West African Vodun
Vodun or Vudun (spirit in the Fon and Ewe languages, with a nasal high-tone u; also spelled Vodon, Vodoun, Voudou, Voodoo etc.) is an indigenous organized religion of coastal West Africa from Togo to Nigeria. Vodun is practised by the Ewe people, Kabye people, Mina people and Fon people of southern and central Togo, southern and central Benin and (under a different name) the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria.
It is distinct from the various traditional animistic religions in the interiors of these same countries and is the main origin for religions of similar name found among the African Diaspora in the New World such as Haitian Vodou, the Vudu of Puerto Rico, Candomblé Jejé in Brazil (which uses the term Vodum), Louisiana Voodoo and Santería in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. All these are syncretized with Christianity and the traditional religions of the Kongo people of Congo and Angola.
Read more about West African Vodun: Theology and Practice, Relationship To Bò, Demographics
Famous quotes containing the words west and/or african:
“Where there’s more of singing and less of sighing,
Where there’s more of giving and less of buying,
And a man makes friends without half trying
That’s where the West begins.”
—Arthur Chapman (1873–1935)
“We live in a highly industrialized society and every member of the Black nation must be as academically and technologically developed as possible. To wage a revolution, we need competent teachers, doctors, nurses, electronics experts, chemists, biologists, physicists, political scientists, and so on and so forth. Black women sitting at home reading bedtime stories to their children are just not going to make it.”
—Frances Beale, African American feminist and civil rights activist. The Black Woman, ch. 14 (1970)