Religion Dahomean is very much linked to blood, the dead and the power of the other world.
The cult of the dead was subject to hierarchy: if the dead person was poor, they were thrown into the bush to feed the wild animals; if he was rich, great honors were paid to him; his grave was dug under his mortuary bed and, in the distant past, a child was slaughtered on his grave to appease Liba, the guardian of the dead. The funerals of kings were accompanied by massacres. Men and women destined to serve as their servants and wives in the other world were immolated on their tombs.
Besides, the Dahomeans did not fear death; they believed so completely in the immortality of the soul that they viewed death as the passage to a more real and eternal life. To speak with his ancestors, the king once killed with his own hand a man whom the family was very honored to see chosen as the king's ambassador. At regular intervals, smaller rituals also included such sacrifices. The aim being in some way to renew the “personnel” of the former sovereigns. The people immolated on the tombs were provided with a bottle of tafia and cowrie shells for travel expenses.
The religions of Blood and Snakes (Vodou) in Dahomey.
Besides this blood religion, practiced especially in the Abomey region, there existed along the Slave Coast (especially Dahomey and Togo) another religion which, with its innumerable priests, also strongly impressed ancient travelers, which was first called the religion of serpents. It was in reality more of a local cult of the serpent – a sacred python of three meters, which had its priestesses in Ouidah, and to which a mythology complex -, of which there were many other aspects, such as the sacredness of trees (which foreigners did not have the right to cut), and especially the veneration of numerous powers.
Inside the houses, worship was mixed with all the acts of life; outside we found on every street corner in the towns, under every tree in the countryside, small markers covered with pottery and offerings: palm oil and corn cakes were constantly replenished there. There was fear of addressing the “Lord of spirits” who was too great a god; but we adored the soul of the ancestors and the forces of nature, the secondary geniuses.
Sometimes the patron of cities was a snake (the dangbé), as in Ouidah, who represented benevolence and happiness, sometimes a dog, a monkey, a caiman; on the shores of the sea, people worshiped the god of the waves. The Dahomeans adored the souls of the great; they adored their own souls not “when it goes down into the belly” but “when it goes up into the head and stirs up ideas.” Each object had its soul which was a power; the Christian cross was a respected power; the same goes for cannons and rifles.
These powers were called voodoo, from which derives the name Vodou or Voodoo by which we know this religion today. It came from the shores of Dahomey to America and was adapted there in various ways by trafficked slaves. In Haiti as in Brazil, it has remained all the more anchored as it is experienced by the poorest segments of the population as a tool for expressing identity.
