Roog, the Pangool and the Xooy

Serer religion holds Roog, called Roog Sene in some communities, as a single remote creator who set the world in order but is not approached directly in ordinary worship; Henry Gravrand's account of Serer cosmology and John Mbiti's survey of African religions both describe the pangool as the working intermediaries of Serer religious life, the spirits of the founding ancestors and of the land who receive offerings, are consulted through divination and are held responsible for the fertility of fields and the wellbeing of lineages. The most public expression of this system is the Xooy, an annual divination ceremony UNESCO recognized on its Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2013, in which saltigue diviners, whose office is inherited within particular families, enter trance to foretell the coming rainy season, warn of dangers and prescribe remedies before an assembled crowd.

Initiation, agricultural ritual and funerary rites toward the pangool and the ancestors continue as lived practice in Sine and Saloum villages rather than as folklore, observed by a Serer population that Senegalese sources estimate retains one of the highest shares of traditional religion practitioners of any Senegalese ethnic group. Islam has nonetheless become the majority faith among Serer as among most of Senegal, typically coexisting with rather than replacing address to the pangool, and a smaller Serer Christian minority exists alongside both.