The Vodun Religious Practices in the Slave Coast and in Bahian Candomblé

The paper looks at the vodun religion in the ancient Slave Coast and its contribution as an “organizational model” in the 19th century formation of Afro-Brazilian religion. The latter institution, also known as Candomblé, has been usually characterized as strongly influenced by the Yoruba orisha worship, but I argue that the vodun religious practices of the Gbe-speaking people were equally if not more important in its formative process. Viewed within a transatlantic comparative frame, the analysis of discreet ritual segments in both the West African and the Brazilian contexts allows us to explore the complex and variable relationships of continuity and discontinuity. The historical data encoded in ritual practice also offers a rare glimpse into the meanings the religious experience may have had for practitioners in a slavery society.