Seth Epling

I am studying Fon scepter for the God Hevioso. This object is a wooden staff with an axe like head and is used in political and festival practices in what is now modern day Benin. I want to study this object because I want to learn more about the use of these scepters in court and religious practices. I also want to know more about this specific scepter and the king or Oba who carried this scepter and the effect it had on the Fon people.  I want to know more about how the designs on the scepter represent the king who held it and Hevioso the God of Thunder. This research will help the reader understand that objects that are taken out of festivals have little to no meaning unless it is shown in a practical sense. It helps the reader understand that each object has a much deeper meaning and each king has a god representing them.

One of the things we discussed in class was the power of ase in everyday life. People who have ase have personal power and ase can come for lots of different places. In the reading “Ase: Verbalizing and Visualizing Creative Power Through Art” by Rowland Abiodun, he discusses the implications of Ase and all the places that it can come from. Abiodun states, “Like a sceptre, ase must be received from a source of outside of, and higher that oneself,”(Abiodun, 311)  Although, this is directly describing Yoruba religion there are man parallels between the two religions because Yoruba had lots of influence of Vodou and many other religions that are similar. This connects to my object being a scepter but also it shows that not everyone can be a king with any object. Objects have to meaning but they can not be taken out of context. Professor Abiodun also stated in our class, that these objects can not be displayed in a museum or art show and have ase within them. For this reason, my object needs to be looked in a ritual or practice. The whole ritual has to be understood and the background of the king and the god of the practice have to be learned in order to really feel the ase of this object

To further understand the use and meaning of the scepter in Vodou religion, I will be trying to find a video of the ritual. This will increase the understanding of the ritual because I will be able to see it. Another primary source I want to find is a first hand experience in an article by someone who went to the festival. Hopefully by someone who practices vodou so I can get their point of view. The last source I will need is an article about the king and the god who is represented by the scepter, this will be a secondary source and is needed to understand the background of the ritual.

People from all over the world come to the Oṣun-Oṣogobo festival to celebrate their religion and to celebrate and honor Oṣun, one of the Oriṣas in the Yoruba religion. An Oriṣa is one of the many different aspects of the god that the Yoruba people worship. Oṣun is sometimes referred to as “the good mother” and she has a major role in the story of the world’s creation in Yoruba texts. She is represented by water and the color yellow, and her sacred grove lies in the town of Oṣogbo. The film talks about the spread of the Yoruba religion through the slave trade and the ways African-Americans are reconnecting with their heritage through religion and pilgrimage. At the beginning of the festival there is a tradition in which 16 lamps are  lit and people dance and celebrate around them. The film shows a mix of traditionalists, non traditionalists, and people who don’t practice the Yoruba religion dancing around the lamps.
The festival is a good example of African diasporic religion due to all the different people shown attending the festival, and all their different backgrounds. Yoruba religion is practiced all over the world and all the different people who go to the festival show that the religion is not going away anytime soon. At the beginning of the film a man says, “While we may have left Africa, Africa did not leave us.” That quote speaks to the ways people worship and the immense importance of the pilgrimages that people make to Nigeria to reconnect with their roots. The two African American women who are initiated as priestesses during the film talk about rewriting their destinies, and how at the end of the initiation they felt like they were at home. Johnson’s idea of hybridity in African diasporic religions fits some of the women’s experiences growing up. The matching of Catholic saints to different Oriṣas and the different aspects of God found in Christianity and Catholicism speak to the idea of a hybrid sort of religion. While African people were enslaved it was dangerous to practice their religion, and Christianity was forced on them. Instead of giving up their religion, they matched different saints to the different Oriṣas and while they may not have been able to worship and pray in the same way they had, they still worshipped. Thompson did a good job of describing the ways in which the slaves incorporated Christianity into their religion to hide their practices: “…they managed to establish altars to their dead even while blending with the Christian world: they coded their burial mounds as ‘graves’ but studded them with symbolic objects…”(Thompson, Overture: The Concept “Altar”.)
The Oṣun-Oṣogbo festival brings people together, whether they’re practitioners of the religion or not, and to those who are it holds an incredibly special meaning. The vast diversity seen in the people attending the festival shows the ways in which the Yoruba people worship and how aspects of the religion are similar to those of other religions and yet the ways in which they worship are incredibly different. One of the women initiated as a priestess talks about how she tends to pray quietly but that it feels good to pray loudly so her prayers can be heard and how the bells force her to pray loudly. The Oṣun-Oṣogbo festival brings out aspects of African diasporic religions that are beautiful and interesting while showing how the Yoruba peoples’ rituals during the Oṣun-Oṣogbo festival affect the atmosphere in the town and how they affect all the people in the town, whether they are practitioners, traditionalists, non traditionalists, or people who are just there to celebrate Oṣun.

-Hayden

The African Diaspora, is a word used to encompass the evolution and adaptation of religious practices originating on the African Continent, that have been held in the hearts of many religious practitioners, dating as far back to the Slave Trade, taking place between 1500-1800. During this period, thousands of Men, Women, and Children were abducted from the African continent, and shipped globally to the “New World”. With them, travelled their intricate religious and cultural practices, and these practices have been subjected to acculturation, and the forced adaptation of slaves to the America’s. The Diaspora, has been subjected to the practices of thousands of people from every walk of life, and have intertwined, culturally, with various religions from the Americas, to produce many blended, or hybridized religions that are continued to be practiced today, in the 21st Century. African Slaves were forbidden to practice African religions once in the America’s and to safely practice their religions, they incorporated the Christian Saints that closely resembled a specific Oriṣa. They “managed to establish altars to their dead even while blending with the Christian world: they coded their burial mounds as ‘graves’ but studded them with symbolic objects…”(Thompson, Overture: The Concept “Altar”). By doing so, they were able to practice their religion safely, and thus beginning the process of hybridization, blending cultural aspects of two religions and creating a hybrid religious practice. In the documentary, “Sacred Journeys with Bruce Feiler: “Oṣun-Oṣogbo” two American-African women, as they identify, are documented as they participate in the rite of induction into the priestess-hood of the Orisa, a Yoruba word for goddess, Osun.
Alatin Stewart, and Oni Yebiye-Hinton are two young women, traveling to the Oṣun-Osogbo Festival, in Osogbo, Nigeria. They answered the call to become inducted as priestesses into the Yoruba religion, an example of an African religious practice originated on the continent itself. The two young women, until this point had led their lives in the cultural-melting pot of the United States, and are ecstatic to return to the place of their ancestral roots, to dedicate their hearts to a religion that may have even had their ancestors as their religious leaders, many decades ago. The quote “We left Africa, but Africa never left us.” emphasizes the importance of keeping ones religion alive in their hearts, even if, like the African Slaves taken from their homeland, there comes challenges to ones environment, or lives in which their faith, and every other aspect of their being, is tested. When Alatin and One arrive at their religious site, the scene is one of abandoned streets, lined with stray animas, and a large gate at which their religious induction is to begin. Once the gates opened, we are allowed a glimpse into the heart of the Yoruba tradition, with priestesses and priests, welcoming the young women, and many breath-taking altars, lined with sea shells, gorgeous pearl jewelry and vibrant colorful flags to represent the Goddess Oṣun, who is a goddess of water, fertility, beauty, and love. The representation of Altars is a deeply sacred practice in the Yoruba tradition, as the focal point for the channeling of a god, or goddesses energy, and welcoming them to create change in the lives of the practitioner.
The Oṣun-Osogbo Festival, is a perfect example of the African Diaspora, and how various aspects of the cultural perspective can be observed to be similar to other religions such as Christianity. The flags used in the Yoruba tradition, contain multiple colors and patterns to represent different Oriṣa, similar to in Christianity, how various altar cloths and garments worn by religious leaders represent various saints, and angels. The Altars in the documentary are vastly similar to the altars read about in Thompson’s article, expressing different Oriṣa through colors, patterns and the fabric itself used to craft the flags. Thompson expressed the importance of an altar, and how an altar reflects the personality of the practitioner, and how they connect with their Oriṣa. Another cultural similarity are the dressings worn by the Yoruba women, that resemble closely many dresses and pieces of clothing worn by Spanish practitioners of religion, performing ritual dances for their gods and goddesses. These similarities amongst the Yoruba practices and those of other places display the acculturation that has occurred since the Slave Trade, to further adapt religious practices to include practitioners beyond the Yoruban culture.

Tying together with the documentary, the young women, were inducted as High priestesses of Oṣun, and were allowed to enter into Oṣun’s grove, the sacred dwelling place of the goddess of water, beauty, fertility, etc. and the two priestesses stood over the river, and explained that they both felt as if they had returned home, and this is what they were searching for their whole lives. These young women display the nature of the Diaspora, that two young women raised in a different part of the world in a different culture, could travel back to Africa and become High Priestesses, and devote their lives to the path they felt destined to walk. The Diaspora lives in the hearts of people today, who practice their religious beliefs freely, without constriction, in every location of the world, and blended aspects of their beliefs to honor their roots. Their growth and evolution throughout their lives and the life of their beliefs, and how they as people, will continue to grow, evolve and adapt to an ever changing world, just as so many African Slaves adapted and changed the beliefs of Diasporic Religions, to an ever changing global network of divine knowledge and practices.

African Diaspora is a term used to describe the mass movement of African culture and religion during the slave trade. During this time, the colonists who were taking away the freedom, names, and lives of the slaves, could not take away their religion and beliefs. Diaspora is the incredible instance in when even though the religion is spread out around the world, people are able to still follow it with their own culture as a part of it. These religion are able to adapt and connect with different cultures, religions, and beliefs. The religion of Yoruba was able to spread to many different areas along the Atlantic Coast during this time and with this came populations who brought their own, new culture to the religion. In the documentary, Sacred Journeys with Bruce Feiler: “Oṣun-Oṣogbo”, two American girls are followed as they travel to Nigeria in order to become priestesses. This religion is an African Diaspora and this is proven by these two young college students and their travels to Nigeria and a center of Yoruba religion.

The main story follows two students, Alatin Stewart and Oni Yebiye Hinton, and their journey to Osogbo, Nigeria. It starts off with the back streets of the biggest city in Nigeria, which is Lagos. This beginning of the documentary is compelling because the images show a part of town that is run down, dirty and overrun by stray animals. Then, a gate opens for Stewart and Hinton, revealing a beautiful altar and the connective power that this religion holds. Later in the documentary, Stewart and Hinton go to a sacred festival called Oshun-Oshogbo. Oshun is a deity that is associated with water, fertility, love and purity and this festival is to honor her. The main part of the festival is when a young, virgin maid, carries sacrifices to a river front. After this, she is now regarded as a goddess as she leads everyone back. This is an incredible and passionate festival welcome to all. It starts on the streets, where everyone is trying food from different types of people and cultures. One of the most interesting parts about this festival is the sheer number of people who attend that are not African Diaspora followers. The importance of this festival is emphasized by the history of African culture. Africans were pushed out of their land and forced to change religion. As the priest said towards the end of the documentary, “We left Africa, but Africa never left us.” This demonstrates how they spread out over the globe hundreds of years ago, and each year are able to make it back to where their ancestors once lived and celebrate unity.

“Diasporas are social products that must be rehearsed, represented and refreshed; they do not spring up or endure automatically; rather they demand continuous long-enduring effort.” (Johnson, 515) This quote, from an excerpt of “Religions of the African Diaspora” by Paul Christopher Johnson, explains that the African Diaspora religion needs to be constantly practiced to ensure that the long history of the religion is not forgotten. This is shown in the documentary about the Oshun-Oshogbo festival. This festival is done every year and most things about it do not change. These people continue to practice this religion and barely change anything about it. This is in agreement with Johnson because these people keep their religion in mind and make sure that the little aspects and traditions are kept generation after generation. This also demonstrates Johnson’s idea that this religion did not spontaneously arise; it has been worked on since the slave trade to the present day and will continue to grow. This religion will be long lasting due to the accepting nature of its followers. They are not secluded, many followers are also Christian and Muslim and are able to integrate aspects from both religions into their own beliefs. For the reason of world connections and the ability to integrate and change, Yoruba is an African Diaspora Religion.

-Seth Epling

In the heat of August, tens of thousands of people crowd the streets of Osogbo, Nigeria where they plan to spend the next 12 days honoring their most important Orisha, the goddess Osun. Osun offers grace to Osogbo and ensures their lives are well as long as the people honor her and her Sacred Grove once a year. The beauty and intensity of this festival is explored by Bruce Feiler in “Osun-Osogbo” an episode of a documentary series called  “Sacred Journeys”. Feiler takes you into the heart of Osogbo to show the world how this city honors their goddess from lamp lighting ceremonies to animal sacrifice. After Feiler’s twelve day journey is over and the film has ended it is clear that the Osun-Osogbo festival is an example of the African diaspora with the memories that shape this culture, the distanced covered from a time of exile, and thousands of people returning to Osogbo every year.

The African diaspora is an idea that there are communities around the world that came from descendants of the slaves taken from Africa. Paul Christopher Johnson’s quote from his writing “Religions of the African Diaspora” best connects this idea to the Osun-Osogbo festival, “Diasporic religions are composed on the one hand out of memories about space-places of origins, about the distance traversed from them since a time of exile, and physical or ritual returns…” Two women whose journey of becoming Yoruba priestess’ in the film is the most accurate example on how this festival represents the African diaspora.

The two women who traveled to Osogbo with Bruce Feiler tell him what life was like growing up. They both practiced the same religion depicted in the festival but in the Americas; their only real connection to the Yoruba people was through memories of their families. This example from the film is a key representation of the African diaspora because the Yoruba traditions were kept alive in small communities across the world through memories from their African descendants passed down from generation to generation.

Not only did the women practice their religion from memories passed down, but they understood how their small religious community in the Americas came to be. During the slave trade most slaves came from the coast of Nigeria, bringing their culture with them. The forced journey corresponds with Johnson’s idea of the African diaspora, “…the distance traversed from them since a time of exile…”. This idea made the two soon-to-be Yoruba priestess’ and many others feel the need to come back to the festival  to experience what was taken from them and many other generations. Their physical returns due to a past time of exile truly captures the African diaspora in the Osun-Osogbo festival.

While the idea of the African diaspora is not one known to everywhere this is definitely a film worth watching. It is truly amazing to see a culture that has been spread all over the world stay connected through memories, which in turn gives them the desire to return to the heart of their culture, the Osun-Osogbo festival.

Some of the aspects of the Oṣun-Oṣogbo festival as seen in “Sacred Journeys” may seem familiar to the American viewer who has little experience with Afro-Atlantic religion, and for good reason. Religious mixture includes traditions of different types of religions and cultures all mixed together. Due to the influence of the slave trade, a lot of these mixtures have aspects and traditions that someone who is unfamiliar with many religions will still be able to recognize. Nigeria was a central country in relation to the slave trade, and many slaves from Nigeria were sent to South, Central, and North America. Practices from all around these areas mixed with practices brought over from Nigeria, and modified versions of religions spread around the world. “Sacred Journeys” may be about viewing and understanding Yoruba culture, but there are still plenty of aspects that are recognizable to someone who doesn’t know much about Afro-Atlantic religion.

One example of religious mixture is when the two young women being inducted into a Yoruba-centric culture shaved their heads and washed with holy water as a way to symbolize their induction into a new life and religion. This is similar to the idea of Christian baptism, in which someone, often a child, has holy water sprinkled on their head to represent entering a new life. These rituals are incredibly similar, and are an example of one of several very familiar aspects of the festival that a viewer is likely to recognize, even if they haven’t studied Afro-Atlantic religions.

Another example would be the animal sacrifice. During the induction of the two young women, several people that are practiced in performing traditional rituals sacrifice a goat. This is somewhat similar to a religion such as Satanism, in which one of the most recognizable aspects to a modern viewer would be the sacrifice of an animal, often a goat. Although this isn’t the most glamorous of comparisons, it is worth noting that animal sacrifice, no matter the reason why, is a very real aspect of both of these religious practices, and could be evidence of more mixing of cultures.

It’s important to recognize the effects of the slave trade on Yoruba culture, and how it ties into some of the examples of Yoruba religion sharing characteristics with other religions. Johnson’s thoughts that “even cultural losses, and the responses to loss, continued to inform the experience of a new territory and generate new practices both among the colonized and the colonizers” (“Syncretism and Hybridization”, 759) shares an idea that is relevant to the effects of the slave trade. Even through losing followers, the Yoruba culture has gained a lot, in that it now has traditions and practices that encapsulate some of the culture and practices of other religions and religious mixtures. Without the loss of followers, Yoruba religion wouldn’t have developed to share aspects of more cultures and religions and to grow into a new, more diverse religion.

While Yoruba religion exists on its own, it can be easy to recognize the influences of other religions on the traditions of Yoruba religion. The strong influence of the slave trade brought diversity from many different places into practice in Yoruba culture. The mixing of different cultures, religions, and rituals all ended up merging into a beautiful and diverse festival, and having a meaningful impact on not only Yoruba, but other religions as well.

Yoruba religion is a lifelong devotion to powerful Orisa, or gods, by the performance of specific rituals. Those who practice, use altars to communicate with their many Orisa. During the slave trade, communities of African people were taken by force and shipped to the Americas. These individuals were stripped of all identity; many forced to practice Christianity. Opposition, however, was met with devotion. Those captured practiced their religion in secret, managing to protect and spread Yoruba religion and culture from Africa to the Americas. But this does not mean that Orisa culture and tradition has been completely removed from Africa, for it is bustling in places like the Sacred River in Osogobo, Nigeria; a holy site of the Orisa Osun.

Every year, there is a festival devoted to the river Orisa Osun that occurs on the banks of her holy river, the Sacred river. This festival is essential for “reviewing contracts between humans and the divine.” The people dance, sing, and make sacrifices to their holy Orisas as they unite as a community to cleanse in the banks of Osun’s holy river. Robert Thompson, an expert of African Atlantic Altars, states in “Face of The Gods,” that “Stones and water complete the image of this most important woman. We gather her rounded pebbles at the river and place them in river water in vessels on the altar. Water is the altar where we ask for her blessings.” This excerpt explains how alters can take many forms, for instance and alter can be a river where worship takes place. With this being said, the use of a typical altar is not necessary, for an altar can take any form as long as it is worshipped properly.

There were many typical African Diaspora components in the festival, for instance an animal sacrifice is made by a virgin as an offering to Osun. Animal sacrifices are typical of Diaspora religion. These sacrifices are special gifts to the gods, to show appreciation, but also to give energy to the gods, asking for their divine protection. Also, I saw a lot of dancing and heard a lot of typical diaspora music. I recognized the intense beating of drums used in the festival. Drums are typically used to invite spirits to possess followers. While the drums beat through the night, the dancing reins on as well. The dancing  builds community, and honors certain orisa. However, among all is the alter in which they worship. The alter is the main aspect of Yoruba Religion, and the Osun-Osogbo festival dwellers worshipped a purely organic alter that Osun herself touched; the Sacred River. The Osun-Osogbo festival showed many connections to African Diaspora religion, despite being in different parts of the world two religions can share similar practices.

From what was displayed in the video, Diaspora religion is not only active and engaging, but strong. African Diaspora kept many traditions and practices despite being translocated across the Atlantic Ocean, this takes dedication. Coming from a rural town in Maine, I of course ‘practiced’ Christianity, but never had a strong dedication to it. As a whole, there was never a sense of community, it seemed forced. The Diaspora religions are inclusive to everybody, the dancing engulfs all participants and it is a celebration practiced by many. Everybody in this religion worships, but practice differs from person to person. It is a life long devotion for everyone, but each individual practitioner worships different gods and has different possessions on their alter. The religion molds around the individual, instead of the individual molding around the religion; a special aspect of Diaspora religion. (Dan)

People from all over the world come to the Oṣun-Oṣogobo festival to celebrate their religion and to celebrate and honor Oṣun. The film talks about the spread of the Yoruba religion through the slave trade and the ways African-Americans are reconnecting with their heritage through religion and pilgrimage. At the beginning when the 16 lamps are being lit there is a mix of traditionalists, non traditionalists, and people who don’t practice the Yoruba religion. One of the women in the film talks about how she was labeled as East Indian as a hard to place baby and that she fought to claim her African heritage. Another of the women talks about how she grew up christian but in her house there were altars for the catholic saints who correspond to different Oriṣas. Native Africans and people of African descent gather to celebrate Oṣun during the festival.
Johnson’s idea of hybridity in African diasporic religions fits some of the women’s experiences growing up. The matching of catholic saints to different Oriṣas and the different aspects of God found in christianity and catholicism speak to the idea of a hybrid sort of religion. The ways in which people of different religions worship varies but according to the priests in the film they are all worshipping the same God.
The festival is a good example of African diasporic religion due to all the different people shown attending the festival, and all their different backgrounds. Yoruba religion is practiced all over the world and all the different people who go to the festival show that the religion is not going away anytime soon. At the beginning of the film a man says that while slaves and people of African descent may have left Africa, Africa did not leave them. That quote speaks to the ways people worship and the immense importance of the pilgrimages that people make to Nigeria to reconnect with their roots. The two African American women who are initiated as priestesses during the film talk about rewriting their destinies, and how at the end of the initiation they felt like they were at home.
The Oṣun-Oṣogbo festival brings people together, whether they’re practitioners of the religion or not, and to those who are it holds an incredibly special meaning. It is obvious that no one is against the ways that African diasporic religions mixed or the way that Yoruba religion mixed with Christianity. Johnson talked about the use of the word “hybrid” in relation to religion throughout history and how different scholars used it negatively, however, the hybridity of African diasporic religions is not a bad thing. The vast diversity seen in the people attending the festival shows the ways in which the Yoruba people worship and how aspects of the religion are similar to those of other religions and yet the ways in which they worship are incredibly different. One of the women initiated as a priestess talks about how she tends to pray quietly but that it feels good to pray loudly so her prayers can be heard and how the bells force her to pray loudly. The Oṣun-Oṣogbo festival brings out aspects of African diasporic religions that are beautiful and interesting while showing how the Yoruba peoples’ rituals during the Oṣun-Oṣogbo festival affect the atmosphere in the town and how they affect all the people in the town, whether they are practitioners, traditionalists, non traditionalists, or people who are just there to celebrate Oṣun.