African and Afro-diasporic: magic in this belief world

African and Afro-diasporic religions include Ifa and Orisha worship in West Africa, Vodou in Haiti, Santeria or Regla de Ocha in Cuba, Candomblé and Umbanda in Brazil, Obeah in Jamaica and the Caribbean, Hoodoo and conjure in the American South, and Palo and Kongo-derived practices. They were created by enslaved Africans and their descendants and are living religions. This page uses the communities' own names, and explains why outsiders' words did harm. They are among the largest religious families of the Americas, with millions of practitioners.

Origins and forms

These religions grew from the beliefs of Yoruba, Fon, Kongo and other peoples carried by the Atlantic slave trade. They honour spirits or gods, such as orisha, lwa and nkisi, as well as ancestors, and use initiation, drumming, offerings and possession. Under slavery, many took the faces of Catholic saints. Hoodoo is a set of folk practices and not an organised church. Ifa in Yoruba land and in Cuba is a system of verses and divination, and its priests, the babalawo, are trained for years.

Naming and stereotype

Voodoo, as a horror film and doll image, is a distortion of Vodou. Missionary and colonial writers called these religions fetishism, witchcraft and devil worship. Practitioners prefer Vodou, Santeria or Lucumi, and Candomblé. The stereotype of the voodoo doll comes largely from European folk magic and fiction, and has little to do with Vodou practice. Initiation brings a new name, a guiding orisha or lwa, and a place in a religious family, and many initiations include seclusion, dressing in white and the learning of songs and rules.

Persecution and recognition

Slave owners and later governments banned or raided these religions. Haiti's Vodou was prosecuted under anti-superstition campaigns in the 1940s and recognised as a religion in 2003. Brazil's Candomblé houses were once raided by police. The US Supreme Court in Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. Hialeah (1993) protected Santeria animal sacrifice as religious practice, which sacrifice remains controversial to some. Animal sacrifice is part of some of these religions, as in many others around the world, and is performed according to rules of its own and by trained people, with the food shared among the community.

Today and the market

Practice has spread through migration to New York, Miami, London and Paris, and many Black practitioners see the religions as a return to heritage. They face commercial use of sacred names, appropriation by outsiders, and ongoing prejudice from some churches. Some initiatory knowledge is closed, and entries here stay with what communities openly share. Recent years have brought scholarship, museums and festivals that celebrate the religions, as well as new tensions with evangelical churches that call them demonic and have attacked temples in parts of Brazil.