Ideas and issues for African Americans considering the practice of West and Central African Traditional Religions.

Although there are cultural variations in belief among Africans, author Kwabena Dei Ofori-Attah believes they are not strong enough to blur the common strands that give Africa its distinctive religious character.

A short overview of the many Traditional Religions practiced among people of differing cultural, linguistic, and ethnic groups; gives names for the supreme deity in many African languages; part of a larger site on polytheism.

This site describes Akan cosmology and illustrates it through traditional Akan religious symbols, each of which encodes within its graceful lines a theological or moral belief or lesson. The integration of this rich traditional Akan symbolism into the Roman Catholicism of Ghana is shown, as well.

Ancestor cults loom large in the anthropological image of Africa, but only certain dead with particular structural positions are worshipped as ancestors; this paper presents a study of ancestor and elder veneration among the matrilineal Suku of south-western Congo (Kinshasa).

Death and the afterlife play a large role in the religion of the Ibo and Kalabari (part of the Ijaw) of Nigeria, who believe in worshipping spirits, in karma, and in the existence of each person's "two souls." An essay by Karen Hauser.

An exhibit of Yoruba religious art, with brief explantions of the iconography of the deities depicted.

Hilde Arntsen, University of Oslo, presents an introduction to the Traditional Religions of Zimbabwe, whose people communicate with God through their deceased ancestors. Part of a larger site on all the religions of the nation, including Christiantiy and Traditional-Christian-Syncretic religions.

By Mercy Amba, an article in Cross Currents, the journal of the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life.

An online newsletter dedicated to African Traditional Religion around the world, with a focus on Yoruban religion and culture in America.

Originally published in the Journal of the African Society, Vol. 19, in 1919, this essay describes the religious customs of the Ga people of Ghana as they existed independently of Roman Catholic influence.

In 1996 the government of Benin declared that Voodoo and other ATRs (practiced by about half of the population) are officially recognized religions on a par with Islam and Christianity, and gave ATR its own national holiday, January 10.

Origin Myths of Mande, Yoruba, and Cameroon.

Large site created by an African-American Priestess, to initiate others across the diaspora. Site features both Dahomean Vodoun and Mami Wata traditions of West Africa, with articles on these and other ATRs in Benin, Togo, and Ghana; bibliography; links to related pages.

A brief introduction to the religion and rituals of Yorubaland.