Brazilians march for Eshu, an Afro-Brazilian deity, to protest Christian intolerance

A march in honor of the orisha Eshu drew some 150,000 people in São Paulo recently, considered a rebuke to the rise of evangelical Christians’ political power.

People attend the March for Eshu, Aug. 18, 2024, in São Paulo, Brazil. (Video screen grab)

August 27, 2024
By Eduardo Campos Lima


SÃO PAULO, Brazil — A march in honor of an Afro-Brazilian deity drew some 150,000 people in São Paulo on Aug. 18, shocking many in this historically Catholic country that has witnessed the growing numbers and political power of evangelical Christians.

The March for Eshu, honoring a West African Yoruba orisha, was widely interpreted as a rebuke to the evangelicals who are credited by political analysts with securing the presidency for conservative politician Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, much in the way American evangelicals championed Donald Trump. Bolsonaro has cited Trump as a model in the governing style as well.

In the Bolsonaro era and since — Bolsonaro lost his bid for a second term to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022 — signs of evangelical Christians’ ascendancy have been everywhere, from the omnipresence of televangelists on the airwaves to the crucifixes and the Bible displayed in government offices to the 30-year-old March for Jesus, at which millions fill city streets around Brazil.

In marching for Eshu, adherents of Afro-Brazilian religions showed themselves ready to make their voices heard. “My idea was to combat intolerance against my faith. But not through confrontation. I just wanted to show the size of our creed and of our people,” said 32-year-old social media influencer and businessman Jonathan Pires, who organized the march.

Pires said he was disturbed by the way evangelicals have demonized his spirituality. Illegal in colonial times, the faiths brought by enslaved Africans to Brazil before slavery was outlawed in the late 1800s were practiced secretly, and orishas were often venerated after being renamed for Catholic saints. During Bolsonaro’s tenure (2019-2022), verbal and physical aggressions against those people grew exponentially.

Adherents of Afro-Brazilian faiths, which include Candomblé and Umbanda, were historically marginalized — and, many say, unrepresented: Out of fear and shame, many told surveyors they were Catholic.

Eshu has different aspects in Candomblé, which views him as an orisha, and in Umbanda, in which Eshu is an ancestral force, one often associated with bohemians and outcasts.

In either faith, said Maria Elise Rivas, a yalorisha (or priestess) of both Umbanda and Candomblé, “he’s a force with uncontrollable power, something that transforms him into a kind of transgressor, a manipulator and a destroyer.” He is also a messenger who mediates between humans and the gods.

In all this, Rivas pointed out, Eshu is problematic for monotheistic faiths and is often portrayed as a devil by Christians. “Those traditions have rigid rules, but for Eshu everything is flexible,” said Rivas. “There’s no idea of right and wrong, but a conception of building endless possibilities.”

Taking Eshu to the street, like the March for Eshu did, also challenged the racial and economic divisions in Brazilian society. A march made sense, said Rivas, “because the street doesn’t belong to anybody in particular, it belongs to all races and classes, and that’s the essence of Eshu.”

Jonathan Pires, center holding child, participates in the March for Eshu, Aug. 18, 2024, in São Paulo, Brazil. (Photo courtesy of Jonathan Pires)

Social media has allowed followers of Afro-Brazilian traditions to unite against oppression and organize against attacks on them. In the past few years, Pires has become an activist on believers’ behalf. He created a bumper sticker reading: “It has never been luck, it has always been macumba,” a retort to familiar bumper stickers on Christians’ car bearing slogans like: “It has never been luck, it has always been Jesus.” (A macumba is a percussion instrument used in Candomblé rituals and a slur, positively reappropriated in the bumper sticker, for an adherent for an Afro-Brazilian faith.)

“Many people see our religion as one of poverty. I want to show to everybody that we’re also prosperous, given that Eshu opens the way for us,” Pires said.

His work on social media has earned him more than 600,000 followers on Instagram, which he uses not only to talk about religion, but to advertise his charitable work. When floods devastated the state of Rio Grande do Sul earlier this year, Pires managed to collect 120 tons of food and other basic items for those impacted, and he and his family spent more than two weeks in the region helping to distribute aid kits to flooded areas.

“That was also a way of demonstrating that Eshu is not about bad energies, like many people think. He feeds us and elevates us,” Pires said.

He said he paid for the costs of the march and refused when politicians offered their support. “Eshu is not a supporter of (Lula da Silva’s) Workers’ Party nor a supporter of Bolsonaro. My party is Eshu,” Pires said.

On social media, however, many people associated the march with the left wing, in part because Pires asked participants to wear red, one of Eshu’s ceremonial colors, but also the color of the Workers’ Party.

But Caio Fábio, a prominent evangelical pastor who has become a critic of the religious right, pointed out that, given the Brazilian right wing’s close ties to evangelicals and conservative Catholics, the March for Jesus has become regarded as a political rally for rightist politicians such as Bolsonaro. “The March for Jesus has always been ideological and political,” Fábio said.

“It became a perverted event, full of politics. And that phenomenon was accompanied, of course, by the deterioration of the Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches, which also became aggressively politicized.”

Ironically, he said, Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches have long assimilated elements of the Afro-Brazilian religions as they tried to convert their adherents. The frantic circular dance known among evangelicals as the reteté accompanies their speaking in tongues as they feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, a usual component of neo-Pentecostal celebrations many times associated to African-Brazilian religions.

“Many people left their original African Brazilian creeds and began to frequent evangelical churches, which scandalously appropriated some of their ritual forms,” Fabio said.

But many, he added, especially the youth, are returning to Umbanda or Candomblé because of the politicization of the evangelical churches.

Pires said that since the first March for Eshu in 2023, people are becoming more comfortable with outwardly showing their Umbanda or Candomblé faith. “More and more Camdomblé or Umbanda practitioners feel comfortable to wear our traditional bead necklaces on the street. People used to be afraid or ashamed of doing so,” he said.

Ivanir dos Santos, a Candomblé leader in Rio de Janeiro and a longtime opponent of religious intolerance, said the March for Eshu is a natural reaction from a people who can’t stand to be attacked anymore.

“The March for Jesus has a conservative, moralistic, homophobic and intolerant agenda. That segment reacted in order to elevate its own self-esteem,” he told RNS.

Dos Santos has argued for opposing intolerance not through marches of Afro-Brazilian believers alone, but a variety faiths. “That’s why I defend the idea of promoting walks that join people from other creeds and social segments that promote freedom and democracy, instead of marches,” he said.

Pires said that he met a number of Catholic priests and evangelical pastors at his march, but some experts said the opposition had to begin with Eshu.

“The African Brazilian religions have a marvelous ability of resisting,” said Rivas. “And Eshu is a great reference in that process, because he is the one who rebuilds reality for all the people, no matter who they are.

Stability is not in the cards for 2023: Divinations reveal a year of transitions

Using tarot, astrology, runes and countless other divinatory methods, practitioners offer a reading on the pulse of the year to come.

Image from Pixabay/Creative Commons

January 6, 2023

By 

Heather Greene

(RNS) — If there’s one thing pagans, witches, brujas and other spiritual folk agree on as they look ahead and make predictions for the year of 2023, it’s that change is coming.

“(This) will be a year of transition,” said Lorraine Anderson, an oracle deck author and spiritual teacher based in Los Angeles in an email. “I’m excited to welcome 2023, and despite some obstacles, the year ahead feels like (a) fantastic period of growth, evolution, and clarity.”

Annual divinations are a common practice in a number of spiritual traditions. Sometimes they are done privately for oneself or a small group, sometimes more broadly for anyone to reference or utilize. Practitioners use tarot, astrology, runes and countless other divinatory methods to take the pulse of the year to come, not promising specific eventualities but sketching the year’s character. 

A tarot card reading using the Moonchild Tarot deck. Photo courtesy of Lorraine Anderson

Anderson, like many professional readers, makes annual predictions meant for everyone. Her 2023 vision, crafted using both the Kuan Yin Oracle and Moonchild Tarot decks, shows the potential for real gains in our spiritual strength. Blessings, she said, will come in the form of “inspiration, expression and fresh perspectives.”

In her reading, the presence of the Judgement card highlights the importance of self-reflection and personal understanding. The three of cups, she said, warns us to “leave room for fun and connection to the people who mean the most.”

“The spirit of collaboration is your most important goal” for the year, she said, emphasizing the need for community.

Lorraine Anderson. Courtesy photo

Looking into the future in this way can be scary, knowing it might reveal obstacles or upsetting possibilities. It takes bravery, Anderson believes, to glance forward. Everyone wants to have “the best year ever.”

However, most readers take comfort in the warnings as much as they do in positive predictions.

Theresa Reed, best known as the Tarot Lady, is a “planner by nature” and loves year-ahead readings. “If I’m aware of what’s happening, I’m more likely to make better decisions,” she told RNS in an email interview. She has been doing readings for more than 40 years. 

Like Anderson’s, Reed’s predictions for 2023 are filled with momentum, but her reading speaks more specifically to current socio-political conditions, from war to public health. “The year is governed by the Chariot,” she said, “which is associated with the number 7.” Travel will return, but crises on the world stage will escalate, she noted. 

“This may seem frightening at first, but there is an end in sight. The will of the people is mightier than the iron fist,” Reed said. “Younger leaders will begin to take the reins, and the old way is coming to a close rapidly.”

Reed explained, “The Chariot gives everyone the ability to get back in the driver’s seat of their lives. You’ll have better options this year and more willpower at your disposal.” You don’t have to settle, she added. “Focus on what you want and go for it.”

A tarot reading by Theresa Reed. Photo courtesy of Theresa Reed

Reed combined her tarot reading with astrology, noting three major 2023 astrological events. “Jupiter moves into Taurus in May. Saturn moves into Pisces in March. And Pluto takes a dip in Aquarius in March,” she said. She drew a card from her Weiser Tarot for each of these planets.

According to her reading, the Hanged Man, drawn for Jupiter, suggests the patience and sacrifice of the past years, through the pandemic, will pay off in 2023. The Seven of Wands, drawn for Saturn, suggests “there are still struggles that need to be wrangled,” she said, such as social justice, equity and reproductive and identity rights. 

The High Priestess was drawn for Pluto, the planet of transformation. “The divine feminine is awakened, and the patriarchy will be undergoing massive changes,” she said. “People want peace.”

These three major astrological events also took center stage in Diotima Mantineia’s 2023 reading, which she makes publicly available annually. “We are in the middle of an era of massive social, political, and environmental upheaval,” she wrote. 

Mantineia is a professional astrologer and witch. She has been doing annual readings for decades. “I’ve been fascinated by prediction since I first started studying astrology way back in 1969,” she told RNS.

“The astrology of the upcoming year plants the seeds of a collective awakening to reality that the coming years will bring to fruition,” Mantineia wrote. In other words, prepare to change or be changed.

“The planetary patterns galvanize personal searches for truth and bring shifting power dynamics to the collective and in our personal lives,” she said. Mantineia, like the other readers, sees a call for community strength and unity.

Jupiter is the one to watch, she said: “Questions of truth, justice, law, and religion will demand answers from individuals, organizations, and governments, as well as artists and scientists.”

In her full reading, posted to her blog Urania’s Well, Mantineia provides a detailed month-to-month outlook, demonstrating how to personally navigate this year of transformation. “You may feel that you’d happily pass on the changes, and be fine with a bit of stability, maybe even boredom, back in your life after these last few years,” she said.

But that’s not what is in the cards or the stars.

Theresa Reed. Photo by Jessica Kaminski

Mantineia, Anderson and Reed all provide a similar general outlook: 2023 will be a year of transition, transformation and change — socially, politically, personally. Finding strength deep in yourself, embracing and even unleashing your talents and welcoming community is the way through the coming chaos as we ride the Chariot to 2024.

Their readings also aligned with the community-specific Letter of the Year, perhaps one of the most well-known annual divinatory predictions.

The letter is divined by Cuba’s senior-most priests of Lukumi, who are trained in the ancient divinatory system called Table of Ifá. Lukumi, often called Santeria, is also known as Regla de Ocha and is a Yoruba religious practice that finds its origins in Africa.

“The Letter of the Year is one of the most important ceremonies,” explained Olosha Afefe Omooya, and is not meant for the general public. Omooya is a priest and a professor living in Miami and, although he is not one of the leaders producing the letter, he pays attention.

The letter offers technical information such as suggested offerings, prayers and meditations, he explained. It also includes the year’s governing Orisha, the divine spirits, sometimes considered deity, or forces of nature, within the Yoruba religious practice. This year’s governing Orisha is Obatalá, one of the oldest of the orishas and creator of humankind, accompanied by Oshún, a river deity associated with femininity.

Omooya did add that, for 2023, the letter generally advises “an attention to health matters and the avoidance of excess of processed foods, greater education work against domestic violence,” particularly with respect to women, children and the elderly. It also called for “continued work for unity in the community,” he said.  

The letter, as Omooya explained, is determined by the Asociación Cultural Yoruba de Cuba, an organization of priests sanctioned by the Cuban government. Some priests believe “the Letter should be specific to nations.” Today, many communities divine their own Letter of the Year, said Omooya.

In the U.S., that work is done by Miami-based priests. Their Letter of the Year, he explained, “concludes that 2023 will bring about social rebirth,” and “speaks to removing of obstacles and favorable changes.” The governing Orisha is Eleguá, a deity of roads or paths, also accompanied by Oshún.

While the letter’s predictions are meant only for the Yoruba community, Omooya welcomes the growing interest in it. “Many practitioners keep their faith and veneration private because of discrimination,” he said. “I hope that interest in the letter translates into an invitation to better understand the Yoruba faith,” as well as Cuba and the Cuban diaspora in the coming years.

Cuban Santeria priests predict respiratory disease for 2022

Online News EditorJanuary 2, 2022

 

Havana, Jan 2 (EFE).- This year will be one of respiratory, cardiovascular and nervous system disease, according to forecasts made on Sunday by Cuban Santeria priests, known as “babalawos,” who also called for the public to exercise humility and follow good hygiene habits in 2022.

The predictions, which are part of the so-called “Yearly Letter” of prophesies presented on Sunday to the press by Cuba’s Yoruba Cultural Association and are the results of the traditional meeting between Christmas and New Year’s Day by a group of priests from all families of Santeria on the communist-ruled island.

The babalawos warned that 2022 will be governed by Obbatala, the Yoruba religion’s main “orisha” or deity who is also known as the creator of the Earth.

The warnings of the priests come within an especially significant context for the island due to its serious economic crisis and the resurgence in Covid-19 cases after authorities had managed to get the pandemic mostly under control in the last few months of 2021.

The prognostications by Afro-Cuban religions included in the Letter recommend “avoiding arrogance and bad behavior,” exercising good personal hygiene and paying more attention to the education of children and teens.

Regarding marriage, the priests recommended that couples act with greater prudence to avoid catastrophes, as well as be humble, patient and united in dealing with life’s travails.

The predictions and admonitions come after a year marked by the Covid pandemic and the closure of Cuban schools due to the prevalence and spread of the coronavirus, but also a series of social protests and increased political polarization.

The priests also called for “establishing favorable agreements on immigration policies to prevent the loss of human lives,” especially at a time when the illegal emigration of Cubans trying to get to the United States across the Florida Strait has skyrocketed.

The forecast also contains somewhat mysterious mentions of “dead king, installed king,” “I have everything, I have nothing,” “while there’s life, there’s hope” and “God gives a beard to he who has no jawbone,” all of which can – with a certain stretch of imagination – be applied to Cuba’s current context of scarcity and galloping inflation.

Obbatala will be the Yoruba deity to reign in 2022, the priests say, and combines characteristics with the Virgin of the Mercies, the patron saint of Barcelona. He is thought by Santeria believers to have created the world and sculpted human beings, and he presides over the head and a person’s thoughts and dreams, according to the Yoruba religion.

His name derives from a Yoruba word meaning “king of purity,” and thus he governs all that is clean, white and pure and does not abide a lack of respect or any form of nudity in his presence.

Santeria developed in Cuba as part of the cultural heritage brought by African slaves during the Spanish colonial era and it has been passed down through the generations via prayers, rituals, dances and even in various kinds of food.

The religion merges Catholicism with ancient African beliefs and is practiced by millions of Cubans, with most people on the island saying that they “accept” it or “consult” the religion’s priests for help and advice with assorted questions, problems or difficulties.

NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS: Cuban authorities in recent months have substantially reduced the size of EFE’s press contingent in Havana, where there are currently just two journalists reporting. EFE hopes to be able to regain its reporting capability on the island in the coming days.

EFE lh/int/dmt/bp

 THE LANGUAGE OF THE ORISHA

'Talking drum' shown to accurately mimic speech patterns of west African language

Analysis demonstrates the value of studying non-western cultures to bring important new insights to mainstream musicology and linguistics

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FRONTIERS

 

IMAGE: THE IFESOWAPO DÙNDÚN ENSEMBLE PERFORMING IN IGBO ORA, SOUTHWEST NIGERIA. view more 

CREDIT: DR CECILIA DUROJAYE

Musicians such as Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton are considered virtuosos, guitarists who could make their instruments sing. Drummers in west Africa who play hourglass-shaped percussion instruments called dùndúns can make their instrument not only sing, but talk. New research published in the journal Frontiers in Communication is one of the first to show the high degree of acoustic correlation between these talking drums and the spoken Yorùbá language.

Dùndún drumming is a musical-oral tradition where skilled drummers, manipulating the intensity and pitch of the instrument, can mimic Yorùbá, a tonal language mainly spoken in southwest Nigeria. Dubbed 'talking drums', dùndúns can be used as purely musical instruments or what scientists refer to as speech surrogates, imitating the three tones of the language.

The authors of the new paper describe how they analyzed and compared 30 spoken and sung verbal snippets with corresponding drum and song excerpts. They found that the dùndún very accurately mimics the microstructural characteristics of Yorùbá vocalization directly, while the fidelity decreases when the drums are used purely for music or less direct communication such as song. The scientists also distinguish four modes through which the talking drum connects music and language - rhythm, singing, drum talking-performative and drum talking-direct.

New understandings between music and speech

Equally important, the acoustical analysis demonstrates how studying non-western cultures can enrich the way scientists more generally understand the relationship between music and speech, as well as how humans process them, according to lead author Dr Cecilia Durojaye, a researcher and musicologist affiliated with the Department of Psychology at Arizona State University.

"These kinds of multicultural findings are useful for considering deeper relationships and understanding of types of auditory communication and the evolution of language and music," she said. "The talking drum is unique in that it has a foot in both language and music camps, and because its existence reminds us of the thin boundary between speech and music."

While the talking drum is specific to the Yorùbá language, speech surrogacy in music occurs across cultures, so the research can contribute to how scientists understand the phenomenon in general and in the Yorùbá culture specifically, Durojaye explained.

The study involved comparing the timing patterns between recorded drum excerpts and clips of speech and song from Yorùbá vocal performers and professional drummers. The researchers also extracted details on frequency and intensity of the recordings to understand the structural commonalities in these different forms of communication.

Purposes of speech surrogacy

"Our finding that verifies distinct drumming modes varying between musical functions and speech surrogacy helps clarify how the talking drum is used in specific functional ways relating to different types of communication," Durojaye said.

Speech surrogacy serves a number of functions, from disseminating oral history to reciting poetry and proverbs. "Through musical instruments like these drums, one can know the history of a particular culture or a form of knowledge dissemination, as well as aspects of how the people think, their belief systems and values, and what is likely important to them," she noted.

There is still much that scientists don't understand about how these speech surrogate systems operate in terms of the formal linguistic properties they contain, Durojaye said. For instance, how does each mode capture and encode tone and syllables? Or how is the information transmitted on a syntactic or semantic level? And what is the extent of their overlap with musical properties?

"Our study, which focuses on the acoustic properties of spoken, sung and drummed forms, represents one of the first steps towards understanding these various structures," Durojaye said. "We continue to explore this unique instrument, which has the potential for enhancing our understanding of music and language processing, especially from a non-western perspective."

###

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Communication

DOI

10.3389/fcomm.2021.652690

How Tarot & Astrology Became Black & Brown Women’s North Star

Stephanie Long 

© Provided by Refinery29

Amber Finney, known as Amber The Alchemist, is steeping a cup of tea when we connect over Google Hangouts. The soft smoke of what is likely sage, incense or palo santo languidly billows from the bottom of her screen. Behind her hangs a tapestry of planets and constellations, as well as a poster illustrating various crystals. Below that sits a table of bottles and oils. Even through a screen, it’s exactly the backdrop you’d expect from someone whose life’s work includes ancestral healing through rituals and magic.

“I am from Hackensack, New Jersey,” Finney, a tarot reader and spiritual practitioner, says. “My grandparents are from Georgia and South Carolina, so I’m a product of the Great Migration.” Her great-great-grandfather was likely born into slavery, she shares, and was a root worker and healer in the 1800s; her mother, Jeannell, has been practicing divination for decades. Together, Finney and her mother run Brown Girl Alchemy, an online community dedicated to the ascension and healing of Black womanhood. “[My spirituality has] always been within me,” she states with a smile. “The work that I’m doing and the work that my mom is doing is a continuation [of my great-great-grandfather’s work]. We’re bridging the gap and bringing that spiritualism back to our ancestral.”

Finney and her mother aren’t the only ones. In the last 10 years, and especially amidst the COVID-19 pandemic when many have turned to divination as a means of solace and self-healing, Black and brown women have pivoted from Christianity and reconnected with spiritual practices rooted in African, Indigenous, and Latinx ancestry. Many of those practices — like tarot, astrology, and crystal healing — have become increasingly popular on social media, making conversation surrounding non-Christian Black and brown spirituality less taboo. In pop culture, superstars like Beyoncé have paid homage to figures like the Yoruba Orisha Oshun, goddess of female sensuality and fertility. Songs like Princess Nokia’s “Brujas” have become anthems for Black and brown witches everywhere. But before the age of Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram, it was rare that you’d find Black and brown women speaking publicly of sacred practices. Until recently, much of the spiritual community represented online featured a more Eurocentric version of divination — “Black and Silver witchcraft,” a term The Hood Witch’s Bri Luna uses to describe the whitewashed “American Horror Story aesthetic” popular on Tumblr years ago — leaving little room for Black and brown women to feel seen or safe in an already stigmatized space. It’s why the spiritual resurgence happening amongst Black and brown women is more than a revival — it’s a reclamation.

“My grandmother practiced hoodoo. She’s from Louisiana and she lived in Texas,” Luna says. “I feel like most American Black families with Southern roots, there’s magic there, regardless of if they wanna call it that or not.” When she first launched The Hood Witch around 2014, the Los Angeles native — who is of Black and Mexican descent — was one of the only brujas representing Black and brown women in the online world of mysticism. “I was sharing metaphysical information; I was sharing tarot; I was sharing things that were already in my family, doing this visual storytelling [in my way]. I really think that opened doors for other women of color to connect back to their roots. This is something that was long overdue and very necessary.”

In order to understand where spirituality stands today, we look back at where Black spirituality was born, and how our relationship with it has evolved across generations.

The Roots Of Black Diasporic Religion

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According to the Pew Research Center, Black Americans are more religious than the American public at-large. Because of this, many — particularly those of older generations — shy away from sharing their non-Christian spiritual practices, lest they risk condemnation from the community. Malorine Mathurin, for example, is a Brooklyn-based intuitive and hellenistic astrologer of Haitian descent, and says she kept her work “under wraps” during her early years as a diviner after being shunned by friends. “I had one friend who actually went and told everyone in junior high school that I was a witch,” she says. “It was very disturbing and very upsetting. People wouldn’t talk to me and would be very wary of me.”

This type of fear-driven response toward non-Christian spirituality is unfortunately typical from those who adhere to institutional Christianity. But, it didn’t have to be like this. As historical texts show, the word “religion” itself is fraught with a colonialist history. “In fact, the term gained popularity in the sixteenth century and was also imposed on native peoples and their practices during conquest and colonizing regimes,” says Khytie Brown, ethnographer and scholar of African diaspora religions and African American studies, and a research fellow at Princeton University. “‘Knowledge of God’ was often the Euro-Christian deployment of the term in which non-European peoples and their humanity were judged against,” she says. “That is, to ‘have religion’ meant that these cultures and peoples conformed to European notions of a belief in a higher power, usually a monotheistic one, with accompanying practices that they could approximate and compare with Christianity.”

Although Eurocentric Christianity has often been used as a tool of oppression, Black diasporic religion has long been a beacon in the Black community. Religion is both a spiritual and cultural anchor, as Brown describes, and its many forms offer identity and belonging. “In some sense, these practices predate the rupture caused by the TransAtlantic slave trade,” says Kijan Bloomfield, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College. “Black religions also developed as a response to the violence of white supremacy. We often describe Black religion in the West as traditions that emerged in the ‘hush harbors’ or spaces that enslaved Blacks gathered in secret to worship and commune beyond the gaze of their white enslavers. However, Black religion also includes Islam and Judaism — both of which are part of a diverse tapestry of Black religious traditions.”

Bloomfield explains that when enslaved Africans were brought to the Americas, they came with their own set of indigenous spiritual and religious practices — including Christianity. As early as 1491, for example, the Kongo Kingdom in Central Africa had adopted Catholicism as its official religion. As a result, some of the people who were enslaved in places like Jamaica and Haiti — where large portions of the enslaved population came from Central Africa, and Kongo specifically — brought with them an African Christian background outside of the Christianity encountered in the new colonies. Conjure and hoodoo (U.S.), vodou (Haiti), and obeah (Jamaica) are all African diasporic religious practices that provided protection and healing. Back in the days of slavery, Black people looked to divination as a salve amid the terror and violence — both physical and psychological — inflicted upon them by entrapment and colonialism.

“Divination is part of this method of accessing knowledge and insight,” Bloomfield adds. “Living in an anti-Black world that continues to denigrate Black existence and ways of knowing, divination provides a powerful tool to ‘see’ and discern the answers to individual and communal problems that are personal and systemic.”

As for tarot and particularly astrology, which is perhaps the most mainstream and widely understood form of divination, Black women have used the stars as their guide for generations. Bloomfield points out that the old spiritual “Follow the Drinking Gourd” is a nod to Harriet Tubman, who used the North Star (the most prominent star in the Big Dipper constellation) to chart the path of the Underground Railroad. And in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Bloomfield adds, the protagonist, a Black teenager named Lauren Olamina, develops a belief system called Earthseed. “The ultimate destination, Lauren argues, is for humans to ‘take root amongst the stars’ — to develop a more liberating framework for community and care. Contemporary astrology, I believe, continues a tradition in which Black people have looked to the universe and it’s wonders to circumvent the kind of Enlightenment logic whose ultimate end led to our enslavement and denigration.”

The Seeding Of Stigma Surrounding Non-Christian Spirituality© Provided by Refinery29

The term occult — which is from the French word occulte and directly from the Latin occultus meaning “hidden, concealed, secret” — often carries with it a negative connotation. In the Black Christian community in particular, the word is typically used to describe something that is evil or “of the devil.” It’s synonymous with the terms “pagan” and “magic,” both of which were and still are looked down upon in Black religious spaces.

“I believe this is a common impulse and, in many ways, it is misguided,” says Bloomfield. “Religion practiced by Black people throughout the diaspora is syncretic — it draws on African worldviews about power, the spirit world, and the divine that is always in conversation with Christianity. After all, Christianity was a tool of colonialism which enslaved Africans interpolated with their traditional beliefs.”

In Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition, as Bloomfield notes, author Yvonne Chireau argues that alternative forms of Black religion such as conjure and hoodoo are a complement to African-American Christianity. Bloomfield believes that the suspicion and fear that often shroud divination and occult practices stems from the prominence Christianity achieved within Black diasporic communities, particularly in the U.S. and the Caribbean. “Aligning oneself with Christian values was a strategy to cope with the terror of enslavement and the precarity of Black life, and was also a cloak for more traditional African-derived practices that continued in the New World,” she says. “However, at the apex of the movement for civil rights, Christianity became the primary language to call out the hypocrisy of enslavers and demand justice.”

Finney describes herself and her mother as the “black sheep” of their family, sharing that it wasn’t until this past year when Finney began to receive public attention that she felt comfortable sharing her profession with her family, who are members of the church. “They were like, ‘Okay, somehow you’re accredited, so you must be doing something right,’” she says. “But even still, we don’t talk about it because it’s not for them.”

Afro-Puerto Rican Tarot reader, espiritista, and Ifa Orisha priestess Tatianna Morales — known as Tatianna Tarot — shares a similar story. Born to a Puerto Rican father and a Black mother, Morales says she was raised predominantly by the Puerto Rican side of her family, which is mostly religious with the exception of her father, who is a spiritual medium. “He has studied so many occult and metaphysical topics and is big on personal development, so he and I are like two peas in a pod. This is where I get my juju from.” Her mother’s side of the family, however, is composed of devout Christians, and is “very, very religious.”

“Unfortunately [my mother and I] don’t have a close relationship, but if I were to mention any of this she’d faint and die,” she continues with a laugh. “The irony is that a lot of my gifts come from my Black side of the family. My grandma and my great-great-grandma were practitioners and priestesses in their time in Brooklyn. They did a lot of work for the community [as hairdressers]. So they would essentially mask spiritual workings, spellcasting, and ceremonies that they would do under the guise of them being hairdressers.”

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Pandemic Revival & The Future Of Black Mysticism

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues and many people spend more time indoors, the stigma associated with non-Christian, Black religious practices and belief systems is beginning to fade as Black diasporic traditions become more mainstream online. For some, it’s a homecoming. For others, dispelling the negative stereotypes of divination has become a tool of self-healing during a time of loss and trauma.

“The more widespread embrace of Black diasporic traditions I believe is an effort to reclaim ancestral ways of knowing and to assert Black personhood, particularly in the midst of the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and anti-Black racism,” says Bloomfield. Bloomfield’s latest project, Lived Africana Religion in the Time of COVID-19, documents the many ways in which Black communities have sustained their religious practices during this turbulent time in history. “I have learned that communities marginalized by the mainstream Black church — namely Black queer people of faith and practitioners of African traditional religions — have creatively used social media and virtual meeting spaces to reach new audiences and provide opportunities for connection and healing,” Bloomfield says.

“I think, outside the pandemic, there was always a search for spirituality and wanting to connect spiritually, but there had to be a medium because that’s what we’re taught in religion,” says Finney. “The medium is to connect to Jesus or to go to church to connect to the divine, but I think because we are physically not able to step outside of ourselves, we literally had to step within ourselves and initiate our own healing.”

As accessibility to learning resources increases and the online spiritual community continues to grow, Finney says Black and brown women are realizing they never needed a medium. “We’re getting our spiritual swag back because we’re able to recognize that this is what we do. It’s within us. It’s not something that we ever had to seek.”

R29Unbothered continues its look at Black culture’s tangled history of Black identity, beauty, and contributions to the culture. In 2021, we’re giving wings to our roots, learning and unlearning our stories, and celebrating where Black past, present and future meet.

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Meet the African goddess at the center of Beyoncé’s Black Is King

The divine imagery in Beyoncé’s new visual album goes all the way back to Lemonade.

Beyoncé reads a book titled Black Gods and Kings in Black Is King, because she likes to be clear. Disney+

“I am Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter,” sings Beyoncé in “Mood 4 Eva,” one of the tracks on her just-released visual album Black Is King. But that’s not all she is: “I am the Nala, sister of Naruba, Osun, Queen Sheba, I am the mother.”

Some of those names are self-explanatory. Beyoncé is Nala because she played Nala in last year’s Lion King remake, for which Black Is King is a companion piece. But by calling out Osun, Beyoncé is once again positioning herself with the Yoruba deity Osun, or more commonly Oshun, and making explicit the visual parallels she draws between herself and Oshun throughout the film.

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Black is King is Beyoncé’s stunning ode to African glory

Oshun’s not Beyoncé’s first alter ego. Early in her solo career, Beyoncé introduced audiences to an identity she called Sasha Fierce, whom she described as “the fun, more sensual, more aggressive, more outspoken side and more glamorous side that comes out when I’m working and when I’m on the stage.” After releasing an album titled I Am … Sasha Fierce in 2008, Beyoncé officially killed her alter ego off in 2010, saying, “I’ve grown, and now I’m able to merge the two.”

But lately, Beyoncé has seemed interested in playing with a new and different persona. She incorporated Oshun imagery into her 2016 visual album Lemonade, and she has returned again and again to Oshun iconography in photo essays and videos since then.

Here’s an overview of Beyoncé’s Oshun connection and what makes Oshun such a powerful fit for Queen Bey.

Oshun is a goddess of love and beauty. Beyoncé’s been identifying with her for years.

The Yoruba oshira Oshun. Shutterstock/Horus2017

In the Yoruba cosmology of southwestern Nigeria and Benin, Oshun is the goddess, or orisha, of love, sensuality, and femininity. She is a river goddess, and one of her attributes is to bring forth sweet and fertile waters. Oshun is a mother: Her waters were central to the creation of humanity, and she looks after small children before they can speak. She’s also associated with wealth and is said to love shiny things. She’s often represented draped in yellow.

“Oshun exudes sensuality and all the qualities associated with fresh, flowing river water,” wrote Oshun follower Valerie Mesa for Vice in 2018. “Her sparkling charisma can light up a room, and her lush womanly figure suggests fertility and eroticism. Oshun’s favorite thing to eat is honey, and her contagious laugh can either put you under her spell or send shivers down your spine.” And Oshun, who is said to be jealous, can be vengeful when she is crossed: “Oshun is as sweet as honey,” Mesa writes, “but her honey can also turn sour.”

Beyoncé is reborn as Oshun in 2016’s Lemonade. HBO

In Lemonade (not so coincidentally, a form of sweet water), Beyoncé spends a long interlude submerged in a dreamlike state underwater. As “Hold Up” starts playing, she pushes open a set of doors and emerges in a great flood of water, dressed in a flowing yellow gown, and starts to wreak her vengeance on her cheating man. This moment, Africana studies professor Amy Yeboah told PBS in 2016, is “her emergence as an orisha.” It’s the point where Beyoncé is reborn as Oshun.

Beyoncé as Oshun in her 2017 maternity announcement. Beyoncé

In 2017, Beyoncé returned to Oshun imagery in a photo essay announcing that she was pregnant with twins. The maternity announcement was laced with goddess imagery pulling from different religious traditions, so that at some points in the shoot, Beyoncé is recognizably the Virgin Mary, and in others, she’s Venus. But she also drapes herself in yellow and submerges herself in sparkling water, becoming Oshun once again.

Beyoncé channels various divinities, including Oshun, at the 2017 Grammys. Getty

At the 2017 Grammys, Beyoncé continued to play with divine imagery from different traditions. In her performance of Lemonade’s “Love Drought” and “Sandcastles,” she donned a beaded gold gown and headdress and yellow silk, and as she posed with her dancers, she became variously Mary, Jesus, Venus, the Hindu goddess Kali, and — once again — Oshun.

In Black Is King, Beyoncé ditches any Western references. Black Is King is a love letter to the African diaspora, and while Beyoncé is, as always, representing herself as a goddess in this album, she’s specifically and solely the Yoruba goddess Oshun. She wears Oshun’s yellow and shining beads and cowrie shells; she emerges from the sweet water; she surrounds herself with flowers of fertility; she watches over children. She makes her connection to the goddess as explicit as possible: “I am Osun,” she sings.

In associating herself with Oshun, Beyoncé is highlighting certain key parts of her image. She’s always been an untouchable goddess, and she’s always been sexy, but now she is maintaining that her beauty is divine and so is her motherhood, and that they are inextricably linked. She’s connecting herself to a cosmology in which beauty and love and prosperity all come from the same source, and she’s naming herself as that source.

Beyoncé as Oshun in Black Is King. Parkwood Entertainment

And she is very firmly, pointedly saying that none of these wonderful things — love, beauty, divinity, prosperity — have to come from the West. They have a source in Africa. Throughout all of Black is King, Beyoncé is putting that source at the center of her work.

We always knew she was a goddess. Now she’s telling us exactly which one she is.

How some Black Americans are finding solace in African spirituality

Between the pandemic and protests, practitioners of African religions are welcoming the community and liberation their traditions can bring.

By Nylah Burton Jul 31, 2020

Porsche Little, a Brooklyn-based artist, diviner, and aborisha — or someone who serves the Orisha, a group of spirits central to the Yoruba and other African Diaspora religions — says that she has received a huge increase in requests for divinations and readings throughout the pandemic  .https://www.instagram.com/p/CBlk-9tjEMP/?utm_source=ig_embed

“There’s so much happening right now in the world to everyone, and I know for certain that all of this is happening for a reason,” she says. “A lot of people are stuck in the house and can’t really make sense of their lives, but that’s what I’m here for.”


Little says when she counsels people in her community these days, they specifically want to talk about challenges arising from this tumultuous time we’re living in. Between a terrifying pandemic, a major racial reckoning, an existential crisis that climate change presents, and a government that fails to address any of these things, some Black people are turning to African and Black Diaspora traditions as a means of comfort, community, healing, and liberation.

“With the pandemic and the anxiety and the fear and all of those emotions that all of us are dealing with right now … in the beginning my spiritual practice helped keep me connected and grounded. It helped me understand this moment in the larger context,” says Akissi Britton, an assistant professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University and Lucumí priestess for 36 years.

The Black Diaspora has been through centuries of struggle, resistance, and joy since being scattered from our original homelands. And through it all, many of us have connected with those original practices — food, family structures, languages — as a way of healing and building community with each other. The same goes for African and Black Diasporic spirituality, like the Yoruba, Lucumí, and Santería traditions; many practitioners of these religions offer a different type of healing, one that is removed from traditionally Westernized versions, which generally stress individualism and independence. African traditions, instead, are reliant upon collectivism, strong communities, and healthy interdependence.

Most of these traditions revolve around Orisha (sometimes referred to as Orisa, or Òrìṣà in the Yoruba language, or Orixá in Latin America), a group of spirits from the Yoruba religion that provide guidance. Yoruba and other practitioners are often connected to one Orisha, usually called their guardian — like Oshun, the goddess of love, fertility, and success, and Babalú-Aye, Orisha of healing, including against airborne diseases that can cause epidemics. People who seek practitioners like Little are looking for guidance, which comes from rituals that invoke the Orisha, like baths or offerings and sometimes the reading of tarot cards. Sessions and ceremonies are often private and individualized.

Britton says that growing up in the Afro-Cuban Lucumí religion, which is derived from the Yoruba tradition, gave her a fulfilling sense of self. “I am not separated from my Orisa, from my ancestors, from the spirits, as well as from my community,” she says. “When my sense of self is much broader and attached to other things, I don’t feel so isolated. I don’t feel so alone, like I’m trying to figure it out on my own.”

Britton spiritually counsels others, but she encourages them to seek therapy if they can, too; Lucumí priestesses are not necessarily trained therapists, psychiatrists, and psychologists. Britton has sought out therapy for herself, and says that it works well with her spiritual practice. Often in therapy, she says, “I have gotten information that my ancestors and Orisa have given to me, which is just confirmation.”

Jo, a former student of Britton’s and an Afro-Boricua artist and community organizer, says that the Lucumí religion offered her healing after a tumultuous relationship with both race and religion as a child. Growing up with a white mother and in the Christian church, Jo had little connection to her father’s Puerto Rican family. Still, she was always drawn to the beauty of the complex cultural practices in the Boricua community.

Early in her life, Jo says, she didn’t receive much affection from the people who were “supposed to love” her, and instead she experienced a lot of pain. She completely rejected Christianity and religion altogether, until she found strength and healing in Lucumí. Although she didn’t come to Lucumí until adulthood, she feels much of it has always been with her.

“In some weird way, I always felt protected,” she says. “My angels and ancestors have always been the ones to bring me that feeling. As an adult, I was led right back to the same innate practices I believed in when I was young. I reconnected with the voices and knowings I had turned away from for so long. And it changed my life.”
The liberation in connecting with African spirituality

For practitioners of African spirituality, healing often comes in the form of liberation and resistance. These traditions are made even more pressing considering the centuries-long attempts by European slave owners, colonists, and neo-colonists to suppress and demonize these religions. And now, in a time when America’s racist foundation has been pushed to the foreground, seeking solace in this connection feels especially poignant.

During slavery, Christianity was used to justify the horrific practice. As such, the enslaved were often forbidden from practicing their indigenous religions, and other religions like Islam. Even in places like Cuba, Brazil, Haiti, and Trinidad, European colonists and slave masters attempted to obliterate the humanity and autonomy of enslaved Africans, Britton says. Many in the Black Diaspora embraced Christianity, finding a different sort of liberation in a religion meant to oppress them — a radical tradition that continues today, especially in the African American Episcopal Church (AME).

However, as a form of resistance, other enslaved Africans syncretized their indigenous religions with Christianity, creating traditions like Santería, Vodun, and Hoodoo. For instance, the word Santería means “honor to saints,” and the religion is infused with the Spanish Catholicism that was indoctrinated into enslaved Africans early on. In fact, some practitioners correspond Orishas with Catholic saints — Eleguá, associated with roads and paths, corresponds with Saint Anthony, the patron saint of travelers and lost things — while others believed in removing the Catholic component altogether, as they saw the European influences as antithetical to goals of decolonization and autonomy.

But syncretizing practices wasn’t a matter of happenstance. “[Africans’] ingenuity, their creativity, their brilliance allowed them to maintain certain practices from home while masking them in the practices that Europeans insisted upon,” Britton says. Santería was “the masking behind the saints … that in itself is a liberation practice,” she says.

Britton points out that the Haitian Revolution — the only successful slave revolt and an event that led to the creation of the first free Black republic — while not specifically Lucumí, was “the coming together of Africans, different ethnic groups too, that had a ceremony that inspired and gave strength for the revolution that made it.”

“Africans and their descendants [have] refused to allow Europeans slave masters and colonialists to dictate their full humanity,” Britton says. “This gave them a very strong sense of identity, inspiration, spiritual grounding that was liberatory in the sense that it allowed them to think differently and understand themselves differently than the dominant models do.”

Little, who is studying Ifá and Lucumí traditions, says honoring Orisha and her ancestors helps her connect with her past before enslavement and colonization. She has been following the path to become an initiated priestess, which is mostly focused on immersing oneself in community as they guide you, something that can feel like coming home for so many Black people. “I spent a lot of my life wondering who I was, and where I came from, but now I don’t question that. It has truly reconnected me with not only my roots but with people that I’ve known from past lives,” she says. “There’s a certain power that comes with remembering where you came from.”

Because of the oppression people in the Black Diaspora faced, however, stigma against African spirituality exists today. The Roman Catholic Church has often viewed these practices as akin to demon worship. I know in my own family, some people see these practices as evil or dangerous. Others embrace it.

Little says that we should interrogate those ingrained beliefs and where they come from, particularly relating to Christianity and other religions closely related to “conquest, murder, homophobia, sexism, and slavery amongst so many other forms of violence.” For Little, it’s worth questioning why some in the diaspora have been taught that African religion, which she says “connects you with your personal power, identity and lineage,” is evil. She suggests that “people need to decolonize their own minds and then see what serves them best.”

Ruqaiyyah Beatty, who grew up practicing Christianity, Islam, and other other African religions, is a now practitioner of Ifá, a Yoruba religion and system of divination. She says that through her practice, she was able to find healing through connection. “I was able to connect to Nigeria, it gave me a global network of spirituality, divine guidance, family, and love, and I was able to create and sustain a great relationship to god,” she says.

For those looking to get involved with African spiritual traditions, Britton stresses that research is key. She suggests reading books by independent scholar John Mason, who wrote Black Gods — Orisa Studies in the New World, which discusses 13 Orisha, including their symbols, personal characteristics, philosophical values, animal familiars, and feast days.

She also says it’s important to enter these spaces from a place of respect, seeking mentorship and accountability, and above all, community. “You cannot do this by yourself,” she stresses. The best way to guard against misinformation, Britton says, is to go slow, research, and talk to people.

While African spirituality can keep us connected during a time that can feel especially isolating, Little says, it can also keep us empowered. “I just want people to know that although there is a higher power, remember that you have power as well. I want us all collectively to start using our intuitions ... and to question everything.”

Nylah Burton is a Denver-based writer. She covers mental health, social justice, and identity. You can follow her on Twitter.