The past few years have seen the black community express similar sentiments of "awakening"—or "wokeness," if you prefer. From university education to beauty standards, there have been widespread calls to decolonize our ideas and institutions, and shake off old colonial beliefs and strictures. Traditional African religions appear to be the final and most controversial frontier.Read more: Black Magic: Hoodoo Witches Speak Out on the Appropriation of Their Craft
Shooting on the set of "Ancestral Voices" in Haiti. Photo courtesy of Verona Spence-Adofo
"Any Negro or other slave who shall pretend to any supernatural power," the act said, "and be detected in making use of any blood, feathers, parrots-beaks, dogs-teeth, alligators-teeth, broken bottles, grave-dirt, rum, eggshells, or any other materials relative to the practice of Obeah or witchcraft… upon conviction… [shall] suffer death." Obeah and myalism, another folk religion, remains outlawed in Jamaica under the Obeah Act 1898.Sanctions such as these left later generations wary or outright terrified of their own cultural practices. "It's a direct colonial legacy that we've held on to." Spence-Adofo says. "That we're not good enough in our in our natural form and we have to conform to everyone else's ideology."Many slaves that were shipped to the Americas continued their practices in secret, but over time syncretized and fused with Christianity so that they could practice openly under colonial rule.It's a direct colonial legacy that we've held on to.
Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa, a Zulu sangoma (traditional healer) and author from South Africa. Photo courtesy of Verona Spence-Adofo
"We can go to any church and you'll see an altar with a candle on it and Jesus's photo and no one says a word. But when Africans do it—it's witchcraft, it's devil worship, it's evil," says Spence-Adofo.Yaa makes the same point, citing as an example the highly controversial 'trance' where Santeria priests are possessed in order to facilitate direct communication with the orishas. "But if you're going into trance in a church, that's okay because it's the Holy Spirit," she says.Some also fail to reconcile Christianity's message of love with the brutal way it arrived on African shores, as well as its use as a control mechanism by colonial masters."[Christianity is] a distraction," Benedicte Songye Kalombo says emphatically. She is the digital editor of New African Woman magazine; her religious practice fuses together traditional faiths hailing from Congo, where her family is from. Like the others, she is passionate about destigmatizing the religions she feels have enriched her so much. "We need to stop building churches and start building institutions—Jesus hasn't done it in over 400 years. He hasn't saved us."We need to stop building churches and start building institutions—Jesus hasn't done it in over 400 years. He hasn't saved us.
Watch: Summoning Healing Spirits in Post-Earthquake HaitiPeople like Kalombo believe that a return to indigenous faiths can help to empower the African diaspora that has now spread across the world. Both Christians and traditional practitioners of religion agree on one thing thing: These practices are powerful, whether you believe in the supernatural or not. Vodou is credited for the success of the Haitian revolution, in which Haitian slaves ousted the French—the only slave uprising that led to the founding of a state free from colonial rule. It was during a vodou ceremony that slaves planned the first uprising—a ceremony that was later spun by Christian missionaries as a "blood pact with Satan." It's a counter narrative so potent that, some 220 years later, Christian televangelist Pat Robertson argued that the so-called pact caused Haiti's devastating 2010 earthquake."That's been their mission ever since colonization: Kill African spirituality. And that's what's made us weak," Kalombo sighs. "We're spiritually stronger than anybody else but we don't realize—if don't tell a lion as a baby, they won't know they're the king of the jungle. You've removed their teeth."The misinformation has persisted in every sect. Mami Wata, for example, are best known in parts of contemporary Nigerian culture as part succubus, part mermaid bogey-women, as opposed to a pantheon of ancient water deities as they were worshipped as in pre-colonial West Africa.
Angela Bassett plays vodou priestess Marie Laveau in "American Horror Story: Coven."
Beyonce channeling Oshun in the music video for "Hold Up." Screencap via YouTube
"It's natural progression. Things in life always go in cycles and it's that time. Even now with the Black Lives Matter protests that have been going on here and the US, there is a strong energy of black empowerment which—even up to a couple of months ago—wasn't there."But despite black identity riding high on the political agenda, centuries of stigma won't necessarily wash out over night. Colonialism hoped to eradicate these belief systems entirely, and to eradicate all memory of indigenous practices. Whilst they didn't quite manage it, they did enough to ensure any attempts at a full blown renaissance would face an uphill battle of Sisyphean proportions."The colonists didn't stop until they completed their goal," Benedicte Songye Kalombo says forcefully. "We have to work as hard as they did to destroy it. Are we willing to?"Read more: Exploring a Vodou Priestess's Spirited World, in Photos
