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How long does any type of Root work last?

To: alt.religion.orisha,alt.lucky.w,alt.magick
From: catherine yronwode 
Subject: Re: How long does any type of Root work last?
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2002 07:47:32 GMT

Tom wrote:
> 
> "catherine yronwode"  wrote:

> > Tom wrote:
> >
> > > On a global scale, you're a mere handful.  And you'll never be 
> > > more than a mere handful.
> >
> > This conversation led me to check out the figures at
> >     http://www.adherents.com
> > ("Adherents.com is a growing collection of over 41,000 adherent
> > statistics and religious geography citations -- references to 
> > published membership/adherent statistics and congregation statistics 
> > for over 4,200 religions, churches, denominations, religious bodies, 
> > faith groups, tribes, cultures, movements, ultimate concerns, etc.")
> >
> > Here are their basic stats:
> >
> > --------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >    http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
> >
> > Major Religions of the World Ranked by Number of Adherents
> >
> > (Sizes shown are approximate estimates, and are here mainly
> > for the purpose of ordering the groups, not providing a definitive
> > number. This list is sociological/statistical in perspective.)
> >
> >      1.Christianity: 2 billion
> >      2.Islam: 1.3 billion
> >      3.Hinduism: 900 million
> >      4.Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 850 million
> >      5.Buddhism: 360 million
> >      6.Chinese traditional religion: 225 million
> >      7.primal-indigenous: 190 million
> >      8.Sikhism: 23 million
> > *    9.Yoruba religion: 20 million
> >     10.Juche: 19 million
> >     11.Spiritism: 14 million
> >     12.Judaism: 14 million
> >     13.Baha'i: 6 million
> >     14.Jainism: 4 million
> >     15.Shinto: 4 million
> >     16.Cao Dai: 3 million
> >     17.Tenrikyo: 2.4 million
> > **  18.Neo-Paganism: 1 million
> >     19.Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand
> >     20.Scientology: 750 thousand
> >     21.Rastafarianism: 700 thousand
> >     22.Zoroastrianism: 150 thousand
> >
> > *  Vodoun: Vodoun is classified here as a subset of Yoruba religion.
> > Technically, Vodoun may be more Dahomean and Fon in origin (these 
> > are tribal groups adjacent to Yorubas in West Africa), but it may 
> > easily be thought of as part of the same Yoruba-dominated African-
> > Western Hemisphere religious category.
> >
> > So, Tom, according to the statistics cited above, the ratio of 
> > combined African/African diasporic congregants worldwide to the 
> > combined neo-pagan/magick/Asatru/Wicca congregants worldwide is 
> > 20 to 1.
> 
> But, of course we weren't talking about every single variant of Yoruba
> culture.  We were discussing Vodou, which *may be* derived from Yoruba 
> or it *may not*. 

Actually, this is a complex issue. When African people were enslaved and
brought to the Americas, they came from numerous
/national/tribal/language groups, with separate religons (separate
pantheons, modes of worship, etc.) that were all somewhat related in a
few basics (ancestor veneration, for instance). 

Members of these different African nations wre deliberately mixed
together by their "owners" in an attempt to minimize inter-tribal
communication and thus subvert the potential for  rebellions. Thus
Haitian Voodoo contains some elements of non-Fon/Ewe religions, just as
Santeria contains elements of non-Yoruba religions. A nation like Cuba
contains Yoruba, Fon/Ewe, and Kongo religios groups side-by-side, and it
is not uncommon for a person to belong to two of them, due to
intermarriage. In the New World, the incorporated pantheons of a second
African religion often appear as a secondary strain within religion
largely derived from a different African religion and they are is
deliberately preserved in the form of special rites for the other
"nation." This is a direct outgrowth of the forced mixing of the
"nations" that occurred under slavery. 

You can find some material about this subject at Racine's Vooooodou
Pages site. You can also get a dramatized idea of how such accomodations
arose by watching the movie "Amistad," where you will see how a
ship-load of people from different tribes were forced together and were
trying to sort out their own national issues even as they were being
treated as chattel. 

For these and other reasons, it seems to be the growing consensus to 
categorize these religions as "African & African Diasporic." It is
almost impossible, after 500 years of intensive intermarriage in the
diaspora, to say that any African-Diasporic religion is the pure
offshoot of one African language-group. 

Actually, i have been in correspondence with the webmaster of
adherents.com about his casual use of the term "Yoruba Religion," which
necessitated his footnote to explain that he included Vodoun in that
group. I suggested that he use the more general term "African and
African-Diasporic" -- as the DMOZ directory does -- to cover the entire
field. He wrote me that he thinks this is a good idea, and he will
probably implement it. 

This would make "African and African-Diasporic" equivalent in scope to
"Neo-Paganism," which he refers to as an "umbrella group" because it
includes Wicca, Aatru, Druidry, and Magick (Thelema). 

> Trying to toss 20 million Africans into the 
> argument, even though they may have nothing whatever to do with Vodou, 
> is just an attempt to confuse the matter.

You did not read the document correctly, Tom. The 20 million figure was
for Yoruba, Fon/Ewe (and presumeably Kongo) adherents in Africa AND in
the Americas (including Nigeria, Benin, Dahomey, Cuba, Haiti, the US,
etc.).

Counting the adherents of African and African-Diasporic religions
trans-oceanically, not regionally -- just as Christianity, Buddhism,
Hinduism, and the others are counted -- is the only reasonable way to
make a world-wide compilation of adherents. (The site does have
regional/geographic brwakdowns of religions, too, when they are made
abvailable through national census reports.) 

In the case of the African Diasporic religions, many people do not
appreciate the fact that since the abolition of slavery and the rise of
cheap transportation, adherents of these religions from both sides of
the Atlantic Ocean have gotten in touch with their counterparts on the
other side. People who belong to lineages that had lost portions of
their liturgy sue to the oppression of slavery have in some cases sent
emissaries to Africa to re-acquire liturgical information. At the same
time there has arisen during the past 30 years a re-Africanization
movement" in some lineages of Diasporic religions. Thus we now see some
Yoruba-derived New World religionists identifying their religion as
"Santeria" (displaying an admixture of Catholic symbolism overlaid on an
Afircan theology) and some Yoruba-derived New World religionists
identifying their religion as "Lukumi" (purely African-allied, not
displaying Catholic symbolism). Likewise there are branches of Palo
(Kongo-derived religion) in the New World that are Afro-centric and
others which, by contrast, have adopted some Catholic symbolism
(although not a strictly Catholic theology or cosmology). 

> Using your argument, we might as well lump neo-paganism in with
> "primal-indigenous" religions, from which they *may have* sprung.  
> That makes it 190 million to 20 million.  Vodou loses again.

That's specious. Neo-Pagan religions such as Wicca and Thelema did not
spring from "primal indigenous religions -- and, more importantly, they 
has no functional relationship to those religions at the present time.
Yoruba, Fon/Ewe, and Kongo religions in the New World have not only a
lineal relationship to the same religions in Africa, they address
themselves to the same pantheons, utilize similar musical literugy, and
they share the same general symbolism (planetary, colour, foods) for the
pantheon-mamebers. For me, the real clincher that led me to understand
their functional relationship to Africa was when i learned that in many
Cuban houses the services are conducted in part in African languages
(preserved through 500 years of diaspora). In other words, these are not
"revivals" in the sense that Neo-Pagan religions are -- they are true
surviving lineages that are, in many cases, in the process of reuiniting
after a long diaspora. 

The analogy between these religions and the various branches of Judaism
in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the New World should be obvious
to you -- and just as the adherents American Judaism  are grouped with
the adherents of Israeli Judaism for the purpose of determining the
worldwide number of adherents to Judaism, so it is reasonable to group
the African and African Diasporic religions together to achive a
worldwide count of adherents.  

cat yronwode 

Freemasonry for Women ------- http://www.luckymojo.com/comasonry.html

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