The indigenous religious beliefs and practices of African peoples include various traditional religions. While generalizations of these religions are difficult, due to the diversity of African cultures, they do have some characteristics in common.
Generally, they are oral rather than scriptural, include belief in a supreme being, belief in spirits and other divinities, veneration of ancestors, use of magic, and traditional medicine. The role of humanity is generally seen as one of harmonizing nature with the supernatural.
While adherence to traditional religion in Africa is hard to estimate, due to syncretism with Christianity and Islam, practitioners are estimated to number over 100 million, or at least 10 percent of the population of the continent.
African diasporic religions are also practiced by descendants of Africans in the diaspora in the Americas such as Candomble, Umbanda, Quimbanda in Brazil, Santeria in Cuba and the United States, Lucumi in the Caribbean and Vodun in Haiti and the United States
African traditional religion, African traditional religions, Indigenous African religions are all common terms used to discuss the subject of indigenous faiths found within Africa. Each term is debated among scholars.
Some challenge the word "traditional" and prefer "indigenous" since traditional can also include traditional African Islam and Christianity, and are established traditions in African societies.
Some, such as Mbiti, contend that while using the singular "religion" a plural understanding is needed. Others suggest that these thousands of "religions" are only differing expressions of the same basic "religion."
The argument posited is that a centralized structure of rituals and beliefs run the entirety of the African continent.
Some suggest this is problematic as there is no "genetic" relationship between these plural beliefs to create ideological homology, and the observed similarities can subjectively also be found outside of Africa.
West African religious practices generally manifest themselves in communal ceremonies and/or divinatory rites in which members of the community, overcome by force (or ashe, nyama, etc.), are excited to the point of going into meditative trance in response to rhythmic or mantric drumming and/or singing.
One religious ceremony practiced in Gabon and Cameroon is the Okuyi, practiced by several Bantu ethnic groups.
In this state, depending upon the types of drumming or instrumental rhythms played by respected musicians (each of which is unique to a given deity or ancestor), participants embody a deity or ancestor, energy and/or state of mind by performing distinct ritual movements or dances which further enhance their elevated consciousness, or, in Eastern terms, excite the kundalini to a specific level of awareness and/or circulate chi in a specific way within the body.
When this trance-like state is witnessed and understood, culturally educated observers are privy to a way of contemplating the pure or symbolic embodiment of a particular mindset or frame of reference.
This builds skills at separating the feelings elicited by this mindset from their situational manifestations in daily life. Such separation and subsequent contemplation of the nature and sources of pure energy or feelings serves to help participants manage and accept them when they arise in mundane contexts.
This facilitates better control and transformation of these energies into positive, culturally appropriate behavior, thought, and speech.
Further, this practice can also give rise to those in these trances uttering words which, when interpreted by a culturally educated initiate or diviner, can provide insight into appropriate directions which the community (or individual) might take in accomplishing its goal.
Followers of traditional African religions pray to various secondary deities (Ogoun, Da, Agwu, Esu, Mbari, Thiorak, etc.) as well as to their ancestors. These divinities serve as intermediaries between humans and the primary god.
Most indigenous African societies believe in a single creator god (Chukwu, Nyame, Olodumare, Ngai, Roog, etc.).
Some recognize a dual or complementary twin Divinity such as Mawu-Lisa. For example, in one of the Yoruba creation myths, Olodumare, the 'Supreme', is said to have created Obatala, as Arch-divinity, who then created humans on earth. Olodumare then infused those human creations with life. Each divinity has their own priest or priestess.
There are more similarities than differences in all traditional African religions. Often, the supreme god is worshiped through consultation or communion with lesser deities and ancestral spirits.
The deities and spirits are honored through libation, sacrifice (of animals, vegetables, or precious metals). The will of God is sought by the believer also through consultation of oracular deities, or divination.
In many traditional African religions, there is a belief in a cyclical nature of reality. The living stand between their ancestors and the unborn. Traditional African religions embrace natural phenomena – ebb and tide, waxing and waning moon, rain and drought – and the rhythmic pattern of agriculture. According to Gottlieb and Mbiti:
The environment and nature are infused in every aspect of traditional African religions and culture. This is largely because cosmology and beliefs are intricately intertwined with the natural phenomena and environment.
All aspects of weather, thunder, lightning, rain, day, moon, sun, stars, and so on may become amenable to control through the cosmology of African people. Natural phenomena are responsible for providing people with their daily needs.
For example in the Serer religion, one of the most sacred stars in the cosmos is called Yoonir the (Star of Sirius).
With a long farming tradition, the Serer high priests and priestesses (Saltigue) deliver yearly sermons at the Xoy Ceremony (divination ceremony) in Fatick before Yoonir's phase in order to predict winter months and enable farmers to start planting.
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