewe vodu therefore can
be called cultic, it is a religion, that is better described as a co-existence of different cults, that,
to a certain degree, rest on a shared worldview, loosely held together, than as a religious body
organised by central institutions. .
Due to his functioning as governor of the clan, the tahwiyo plays an important role in
composing the human being. In the beginning, it was the creator himself who formed men out
of clay. Later, he drew back from such worldly affairs and gave his power in procreation to
the tahwiyo and to the ancestors around them. The ancestor, who is to become the persons
Joto, is "sent" to the family by the Great Sê. He selects the clay, from which the person is to
be formed and becomes the person’s joto this way, to which the se, the human soul, is linked.
With the power of Da, implicitly working in this process, the continuation of human life is
thus set into work. The joto is not reincarnated in the new human being, but rather transmits
to the latter his sociological part, his status and his role, so that several persons living at the
same time can have and indeed most often do have the same Joto.
The human soul (se) has many forms: the se is, strictly speaking, a portion of Mawu, the great
Se of the world. It is the animatin principle. Selido is life, feeling, personality; it is peculiar to
the individual, spirtiual faculty, . The Kpoli, is identified by the fa-oracle, the persons destiny.
An then we find the ye, the indestructible part of the soul, the shadow, that leaves man by the

time of the burial and becomes invisible. There are three stages of Initiation through the Fa
divination-system, similar to that of Yorùbá Ifá-divination.
The adepts of certain Vodu(n) are called Vodunsi, because they are possessed by the Vodun.
They have to go through a process of initiation, in which they learn the language, the dances
and the chants of the Vodun and must work, so that there is an income for the house or
convent of the vodu, the Vodun-kpame (Hunkpame), supervised by the xwégan (head of
house), the Kangan (master of the rope) in charge of discipline and the Hunso and the Nagbo
who are "novice" master and mistress respectively. In the Hunkpamê the elect are initiated to
the cult of their "spouse", the Vodun to whom they are consecrated for their whole life.
Initiation to the Vodun is a particularly important moment that deeply marks the life of the
individual. Its aim is gradually to lead the profane from non-existence to their existence as
sacred persons; the novice undergoes a series of separations which are each a death to the
previous profane life. Before anything else, the Vodunsi must make a solemn vow of absolute
discretion as regards what they have seen and heard or will see and hear in the convent. Any
Vodunsi who cannot keep quiet about what is to remain secret and act with the veneration that
is due to the sacred object he carries on his head will be a traitor who will be charged. The
cult of a certain Vodun is headed by the high-priest, the Hunnon.
After all, the function of this system of initiation, together with the worship of the ancestors of
the families and clans, that have their taboos as well, shows, that the cult of the vodun plays
an important part in binding together traditional society. It can be looked at from its social
dimension.
3.1.5. Recent developments in the context of African traditional religion

Nowadays, there is a revival of these autochthonous cults, one reason for that being, that it is
connected to the traditional form of religious experience of these people, that was suppressed
both by Christian Missionaries and the communist government of independent Benin in he
years 1972-1989. From 28 May to 1 June 1991, a symposium of the great leaders of the
Vodun cults was held with the aim of restoring a certain degree of legal recognition for this
traditional religion. In 1993, a great international Vodun festival was organised and held in
Benin: "Ouidah 92". Its effect was to foster its renewal. In the same year, Pope John Paul II’s
visit and his highly media-enhanced meeting with Vodun leaders were taken by many Vodun
followers, not as a sign of dialogue, but as the indication that the Church at last recognises
that the Vodun cult has its place. This combination of circumstances means that in Benin
Vodun is currently organising and structuring itself more and more as a traditional religion,

with a national feast (10 January) and a national hierarchy. The problem with these cults can
be, that they are partly built upon a system of secrecy and fear, which can lead and in fact
does lead in special cases to religious violence, one example being, that the vodun elect their
vodunsi and that there reportedly have been cases of kidnapping young men or women whose
families did not want, that they join the cult.
But this is a problem of contemporary religious developments in West Africa; that has been
subject to investigations by scholars of religion, such as the study carried out by Karola
Elwert-Kretschmer, Religion und Angst: Soziologie der Voodoo-Kulte / Karola Elwert-
Kretschmer . - Frankfurt, Main [u.a.] : Campus-Verl. , 1997. - 220 S. . - ISBN: 3-593-35848-
4. - Literaturverz. S. 210 – 220, which takes the counterpart side to many studies carried out
in the last decades that try to show the authenticity and originality of African world views and
tend to interpret contexts of fear, magic and violence as misreadings by European researchers.
The spreading of Afro-American cults has led to a vivid exchange between new world
adaptations of African Traditional Religions and these religions on the African continent. We
know of Afro-Americans that go to West-Africa to be initiated in a Cult and than build an
African cultic centre in America, like Baba Ifa Karade or others. Through this process, new
religious developments have started. We have to notice, that not only the religion of the slaves
brought to the Americas can be seen as a transformation and adaptation of African traditional
religions, but that this process is going on nowadays within the Afro-American religious
context.
3.2. Haitian Vodu.

3.2.1. A short history of the religion in Haiti
Apparently, the name Vodu, Vaudu, Vodun, Voodoo or the like, stems from the Fon word
Vodu/Vodun, meaning spirit or deity or the cult of this deities. The followers of the religion in
Haiti and on other places, like the USA, where it has been exported to by Haitians who went
there, do not refer to a religion called “Voodoo”, rather they speak of themselves as people
who are serving the lwa (loa), which is the name for the spiritual entities revered and
manifesting themselves in mediumistic trance, used in the Haitian context.
Haiti (land of mountains) is the name, that the Arawaks, the Indians settling in the Caribbean
sea before the arriving of Columbus, gave to the island that was called Hispaniola by the
European conquerors. Slaves from Africa were brought there since 1517. Later, as the
Spanish conquistadores searched for wealth in other places like Peru, the western part of the
island was abandoned. French pirates made it a dangerous place to live in, and it was only the

French government that could get control of it. So, in 1675 the pirates had turned to farmers
under effective French control, which resulted in a division of the island into two parts in
1697 by the Treaty of Ryswick, when the French officially became the colonial power in the
western part of the island, the state called “Haiti” of our time, and the Spanish restricted
themselves to the eastern part, the Dominican Republic of today.
The French attitude towards the slave-population differed from that of the Spanish, of which
we have heard when talking about Cuba. As Anthony Pinn writes:
“With the Treaty of Ryswick the difficulty in providing solid religious training for slaves was
reinforced by a lack of interest on the part of the French planters and businesspersons who
now controlled the area. This, combined with intense interest in economic gain and advanced
production capabilities resulted in slaves receiving a great deal of religious ‘free space’”.
The efforts of the church to label the religious activities of the slaves as Satan’s work and
preventing them from their traditional practices through controlling the space in which the
slaves moved, and prohibiting gatherings of the Africans, were not successful. In the second
half of the 18th century, many French farmers came to the islands, who allowed their slaves to
cultivate their own little pieces of land, which were in fact those mountainous regions that
were really hard to cultivate, in order not to have to care about supporting them with food. As
an outcome of that, an economy of little farming places developed in Haiti, characteristic for
the country up to our days. Whilst, as we have seen, the urbanism of Cuba has had the main
impact on the emergence of Afro-Cuban religions, in Haiti, the economic background of slave
religion is the place of the Africans in a farming society.
Like in Cuban and Brazilian Afro-American religions, the religion of the slaves consisted in a
blending of catholic and African elements. And this religion also is said to have played an
important role in the Haitian revolution, which took place as a kind of outcome of the French
revolution. The French Revolution of 1789 was seen by the French population of Haiti as a
chance to get rid of the French colonial administration and French taxes. The blacks, freed
and enslaved made their claim for liberation and equality, based on the principle of égalité. In
February of 1791 they conducted an uprising, that forced the French convent to give equal
rights to the mulattos born free. But the social status of the slaves did not change. This lead to
an uprising of the slaves, that has to be seen as a main turning point in the history of Haiti. On
august 14, 1791, slaves and slaves already escaped, gathered in a place called “Bois Caman”
(the Caman forest) under the leadership of a slave that had escaped from Jamaica, whose
name was Boukman. They started a cruel war, burning down plantations and killing white
farmers. It ended in 1804, January 1., with the declaration of independence. So Haiti was the

first colony in the Latin-American world, that gained independence, abolished slavery and
declared equality of all citizens.
As a result of that political development, there were no more slaves sold to Haiti after 1804.
For religious life it meant an isolation from European Christianity. Until 1860 there was no
contact with the catholic church. Christian religion developing on its own. The institution of
one priest in certain Vodu-cults playing the part of the Christian priest seems to stem from
that time. The so-called “bush-priest” (pret-savanne) begins ceremonies by rendering catholic
prayers .From 1860 to the time around 1900, no special attention was paid to the Vodu-cults
by officials of the Catholic church, but at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th
century, with establishing “league against Voodoo” catholic work against that religion began.
Vodu was labeled as devilish, demonic work, like in Catechisms:
“ 31. Who is the principal slave of Satan? – the principal slave of Satan is the houngan
[vodou priets]
32. What are the names given by the houngan to Satan? – The names given to Satan by
houngan are loas [the names for the vodun in haitian Vodun], angels, saints, morts
[ancestors] and marass [the divine twins]”
33. Why do houngan give the names of angels, saints and morts? – [...] in order to
deceive us more easily.
34 How do men serve Satan? In sinning, casting spells, practicing magic, giving food-
offerings, manger les anges, manger marassa.”
From 1960 on the attitude of church officials towards Vodun began to change again, now
being more open-minded to this form of religious life.
Outside of Haiti, voodoo-practice can be found mainly in the southern part of the USA,
namely in Louisiana, where many French farmers fled to, taking their slaves with them, in the
course of the Haitian revolution. They had influence on the so called spiritual churches in the
southern states of the USA, where we still can find so called “Hoodoo” doctors today. There
are also cults related to Vodu in Martinique and Guadeloupe.
3.2.2. Petwo and Rada-cult.

There are two main cult-forms, nanchons (nations), in which Haitian Vodun is divided. The
Petro (or: Petwo)- cult and the Rada-cult. The Petro cult is associated with the Haitian
revolution, but Rada claims to be the more important part of the tradition. The name Rada is
derived from Allada, the Dahomean holy city. Rada loas (lwas) are cool lwas, whilst the Petro
lwas are hot. Both sides of Vodun think of themselves as serving the lwa and bringing the

energies of the universe into harmony with life by that service. As rada lwas are said to reside
in Guinea (Ginen, as the Haitian say), rada provides a connection to the African homeland.
The cult’s purpose for the individual consists in centering oneself in an economy of energy,
whose main agents are:
• Bondye (the supreme power; The word is a Creolisation of the french “bon dieu”
• The lwas (mysteres)
• Ancestors (les morts)
• Other spirits
The petwo cults are of New World origin, they are more aggressive, they are not cool &
balancing, but aggressive and angry. The difference between rada and petro manifests itself,
for instance, in the use of water in rada cult and rum in petro cult. But, as a rule, the petro
lwas are not distinctive of the rada lwas but rather alternate manifestations of the same lwa.
3.2.3. The Vodu-Temple

Vodu is a religion organised in cult-groups, without any institutional framework that the cult-
groups would participate in. The centre of each cult-group is the “temple”, and the members
of the group consider themselves as members of the temple, as all belonging to one greater
family. The head of the family is the mambo (priestess of the cult) or the oungan (priest of the
cult), the initiated members are called ounsi and considered “children of the house”. They call
the mambo or oungan “mama” or “papa”. What has been called a “temple” is, nothing else
than the house of the mambo/oungan, that serves as a religious centre.
On the country, these centres are normally farms. One can find main buildings, in which the
mambo or oungan live with their families and buildings for the lwa. Between the buildings,
that can be decorated with the symbols of the lwas, the so called “Vever” or “vévé” (will talk
about that later), we find trees and plants that supply leaves and herbs for ritual use and
chicken, roosters and goats destined for sacrifice live there, moving freely. Poorer “temples”
consist of only one building, which is the rule inthe cities as well. There are no buildings for
the lwas, but altars, that might be located in a separate room, a corner of a room or inside a
wardrobe. If the temple is in a small place, there is only one altar for all the lwa.
On the altars, ritual objects are kept, like:
• The objects connected to the lwa, like: the sword of Ogou, the mirrors and cosmetic
articles of the love-goddess Erzili Freda, the pipe of the farmer-lwa Azaka, tureens, trays
and bottles that keep sacrificial meals and drinks.
• Pictures and statues of catholic saints, candles, stones and the like

• Sometimes we find toys; they are connected to the divine twins Marassa, who are also
considered to be children
• The ritual dress for the ounsi, being worn after having fallen into trance, also can be found
there.
• For the water spirits a basin is supplied. This basin might be big enough, that a possessed
person (=the water spirit him/herself) can take a bath in it, or it might be as small as a
glass of water.
The peristil is the room, in which festivals and feasts take place, traditionally a terrace with a
roof. In the middle of the terrace we find the poteau mitan, the middle pillar- It serves as the
medium of traffic (the way, the ladder), which the lwa use to travel between their world and
our world. We find that idea of a connecting piece between the different realms of reality (e.g.
the underworld, our world of everyday life and heaven) in many religions; it has been called
“axis mundi” (axis of the world) by scholars of religion. Examples could be Jacob’s ladder
from the Old Testament (Genesis 28,12), the tree that the shaman uses for travelling, the very
idea of a cosmic tree or mountain and the like. Unlike the rooms preserved for the lwas, the
peristil is used in everyday life as a profane room.
Drums: the drums are kept in the peristil. They are considered divine voices, similar to
Santería ritual, the are believed to channel the lwas with the help of their significant rhythmic
patterns. There are two main types of drum-sets:
Rada-set: similar to Santería, a set of three, but with only one head attached to them, they are
called pitit (from french “petit”, little): the little one, segon (from french: seconde, the second
one): the middle-sized drum and manman (the mother), which is the biggest.
Petwo-set: this is a set of drums of Congolese origin, used for playing the sharper rhythms of
the Petwo (or: Congo) rites, in which also a crack of the whip can bring down the lwa.
Other rhythmic devices used are the asan (ason), a calabash strung with beads or bones (best
that of ) a snake and bells.
There is much difference to be found between the form of the cultic centres in Vodun. Ths has
three main reasons:
• Every Voodoo-centre is autonomous, not having to face the rules of any higher instance
• No scriptural fixation of tradition is available
• The flexibility of Vodu-tradition, that has adapted itself successfully to changing
circumstances throughout the centuries.

3.2.4. Healing ceremonies
In Vodu, healing plays an important role. Healing in every respect is of greater significance
for everyday live of an adept of the religion than the more spectacular phenomena of the cult
like possession trance. But this central role of healing has also had an impact on the emerging
of the commonly held image of Voodoo as magic practice, sorcery and witchcraft.
Sometimes the mambo or oungan will advice the consultant to marry a lwa. In vodun, special
lwas can be married to their devotees in a ceremony that is very similar to a wedding between
human persons. This is a kind of an oath to stay faithful to the lwa and to practice sexual
abstinence on the day that is dedicated to the lwa. It can be the devotees ambition to marry a
lwa, but also the lwa can deposit his/her will to do so by manifesting him/herself in dreams or
by causing problems that can be solved by marriage.
Normally, the mambo or oungan use divination to find out what kind of trétmen (treatment) is
appropriate to handle the problems of a consultant:
• A meal for hungry spirits
• A ritual bath
• Making a pwen (point), an object, that focuses a persons problems, in order to be treated.
Example: a woman has a problem with the way that she is treated by her husband. A glass is
filled with ice and syrup, then it is closed. This matter is designed to cool down the man in
question and soften him. Then it is wrapped into a piece of dress of the man, in order to
establish a connection with him. Then the glass is turned upside down, showing that things
will have to change fundamentally. The famous voodoo-dolls stem from that kind of healing
practice, too. For example, to gain a lover, one binds together to dolls and the like.
3.2.5. Zombies
Another spectacular feature of Voodoo, represented dramatically in many movies, is the
figure of the Zombie, roughly speaking a corpse without a soul, rising from the grave. To
understand the concept of the Zombie, we have to know, that Voodooists think of the human
person as one who is guided by more than one souls or spiritual principle:
• The ti bónanj: the “little good angel”, the conscience of a person
• The gwo bónanj: the “big good angel”, the personality of a given person
• The lwa mét tét: the lwa, who is the master of the head, a personal guardian angel, like the
Yorùbá ori bound to a persons head.

After dead, the connection between the gwo bonanj and the lwa mét tét has to be resolved in
the right way through ritual means. When this is done in the wrong way, the gwo baonanj can
be captured by an evil sorcerer (a bòkò), who will transfer the gwo bonanj into an evil spirit, a
Zombie, that he uses for exerting witchcraft.
Another form of the “Zombie” is the above mentioned living dead, a dead corpse without a
soul. In Haiti, this Zombies are thought of as corpses that the bòkò has taken out of the grave
and revived. But, since the gwo bonanj has already left the dead body, it is revived without a
soul. The bòkò uses this Zombie to fulfil hard labour as a kind of human working machine. I
always wonder, if the circumstances of slavery have taken part in shaping such an
imagination.
3.2.6. The lwas

On the top of Vodu-hierarchy we find bon Dieu bon (Bondye), God the father. He is above
the lwas, of whom we can find hundreds in Haitian Vodu, some of them of West African
origin, some of them from Central Africa, some of them organised in a group, where new
lwas can come to existence as new aspects of a given lwa, as it is the case with the Gede-
group of lwa. The "vévé" are drawings of corn meal, flour or gunpowder that "concentrate"
energies of a particular spirit so that he/she might be inclined to reveal him/herself by
materialising in the body of one of the devotees. The vévé are the signature of the Gods.
The adherents to a certain lwa, the ounsi, gradually become initiated into being mediums of
the lwa. The head of person “tét” plays a specific role in that process, and it has to be taken
care of the head ritually, like by cleaning it through a ritual called lavé tét (washing the head).
A person called by a lwa might experience this calling in dreams or through a manifestation
of the lwa in the person in mediumistic trance. A person, who manifests a lwa without being
initiated into it’s cult, will be called an ounsi bosalle, a “wild ounsi”. In order to become a
“civilised” ounsi, initiation rituals have to take place. Through these, the ounsi bosalle will
become a ounsi konesan (kanzo, from the french conaissance, knowledge). The time of
instruction involved may take years, central for that are the rituals of kouche (to be laid on the
floor). The Ounsi bozalle first becomes a ounsi lave tèt, than an ounsi konesan (kanzo), one
that is married to her/his lwa. Later on, he or she can become a oungenikon, a song master
able to lead a ceremony. The steps of initiation take place in a special sanctuary room, the
djévo and are called “kouche”. Initiation does not only serve the benefit of the initiated
person, but, as a medium able to represent the lwa, he or she also serves the community. The
ritual begins with the gathering of the items necessary for the ritual – this can be costly,

although there are no fees to be paid directly for initiation, but there can be a lot to be spent.
The lave tèt ritual consists of a 3 days ceremony of sensual deprivation (most of the time lying
on the floor in a dark room), in the course of which finally the gwo bonanj of the initiands is
separated from their heads in order to establish a connection to the lwa mét tèt. The pot tèt
(pot of the head) will be prepared, in order to receive the gwo bonanj of the initiands. After
preparation, the ounsis promenade with their pot tèts on their heads.
(photograph taken through traditional ceremony in Togo)

After the ritual of lave tèt, their follows a time of instruction and the second step of initiation,
the seven-day kanzo ritual, which is closed by the boule zen (brulé zen), the ceremony of the
burning pots.
3.2.6.1. Some lwas

In this chapter, I will give a short outline of the role of some major lwa and, if available, a
depiction of the respective vévé is given, too.
Aroyo (AGWE) is the lwa of the sea, representing the depths of
the oceans, where many Africans have perished in the Trans-
Atlantic passage. Described as "a ready strength". He is one of
Erzulies’ lovers. His vévé is a ship or fish, iconographically he
is also associated with the catholic Saint “Saint Ulrich”, due to
the latters depiction with a fish in his hands.
Agwe/Aroyo is the patron of ships and sailors; during his annual festival, his devotees go out
on the sea with their boats and give sacrifice to him by placing food and drinks on the ocean
in little boats. The crowd dances to the rhytm of the drums in his honour. He likes the salut-
shots and marine-uniforms a lot.

Aizan Velekhete (Ayizan Avlekete) represents the "female principle."
She sits in the Haitian Vodou temple, and becomes essential in the
initiation of new male and female priests of Vodou. She is represented
as the frond of the royal palm tree, the West African symbol of
freedom and of the interaction between worlds. She is the main spirit of
Jean-Jacques Dessalires, Haiti's first head of state and a national hero.
The palm tree is centrally located on the Haitian national flag.
All cemeteries have a family of spirits that control the

"other" crossroads, the passage from life to death. That
function resides in the Gede family of spirits.The first one of
the symbols is the common symbol for Gede, he watches
over the cemetries, sexuality and humour, he is the lord of
death. One cannot easily distinguish Gede from Legba. The
Gede-family of lwas is growing constantly.
Baron Cimetière (Bawon), whose vévé is the middle one, is
the male principle; he appears as grave-digger, with hoe and
shovel, sometimes carrying a coffing. Manman Brigitte
(Brijit, the third vévé), is the female principle.
Baron Samedi (baron saturday) is a very popular Gede, he
appears in trance as a corpse, talking nasally, falling to the
ground; then he is treated in a similar way as one would treat
a corpse. But he can also begin to make jokes, often
behaving lasciviously.
The Gédé also love children, there is a connection between
the two passages of life: coming to life and leaving it. Gede
is also of importance for healing rituals, because he has
knowledge of alle the wisdom of the ancestors, therefore
being able to support the mambo and oungan in their
spiritual work.

Danbalah and Aida Hwedo (Danbala and Ayida Wèdo) are the
divine serpent and the rainbow, whose powers reside in the
domain of knowledge. Sometimes referred to as Danbala Wedo,
the water spirit, with the symbol of the snake, that can survive in
hot and dry regions and therefore is looked at as a symbol of life-
energy. Associated with St. Patrick, who is sometimes depicted
with snakes, because it is said that he relieved Ireland from the
snakes.
Danbalah is the eldest of the lwa, therfore special attention and care is paid to him. He is also
thought of as connecting the earth with the water underground (Ginen, Guinea, the
homeland), therefore the poteau mitan is also called “poto-Danbalah”.
Grand Bois (Gran Bwa) Haiti lacks a hunting

tradition, but has a deity that represents the
power of all vegetation and all forests in
Grand Bois. This lwa is a paramount healer,
much of healing in the framework of Vodu
being linked to the use of herbs and leaves.
Legba
Above we see two Vévé for Legba Ati-bon the first lwa called at all ceremonies. He stands at
the crossroads and is called the “master of the Crossroads", the maitre carrefoure; his place is
at the entrance of the voodoo ceremonial centre, where gifts are brought to him in the form of
little sacrifices, like breaking an egg, lighting a candle or spilling some drops of gin on the
floor. He is a master linguist, a trickster, the intermediary lwa. He appears as a very old and
crippled man. This can hve its source in african mythology, where Eleggua is said to have
legs of different length, due to the fact, that one of his legs is within the realm of mankind, the
other in the realm of the spirits. He is the one, who allows for the interaction between the
physical world and the metaphysical world, hence the crossroads. In some traditions, he
would also be called "the gatekeeper." He is often depicted with an enlarged penis, being
responsible for fertility, sometimes he is shown as a hill of earth, the first elevation to be
found in the cosmos. Being the lord of the crossroads, the cross is also a sign for him like it is
for the Gede.
Maraca Dosou/Dosa (Marasa): These are the primordial Couple, the
twins. The name Maraca derives from the peoples of the Kongo bassin,
where the name is "Mapasa." The Twins are "completed" by the next
child, the dosou (male) or dosa (female) whose powers are conflated
with the original pair, 1+1=3. The twins are often depicted by images of
the catholic saints Kosmas and Damian, who were brothers. The cult of
twins may have to do with the concept of a primordial duality..
Families with twins are said to be blessed, but they also have a lot of obligations to fulfill,
even after the deth of one of the twins or of both. There is a cult of twins among Yorùbá
people, too, and the birth of twins is a matter of special attention, be it in a negative or a
positive way, in many African societies
Ogou is an important lwa, who is prominent among the petro

and the rada lwa as well; his sign is his sword (machete), or a
gun, which those possessed by him are whirling around in an
impressive way. Being a hot-tempered lwa on the one side,
he is also charaterised by justice and rightfulness. There are
several Ogou, like Ogou Sen Jak Majé (Saint Jakob the
older) or Ogou Panama (wearing a Panama hat).

Erzulie / Ezili: like Ogou, this female lwa has divided in several
personalities, some of them tending to the pedwo, other to the
rada side. She is the goddess of love, representing motherly love,
but sensuality, sexuality and the hard working woman as well.
These various aspects are associated with different forms of
depiction and veneration of the Virgin Mary. Ezilis vever always
shows a heart (apt for a goddess of love) and her various
personalities coulf be looked at as a reflection of the roles a
woman can take in haitian society.
Simbi is of kongolese origin, a name for water spirits; the

original simbis were cool, creative spirits in the Kongo
cosmology. These include Simbi Dlo (Simbi in Water) and
Simbi Andezo (Simbi in Two Waters). The magical ability
of their pwen, called nkisi in Kongolese, translated into
powerful magics, that were then used in Petro rites, giving
rise to Simbi Anpaka, Simbi Ganga and Simbi Makaya to
name but a few.
Every Simbi also has specific associations - Simbi Andezo has a connection to both fresh and
salt water. Simbi Anpaka is associated with leaves and poisons. Simbi Makaya is known as a
sorcerer, and is the patron of the Sanpwel Society. Speaking of “Simbi” as one, his Vévé is a
cross with a snake, he is like legba in being connected to crossroads and facilitating
communications between the realms of humans and the gods, and shares the symbol of the
snake with damballah. He connects the two nanchons, (petro and rada), and is generally
associated with magic and magicians.

A short look at some other African-American traditions
4.1. Afro-American Christianity & the Spiritual Baptists in Trinidad
In the protestant countries, we can notice another attitude towards the slaves, resulting in a
different development of „slave religion“. In the history of Christian mission among the
African slaves on the North American continent (the part that now is occupied by the USA)
the contradiction between Christian Ideals and the reality of a slave-holding society was of
major importance. During the colonial period, Anglican missionaries had to struggle with the
reluctance of the slave-holders, who were against conversion of the slaves mainly out of two
reasons. One of them was the fear of dissolving ethnic differences through sharing the same
religion, which they thought would lead to arrogant slaves. On the other hand , they feared
that baptism would lead to immediate emancipation of the slaves, since the English law
forbade enslavement of fellow Christians.
The latter argument resulted in a specific genre of religious literature with the aim of showing,
that Christendom and slavery could go together. Mainly, these texts relied on Ephesians 6,5.
Suspicions did arise, too, that some slaves would only long for baptism in order to gain
emancipation from slavery. A. J. Raboteau tells us about a missionary in South Carolina, who
demanded a vow from the slaves to be baptised, that the did not want to receive the sacrament
in ode to attain freedom. „Apparently he missed the irony“, as Raboteau writes. In contrast to
the more „magical“ interpretation of the sacrament of baptism within the framework of
Iberian Catholicism, Anglican mission tended to convince the objects of the missionary work
of the superiority of the Christian dogma. Therefore, Anglican missionaries tried to slowly
indoctrinate the slaves. This strategy proved to be not too successful, after all. When
protestant revivalist movements came to the continent from Britain around 1740 and held on
to be influential after independence, this situation changed. Baptist and Methodist spirituality,
with its stress on personal religious experience proved to be attractive to the Africans, used to
ecstatic religious practice. Furthermore, Baptists and Methodists alike were abolitionists in the
beginning of their missionary work overseas. Soon they had to change their official attitude
towards slavery due to experiencing harsh inhibitions. The adopted the strategy of bettering
the situation of the slaves rather then working for abolition. But the short period, during
which they had dissolved the spiritual and worldly separation of blacks and whites on the
basis of the doctrine of equality of all human beings, had led to a dissemination of Christianity
among the slaves. But they were not unaware of the difference between Christian religion he
way it was practised by themselves and the Christianity of their white masters. As a rule,

blacks could only hold religious meetings when being looked after and white preachers were
installed with the task of preaching exactly what was the version of Christian doctrine the
slave-holders thought to be apt for those subjected to them: A former slave describes that kind
of service in this way:
„The preacher came and he’d just say ‚Serve your masters. Don‘t steal your master’s turkey.
Don’t steal your master’s chickens [...] Do whatsoever your master tell you to do.‘ Same old
thing all the time. My father would have church in dwelling houses and they had to whisper
[...] Sometimes they would have church at his house. That would be when they want a real
meetin‘ with some real preachin‘ [...] they used to sing their song in a whisper. That was a
prayer meeting from house to house ... once or twice a week.“
Obviously, a different kind of interpretation of the bible, more apt to reflect their situation in
the way that they looked at it, arose amongst the slaves, who did not hold, that Christianity
and slavery could coexist.. Afro-Americans began to use images and tales from the bible to
describe and reflect their own situation. And what they fund in the biblical books, was a story
of liberation from slavery. White preachers were confronted with an interpretation of biblical
texts opposed to their own. They were preaching redemption from sin, and their black sheep
were thinking in terms of their real liberation from slavery. In the memory of a white army-
chaplain this sounds like that:
„There is no part of the Bible with which they are so familiar as the story of the deliverance of
Israel. Moses is their ‚ideal‘ of all that is high, and noble, and perfect, in man. I think they
have been accustomed to regard Christ not so much in the light of a spiritual deliverer, as that
of a second Moses who would eventually lead them out of their prison-house of bondage“.
These hopes, like the feeling of being imprisoned in a strange land, have been expressed
through the so-called „Negro-Spirituals“, that widely adopt biblical imagery to give an
account of the situation of Afro-American slaves in North America. The promised land,
Canaan, was associated with the North by the slaves from the south, the flight to the north was
described with the crossing of the river Jordan. The irony of this interpretation can be found in
the fact, that white religious settlers had described their way from Europe as the land of
captivity to America as the promised land with the same passages and images of biblical
origin.
Another important reason for the success of Methodist mission among the black Americans
can be seen in the familiarity, that Africans, that came from a background of ecstatic religious
experience had with revivalist spirituality of the Wesleyan type.
One of the roots of Pentecostalism is to be found in Afro-American Christianity, although this
fact has been widely neglected by white historians of Pentecostalism. William Joseph
Seymour (1870-1922), a son of slaves, who learned to read and write on his own, was to
become the central figure in the Azusa Street Mission of Los Angeles. There, during a ten-

days period of fasting between April 9 and 12 1906 charismatic manifestations like speaking
in tongues took place. These events had a decisive impact on the spreading of Pentecostalism
throughout the USA. Seymour, having grown up in the delta of the Mississippi went north as
a young man, first to Indianapolis. Later he moved on to Cincinnati, where he joined the black
community of Methodists and worked as an independent evangelist. Then he went on to
Houston, Texas, where he attended the bible-school of Charles Fox Parham, who is
commonly seen as the founder of the Pentecostal movement. But he had to listen to Parham
from the outside, because the latter was a strict follower of separation of races. Later on,
Parham also became a preacher for the Ku-Klux-Clan, holding to the doctrine, that Anglo-
Saxons were the legitimate heirs of Israel. By taking a look at the history of Pentecostalism,
we see the centrality of the question of race for US-American Christianity. Whilst Azusa
Street Mission, bringing forth 38 missionaries in two years time, had been a symbol for
overcoming borders between the races in the beginning of that movement, soon white
preachers began to complain about the dissolution of these very borders, like Parham did in
1912:
„Men and women, whites and blacks, knelt together or fell across one another; frequently, a
white woman, perhaps of wealth and culture, could be seen thrown back in the arms of a big
‚buck nigger‘ and held tightly thus as she shivered and shook in freak imitation of Pentecost.
Horrible, awful shame!“
As Ian McRobert has pointed out, white Pentecostalists in the USA have made use of
doctrinal conflicts to exclude of its history the leitmotif of black Christianity, ecstatic religion
and revivalism, incorporated in early Pentecostalism. Nevertheless, up to our days Afro-
American forms of Pentecostalism do exist and are coming into existence, like the Revival-
Zion-movement in Jamaica or the Spiritual Baptists, a movement that originated among the
low-class black population of Trinidad under the impact of missionary efforts of the Baptist
Church from the USA.
The Spiritual Baptists are also called shouters, with reference to the characteristics of their
religious meetings, but members of the denomination do not like that term at all. The group
lost connection to its mother church in the USA soon and began to include elements of
Trinidad religions, mainly of the Shango-cult, a Yorùbá derived religion in Trinidad.
Currently, in Trinidad & Tobago (two islands in the southern Caribbean, not far from
Venezuela, statistics say that there are 29,4% Roman Catholics, 23,8% Hindus, 10,9%
Anglicans, 5,8% Muslims, 3,4% Presbyterians and 25,7% of other religions. The largest
groups of the population of about 1,2 million are East Indians (as Indians are called in the
Caribbean) and Africans. Spiritual Baptists nowadays are also found in the USA, Canada, and

Great Britain. Speaking in tongues is very important in this religion, in the centre of the mass,
that can last up to 6 hours we find a very emotional sermon, that is accompanied by responses
from the side of the community Being an ecstatic religion on the one side, Spiritual Baptism is
characterised by a rigid social structure of the community and the other. Hierarchy is
dominated by male persons, the priests are selected for their jobs in reference to their
charismatic qualities. Some of the members, even priests, are followers of Shangoism as well.
The offices held in the community are called leader, preacher and prover (the interpreter),
shepherds (in charge o caring for the children), watchmen (they care about visitors), water
carriers (they have to do with baptism), nurses (take of the candidates), warriors,
commanders, inspectors, judges. Preaching, exorcism of evil spirits (orisha!), talking in
tongues (as a manifestation of the Holy Spirit) and public confession of sins are central
religious activities during the service. The middle pillar of the chapel is of great importance,
like in Vodun.
4.2. African derived religions in Jamaica

4.2.1. Obeah & Myalism
In the years 1655-1807, 750.000 Africans have been brought to Jamaica as slaves in sugar-
production, but in 1807 the total amount of people of African origin in Jamaica was only
320.000. First reports on religion of the slaves talk about Obeah and Myalism, rendering
them as sorcery and witchcraft. Whether this could be looked at as two differnet forms of
African-derived religions in Jamaica, has been subject of discussion. In such an account,
normally Obeah is looked at as the “black magic” tradition and Myalism as it’s “white”
counterpart
• Obeah is a tradition commonly looked at as “black” or “evil” magic. Clients consult
Obeah practitioners to counter illness and misfortunes. A special topic is the power, that
the obeah-man is able to achieve over the shadow of a dead person. The shadow is looekd
at as an outer manifestation of an inner, unvisible principle of a persons, that can be
separated from that person. After death, it becomes a duppie. In case, the dangerous
duppie is not neutralised properly by funerla rites, it can be used by the obeah-man to do
evil. Obeah has been subject to anthropological research as well as it has been used as a
theme or subtext in modern literature, for example in the writings of Derek Walcott.
• Myalism is a tradition that has emerged in the 18th century in Jamaica. As a tradition of its
own it can be considered extinct in our days. Most Jamaicans themselves are not aware of
Myalism. Today, Myalism is looked at as a kind of “white” magic, whilst Obeah is seen as

its “black” counterpart and is morally discredited. It has been described by visitors to
Jamaica as a kind of ritual dance, to which their was some initiation and which also was
imbedded into a social structure of responsibility.
As Dianne M. Stewart has shown, in the first reports of visitors, there is to be found no real
distinction between Obeah and Myalism. Instead of using these moral or ethical categories to
describe the two religions, one could use a more structuralistic approach and differentiate
between the two on the level of their structure. For such a point of view, Obeah turns out to be
a practice placed on the level of individuality, whilst Myalism can be characterised as a
collective undertaking, for the main part consisting in ecstatic worship. Myalist movements
were headed by charismatic leaders with skills as herbalists and healers.
Both religions have been taking part in political uprisings, Obeah being outlawed for that
reason in 1760, Myalism being part of the so-called Native Baptist war. In the post-
emancipation era Obeah and Myalism began to be looked at as antagonistic. But it is not the
character of power each of them uses, by which we could distinguish them. Obeah is handling
of neutral power, and it depends on the practitioner, to which ends he makes use of that
power. Myalism, after having ceased to exist as a practice on its own, became part of other
traditions, such as Kumina, which was introduced to Jamaica by rescued West-African slaves,
who were transferred from brought-up slave-ships to Jamaica in the time between 1841 and
1865.
4.2.2. Kumina & Revival Zion

In 1859 a religious movement arose in Irleand & England which was characterised by
gatherings of praying, fasting & singing in order to achieve salvation in Christ. In 1861 this
movement reached Jamaica and fell on fruitful ground. The economic and social
shortcomings of that time made Jamaicans black population open to a „millenarian“ message.
But the revival was transformed by the black inhabitants of Jamaica into their own religious
forms: Revival Zion & Pucumina (a process called „backsliding“ by church authorities) Both
are forms of African-based Christianity, that worship both sky-bound and earth-bound spirits.
Within that religious framework, spirit possession, drumming, singing and dancing are central
ritual activities.
Pukumina can be distinguished from Revival Zion by some differences in ritual and through
the fact, that in Pukumina-worship also negative earth-bound spirits (fallen angels) play a role

The Pukumina variant is seldomly practiced today. Some scholars also make a distinction
between „Revival“ and „Revival Zion“, sometimes all these groups are rendered as
„Pukumina“ or „Pocomina”.
Until the 1950ies Revival Zion meetings were held on the street, including special drum-
rhythms, singing, testifying, preaching and praying. Nowadays the small communities meet at
gathering houses, the group leader‘s home. Some group leaders are also known for their
healing powers. The first part of a Revival Zion meeting consists of drumming and dancing,
accompanied by spirit possessions, than there follows the singing of the so called “ Sankeys”,
songs from a collection of Ira Sankey. This songs are are „tracked“, by the secretary, i.e., he
reads them out line by line and sung out by the community. The last part of the meeting
consists in reading of the scriptures, preaching or testifying, or healing by laying on of hands,
according to the kind of meeting. A special feast within Revival Zion is the so-called “table”,
a ritual centred around a decorated table adorned with flowers, candles, sacred water, fruits,
coconuts, rice and so on. All in all, a meeting takes place like a normal one, but with more
impact on the dancing. Around the table additional rites take place, related to the experiences
of initiated persons with the spirit. At the end of the ritual, the table is “broken”, which menas,
that all join in a communal meal.
4.2.3. Rastafarianism
The Rastafari movement stems from 20th century Jamaica. It is better described as a
movement than an institutionalised religious group or body. It has spread all over the world,
and is widely known because of it’s connection to the very popular Reggae-Music (and other
forms of music derived from that like Dub, Raggamuffin and so on).
Ras-tafari is an amharic word, being the title of the emperor Haile Selassie. It means
“honourable and adorable prince”. In the year 1930 Haile Selassie was crowned in Ethiopia,
at that time the only country on the African continent not subject to a European colonial
regime. Marcus Garvey, a born Jamaican, had been preaching about Africans going back to
their African homeland. He had founded the Universal Negro Association and the African
Communities League in Jamaica in 1914. The crowning of Haile Selassie now was seen as a
sign that re-patriation was about to take place. This fostered Ethiopianism, a world-view that
had been alive in Jamaica for many years. The first Jamaican to teach the divinity of Haile
Selassie was P. Howell during the early 30ies. He has to be looked at as the first and most
successful preacher of Rastafari doctrine. He formed the King of Kings Mission and began to
preach about Selassie and the returning to Africa in 1931. Between 1845 and 1865 Congo

people that had come to Jamaica. They and their offspring were those among the Jamaican
black population having the most recent memories on Africa. Howell came into contact with
them and was influenced by their views. In 1933 he was arrested for 2 years for preaching
seduction. In 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia and as an outcome of that, Haile Selassie had to
leave the country and went to London to exile. As a reaction to this, the Ethiopian World
Federation was founded in New York. A department of that Federation was established in
Jamaica in 1937. In that time, Howell had already published writings, in which he had
formulated the key ideas of Rastafarianism:
• The concept of Black Supremacy
• Theocracy and the Salomonic dynasty
• The opposition between Zion and Babylon: two opposed domains ruled by Haile Selassie
and the pope.
He establishes the Ethiopian Salvation Society in 1939, and builds a – now legendary –
community at Pinnacle in 1940, where he moves to with a number of followers. In the course
of the following years, the government seeks to destroy Howard’s organisation, raiding
Pinnacle for the first time in 1941 and being successful in destroying it in 1954. The influence
of the community, in which Howell introduced African and East Indian influences like
Kikongo and Hindi languages, the tradition of Kumina drumming (of Congolese origin), and
a couple of chants, that were part of the religious and ritual life in Pinnacle. This community
was of great influence during the formation period of the Rastafari movement. In 1941 Haile
Selassie returned to Ethiopia. 1947 The Youth Black Faith was founded in Trenchtown, West
Kingston. This group can be seen as a linkage to the formation of the House of Nyahbinghi,
which is considered the orientation in Rastafarianism being the foundation of Rastafarian
orthodoxy. In 1983 a resolution of the Rastafari Theocratic Ensemble adopted a resolution in
which this was stated. According to Nyahbinghi order, the following beliefs are held by
“Rastafari orthodoxy”:
• Within this era, His Imperial Majesty (H.I.M.), Haile Selassie, is the living God
• Ethiopia is Zion
• The oppressive society of the West is Babylon
• Those who have been stolen by Babylon from Africa have the right of repatriation in
Africa or Zion.
But it has to be taken into account, that there are many groups and individuals, that consider
themselves Rastafarians without belonging to the house of Nyahbinghi or joining the above-
mentioned central beliefs. Furthermore, there is no centralised social organisation found in

Rastafarianism. So it has been described as a culture, a social movement, a religion. Rastafari
followers prefer the word “livity”, which means a way of life informed by theocracy.
Theocracy in the Rastafarian sense of the word means to accept the divinity as a leader, so
that many Rastafari followers consider “Jah” to be the only leader, the head of us all.
So, although the House of Nyahbinghi may have fixed beliefs, Rastafari is also socially and
ideologically fluid. During its development since its emerging in the 1930ies in Jamaica, the
movement has built many organisations and spread upon the world. Many of these
organisations have ceased to exist, like the “Organisation of Rastafarian Unity” (founded in
1980). We can name some, as:
• Rastafarian Centralisation Organisation (1990), a coalition of the following groups:
Rastafari Patriot, Rasses International Sistren, Rastafari International Theocracy
Assembly, Peace Makers Association.
• Twelve Tribes of Israel: founded 1968 in Jamaica, having international membership. They
do not hold Haile Selassie as the Living God, but rather as a person of high spiritual
quality.
• Ethiopian World Foundation (1938), a.k.a. Bobo Dreads.
Many Rastafarians belong to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Rastafari followers tend to
build social organisations in order to achieve a certain goal and after the work has been done,
the organisation disappears and new ones come to existence.
A point of frequent discussion in Rastafari movement since its globalisation in the 1980ies
has been the relationship of men and women, brothers and sistren. Due to Old Testament
values, in Nyahbinghi orthodoxy, women are excluded from key ritual activities, particularly
during the time of their menses. On the other hand, sisters have played an importnat role in
Rastafari activities.
So we can see, that within the framework of Rastafari social organisation, there is a tension to
be found between:
• Organising due to some commonly held values and views on the one hand and democratic
principles on the other hand. This could be seen as a
• Tension between egalitarianism and hierarchy that can also be found in
• Male-female relationship, that is often interpreted in terms of the Bible, whilst on the
other hand, H.I.M. himself broke with the tradition, when he had his wife at his side
during the coronation ceremony.
• Another tension in Rastafari movement exists between the strengthening of African values
in a racist and white-dominated world, leading to black particularism and more

universalistic values like love, peace, truth, justice, that would make the faith attractive for
many Non-Africans, too.
Some key features of Rastafari Thought and life-style will be mentioned in the following:
• Interpreting history with the bible as a guide-book. Rastafarians look at history as a
cyclical dispensation of time. So the stories and the symbolism of the bible can be
attached to other agents in different times. For instance, the persecution Of Israel in Egypt
or in the Babylonian exile is the persecution of blacks taken from Africa and subjected to
slavery in our times; Christ was persecuted like H.I.M; but they have different symbols:
Christ being the lamb, H.I.M. the conquering lion of Zion. The symbolism of the arch is
based upon an ambiguity, because the English word “arch” means the arch of the covenant
and the Arch of Noah. With that ambiguity in mind, we can understand, how Rastafarians
can make a symbolic link between the covenant with Jah and the slave ships or the ships
that will bring them back to Africa, respectively.
• Using cannabis, “herb”, in ritual context. It is widely smoked, by individuals as well as in
ritual context, where the spliff and the chalice are ceremonially lit.
• Reasoning: a form of collective discourse in which individuals explore the implications of
a particular insight in discussion, that is not competitive, but co-operative. It resembles
forms of traditional African social organisation, where problems had to be discussed until
a consensus was found, as opposed to the western democracies basic idea of majority
ruling.
• Livity: the daily life. Some practices are based upon Old Testament laws, namely the book
of Leviticus: Abstinence from certain food, not cutting ones hair, which results in the
traditional dreadlocks. Dreadlocks are sometimes referred to as the covenant and looked at
as powerful. Rastafari often say, that one should not grow dreadlocks until he has a strong
foundation in the faith. They are also thought of as a tool for communication with Jah.
Therefore, according to Nyahbinghi orthodoxy, dreadlocks have to be covered whilst one
is in Babylon. Brothers must remove them for giving praises, whilst sisters are generally
expected to keep their heads covered in public.

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PD DR.

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 1

1. The transatlantic slave-trade.

1.1. A few sketches of West-African History

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 2

1.1.2. The kingdom of Gana

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 3

1.1.3. The kingdom of Mali

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 4

1.1.4. The empire of Songhay (to be pronounced as “Son-r-ay”)

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 5

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 6

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 7

1.3. The situation of slaves of Yorùbá origin in Cuba

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 8

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 9

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 10

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 11

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 12

2. The religion of the Yorùbá and Cuban Santería

2.1 The religion of the Yorùbá in Africa

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 13

2.1.2. Yorùbá Cosmology

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 14

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 15

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 16

2.1.4. Communicating between aye and òrun

2.1.4.1. The òrìşà

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 17

2.1.4.1.1 The multiplicity of òrìşà

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 18

2.1.4.1.2 òrìşà funfun and òrìşà gbigbona

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 19

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 20

2.1.4.1.3. Şàngó and Obàtálá

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 21

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 22

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 23

• Şàngó as òrìşà of thunder and lightning

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 24

• The role of Obàtálá in creating men

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 25

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 26

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 27

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 28

• Other devices for Ifá divination:

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 30

2.2. Santería in Cuba

2.2.1. Ancestor cults

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 31

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 32

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 33

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 34

2.2.1.3. Kardecism and Santería in Cuba

Hödl, Introductory Course to Afro-American Religions in the Caribbean 35