African traditional religions

• 1. Introduction

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  African traditional religions are passed down not in books but in narratives, songs, myths, and festivals, from one generation to the next. Over 100 million people across 43 countries follow these traditions. They are highly diverse, yet they share a common shape. Spirits and gods, both higher and lower. The veneration of the dead. The use of magic and traditional medicine. Most can be described as animistic, with polytheistic and pantheistic aspects woven through them. Some hold a supreme being alongside other gods. Others reject the idea entirely. What does it mean for a religion to live entirely in the spoken word, with no scripture to anchor it? How do the dead remain present among the living? And why, when Islam and Christianity arrived and largely displaced these older faiths, did so many African people refuse to give them up, choosing instead to practice both at once? The role of humanity here is unusual. It is seen as one of harmonizing nature with the supernatural.

• 2. The Living Dead

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  Ancestors are an integral part of reality in traditional African religions. Jacob Olupona, the Nigerian American professor of indigenous African religions at Harvard University, calls ancestor veneration central to the African worldview. Deceased humans, and sometimes animals or important objects, still exist in a spirit world. From there they can influence or interact with the physical world. Most ancestral spirits are believed to be good and kind. When an ancestral spirit takes a negative action, it tends to be small, causing minor illnesses to warn the living that they have wandered onto the wrong path. The ancestors are believed to occupy a higher level of existence than living human beings. They can bestow either blessings or illness upon their descendants. They offer advice, good fortune, and honor. They also make demands. An ancestor may insist that its shrine be properly maintained and propitiated. The defining line between deities and ancestors is often contested. Some believe the ancestors became equal in power to the gods themselves. This belief in ancestors testifies to something distinctive about traditional African spirituality. It is inclusive by design, holding that deceased progenitors still play a role in the lives of those who follow them.

• 3. A Worldview, Not A Creed

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  Highly complex animistic beliefs form the core of these traditions. They include the worship of tutelary deities, nature worship, ancestor worship, and belief in an afterlife. There are also elements of totemism, shamanism, and the veneration of relics. These traditions are not religious principles so much as a cultural identity. The community, one's family, and the environment all play an important role in personal life. Olupona rejects the western and Islamic definition of monotheism, arguing it is too simplistic to capture the complex African traditions. Some traditions have a supreme being alongside other deities. Others do not. Monotheism, he says, cannot reflect the many ways African spirituality has conceived of deities, gods, and spirit beings. He summarizes these religions as not only religions but a worldview, a way of life. Clemmont E. Vontress offers a unifying thread. He holds that the various religious traditions of Africa are united by a basic animism, and that the belief in spirits and ancestors is their most important element. Gods, in his account, were either self-created or evolved from spirits or ancestors that the people came to worship. He also notes that most modern African folk religions were strongly influenced by Christianity and Islam, and so may differ from their ancient forms. That collision between old and new is where the story turns next.

• 4. The Double Faith

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  African people often combine the practice of their traditional beliefs with the practice of Abrahamic religions. Islam and Christianity, having largely displaced indigenous African religions, are frequently adapted to African cultural contexts. Monotheistic elements, such as the belief in a single creator God, were introduced into traditionally polytheistic African religions rather early. The two faiths spread widely, though they concentrated in different regions. Islam's spread across North and West Africa was significantly impacted by Sub-Saharan trade routes, where Muslim merchants helped carry it. In Senegal and Mali, Sufi Islam often integrates aspects of local spiritual practices. Christianity arrived through European missionaries and brought profound changes. Some communities embraced it fully. Others blended its teachings with traditional belief. In parts of West Africa, certain Christian denominations incorporate traditional rituals and symbols into their worship. Many Africans who converted to other religions kept their traditional customs alive, combining them in a syncretic way. Within contemporary Africa, many people identify with both traditional religion and either Christianity or Islam, practicing elements of both in a form of religious duality. West African religions, unlike Abrahamic religions, are not idealisations. They seek to explain the reality of personal experience through spiritual forces that underpin orderly group life, contrasted against those that threaten it.

• 5. When The Drums Begin

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  In West and Central African religious ceremonies, members of the community are overcome by a force, called ashe or nyama, and excited to the point of going into a meditative trance. The trance responds to rhythmic, driving drumming or singing. One such ceremony, the Okuyi, is practiced in Gabon and Cameroon by several Bantu ethnic groups. The drumming carries meaning beyond rhythm. Each instrumental pattern, played by respected musicians, is unique to a given deity or ancestor. In this state, participants embody a deity, ancestor, energy, or state of mind, performing distinct ritual movements or dances that further heighten their consciousness. When this trance is witnessed and understood, adherents glimpse the pure or symbolic embodiment of a particular mindset. The practice builds a skill: separating the feelings a mindset elicits from how those feelings show up in daily life. Contemplating pure energy this way helps participants manage and accept such feelings when they surface in ordinary moments. It allows them to transform those energies into positive, culturally appropriate behavior, thought, and speech. Sometimes those in a trance utter words. When a culturally educated initiate or diviner interprets them, they can reveal directions the community or individual might take toward its goal.

• 6. Reading The Bones

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  Because Africa is a large continent with many ethnic groups and cultures, there is no single technique of casting divination. The casting may be done with small objects: bones, cowrie shells, stones, strips of leather, or flat pieces of wood. Some castings use sacred divination plates made of wood. Others are performed on the ground, often within a circle. In traditional African societies, many people seek out diviners on a regular basis, and there are generally no prohibitions against the practice. Diviners, also known as priests, are sought for their wisdom as counselors in life and for their knowledge of herbal medicine. Mystics carry a related role. They are responsible for healing and divining, a kind of fortune telling and counseling similar to that of shamans. Traditional healers must be called by ancestors or gods. They undergo strict training, learning to use natural herbs for healing along with more mystical skills, such as finding a hidden object without knowing where it is. Traditional African medicine is directly linked to these religions. In the Serer religion, one of the most sacred stars in the cosmos is Yoonir, which is Sirius. With a long farming tradition, the Serer high priests and priestesses, the Saltigue, deliver yearly sermons at the Xooy Ceremony in Fatick. They time these sermons before Yoonir's phase in order to predict the winter months and tell farmers when to plant.

• 7. The Pantheon

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  Followers pray to various spirits as well as to their ancestors, including nature spirits, elementary spirits, and animal spirits. The difference between a powerful spirit and a god is often minimal. Most African societies believe in several high gods and a large number of lower gods and spirits. Some religions hold a single supreme being. The source names several: Chukwu, Nyame, Olodumare, Ngai, and Roog. Others recognize a dual god and goddess, such as Mawu-Lisa. Traditional African religions generally believe in an afterlife, in one or more spirit worlds where both spirits and gods reside. Some also hold a concept of reincarnation, in which deceased humans may reincarnate into their family blood lineage, if they wish to or have something to fulfill. The Serer concept of reincarnation rejects the incarnation or reincarnation of the Supreme Deity and Creator Roog. Yet the reincarnation of the Pangool, or souls, is a well held belief in Serer spirituality. Monotheistic concepts were not foreign to Africa. Some research suggests the belief in a high god or force, set among many other gods and spirits sometimes seen as intermediaries to the creator, was present before the Abrahamic religions arrived. These indigenous concepts differed from the monotheism of the Abrahamic faiths. One rare exception ran the other way. Pharaoh Akhenaten created a short-lived monotheistic religion, making it mandatory to pray to his personal god Aten. His youngest son, Tutankhamun, reverted the change.

• 8. I Am Because We Are

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  Ubuntu is an Nguni Bantu term meaning humanity. It belongs to a concept sometimes translated as I am because we are, or humanity towards others. In Zulu, the phrase is umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu. In Xhosa, the same term often carries a more philosophical sense: the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity. Ubuntu is a collection of values and practices that people of Africa, or of African origin, view as making people authentic human beings. Though the nuances vary across ethnic groups, they point to one thing. An authentic human being is part of a larger and more significant relational, communal, societal, environmental, and spiritual world. Virtue in traditional African religion is often connected with carrying out communal obligations. The examples are concrete: respect for parents and elders, raising children appropriately, providing hospitality, and being honest, trustworthy, and courageous. In some traditions, morality is tied to obedience or disobedience to God. For the Kikuyu, the supreme creator Ngai, acting through lesser deities, is believed to guide the virtuous person as one's conscience. This moral world has also faced violence. Traditional African religions have been persecuted by Christians and Muslims, with adherents forcefully converted, demonized, and marginalized, and sacred places destroyed. The Serer ethnoreligious group of the Senegambia have faced religious and ethnic persecution since the 11th century. The Dinka people, by contrast, largely rejected or ignored Islamic and Christian teachings altogether.