African religions encompass a wide array of beliefs and practices across the diverse cultures of the African continent. It is crucial to recognize that generalizing about "African religions" can be misleading due to the continent's vast geographic variation and cultural diversity. Each of the more than 50 modern countries in Africa has its own unique history, comprising numerous ethnic groups with distinct languages, customs, and beliefs. African religions are as diverse as the continent itself.
Nevertheless, long-standing cultural contact, ranging from trade to conquest, has created fundamental commonalities among religions within subregions, allowing for generalizations about the distinguishing features of religions indigenous to Africa. While no single body of religious beliefs and practices can be identified as African, similarities in worldviews and ritual processes exist across geographic and ethnic boundaries.
A map of Africa, highlighting the continent's diverse geography and cultural regions.
Key Concepts in African Religions
Generally, African religions hold that there is one creator God, the maker of a dynamic universe. Myths of various African peoples relate that, after setting the world in motion, the Supreme Being withdrew and remains remote from the concerns of human life. Despite the general belief in a Supreme Being, cults to the "high God" are notably absent from many African religions; prayers of petition or sacrificial offerings are directed toward secondary divinities, who are messengers and intermediaries between the human and sacred realms.
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African religiousness is not a matter of adherence to a doctrine but is concerned with supporting fecundity and sustaining the community. African religions emphasize maintaining a harmonious relationship with divine powers, and their rituals attempt to harness cosmic powers and channel them for good.
Rituals and Practices
The cults of the divinities are visible in the many shrines and altars consecrated in their honour. Shrines and altars are generally not imposing or even permanent structures and can be as insubstantial as a small marker in a private courtyard. Right relations with the divinities are maintained through prayers, offerings, and sacrifices, especially blood sacrifices.
Ancestors also serve as mediators by providing access to spiritual guidance and power. Death is not a sufficient condition for becoming an ancestor. Only those who lived a full measure of life, cultivated moral values, and achieved social distinction attain this status. Ancestors are thought to reprimand those who neglect or breach the moral order by troubling the errant descendants with sickness or misfortune until restitution is made.
Ritual often marks a transition between physiological stages of life (such as puberty or death) and a change in social status (as from child to adult). Rites of passage are natural occasions for initiation, a process of socialization and education that enables the novice to assume the new social role. Initiation also involves the gradual cultivation of knowledge about the nature and use of sacred power.
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Yoruba cap mask for the Gelede masquerade, wood, pigment, 1930-60; in the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
Masks are an important part of ritual in many African religions; they often represent ancestors, culture heroes, gods, and cosmic dynamics or the cosmic order. Circumcision and clitoridectomy are common and widespread rites of initiation. Although the surgical removal of the clitoris and parts of the labia minora is more radical and more dangerous than male circumcision, both forms of genital mutilation are understood to be important means by which gender is culturally defined.
Possession and Mediation
Possession trance is the most dramatic and intimate contact that occurs between devotee and divinity. In most cases, possession is actively sought, induced through the ritual preparation of the participant. Techniques that facilitate this altered state of consciousness range from inhaling vapours of medicinal preparations to rhythmic chanting, drumming, and dancing.
Contact with the divinities is not always so direct; mediators between the human and divine realms are often necessary. Statuettes called "fetishes," for example, are thought to give substance to invisible spiritual intermediaries. Diviners are ritual specialists who have mastered a technique for reading signs that communicate the will of the divinities. Thought to possess the gift of clairvoyance, diviners are believed to share in the power of insight usually reserved to the spirits. Divinatory ritual is the centrepiece of African religions, because it opens to all a channel of mediation with the gods.
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Witchcraft and the Control of Power
Witches are humans who are thought to possess intermediating power; they are called the "owners of the world" because their power to intercede surpasses that of the ancestors or the divinities. Their power is ambiguous and therefore dangerous, however, and must be controlled.
Throughout Africa, misfortune is ultimately explained as the work of witchcraft, and witches are often seen as forces of evil, even if they are unaware of the ill they do.
Afro-Diasporic Religions: A Synthesis of Traditions
Afro-diasporic religions are traditions that originated among descendants of Africans displaced by the Atlantic slave trade. These traditions are practiced primarily in the Caribbean, Northeast South America, Brazil, and the Southern United States. Traditions include Candomblé, Santería (also known as Lucumí), Vodou (Haitian, Dominican, and New Orleans), Hoodoo (rootwork), and Winti.
These traditions have retained most central ideas and practices of their African parental traditions (e.g., divination practices, possession rituals, belief in multiple deities and spirits). Due to contact with Western ideas and traditions (mainly through colonialism and missionary efforts), they arguably became closer to Western ways of thinking.
Gelede mask, wood and pigment, Yoruba culture, Nigeria, late 19th or early 20th century; in the Brooklyn Museum, New York.
Cosmology and the Concept of Ashé
While Afro-diasporic traditions do not have a uniform worldview or cosmology due to regional and cultural differences, most show stark similarities and shared ideas. The cosmology in Afro-diasporic traditions is heavily influenced by Yoruba cosmology.
An important concept in most Afro-diasporic traditions is that of ashé (axé in Candomblé and ashé in Santería). The concept traces back to Yoruba and is difficult to pin down. It is sometimes used to refer to the fundamental reality that makes up everything. Ashé is believed to be a force that circulates among all beings. Human subjects ought to seek balance of ashé through proper ways of living and ritual behavior. Balancing ashé is key for maintaining well-being.
Deities, Spirits, and Spirit Possession
Most Afro-diasporic traditions acknowledge the existence of a transcendent ultimate origin of reality, known by various names such as Olódùmarè, Elédùmarè, Bondye, Anana, and others. Non-ultimate deities or spirits are more prominent in religious practices. The deities or spirits govern different natural domains, often reflecting Yoruba influences in their names.
Most, if not all, Afro-diasporic traditions actively practice spirit possession. During possession, a spirit takes over a human’s bodily and behavioral functions. In Afro-diasporic traditions, spirit possession can be malevolent but is usually regarded as good. Spirit possession is facilitated by ecstatic rituals that make humans prone to trance states.
John Mbiti's Contribution to Understanding African Religions
John Mbiti's "African Religions and Philosophy" is a classic study of the attitudes of mind and belief that have evolved in the many societies of Africa. Mbiti argues that part of the reason the world is so unfairly prejudiced against Africa is that most people believe that animalistic, native religions are unsophisticated and evolve through time to become more respectable. He highlights the continuity of African forms of religion with other forms of human religiosity and establishes the diversity of African religion from other forms of religiosity.
Mbiti establishes two fundamental concepts in African religiosity: "God" and Time. By analyzing verb tenses from different language groups, Mbiti claims that African forms of time are different than other human concepts of time, such as linear ones. Ultimately, Mbiti establishes two kinds of Time: Sasa and Zamani (Swahili). Sasa is understood as "small time," or time that is centrally located close to the present moment. Zamani, in contrast, is "Macro-Time," or time that takes place distantly from the present moment.
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| God | A "supreme Being" in terms largely familiar to Europeans and Americans. |
| Sasa | "Small time," time centrally located close to the present moment. |
| Zamani | "Macro-Time," time that takes place distantly from the present moment. |
| Ashé | Fundamental reality that makes up everything, divine energy that pervades the universe and ensures creation. |
