Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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Fon (Vodun) Sites

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Sites significant to Vodun as practised by the Fon people of Benin and the surrounding region, the tradition from which the term voodoo derives, though the popular use of that word outside West Africa often bears little resemblance to Fon practice itself. Sacred sites are grouped by tradition at a fine grain here, so a heading can be narrow without that saying anything about the tradition's own reach.

Facts
Overview
What Defines This Grouping
Vodun places of the Fon of the Abomey plateau: the ancestral shrines of the Dahomean kings, who were served as deities after death, together with the convents and compounds of individual vodun held by particular lineages. 2
Status
Status Today
Living. Fon vodun and the royal ancestral cult of Abomey are served today, and Beninese state recognition of Vodun in 1996 ended a long period of colonial, missionary and Marxist-era suppression. 3
Directory
Category
Sacred Sites 1
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Fon Vodun Sacred Sites

This small group gathers a sacred site of the Fon people of West Africa and their Vodun religion, the source tradition, in the region of Benin, of the vodun spirits and of much that later shaped Haitian Vodou and related diaspora faiths.

The browser will find the site the atlas classes here. The entry describes its significance within the living Fon Vodun tradition.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Fon sites of the West African Vodun tradition.

Source Dahomey: An Ancient West African KingdomMelville J. Herskovits
Sources
2. Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving Port, 1727-1892
Robin Law, Ohio University Press, 2004on Dahomean kingship and the royal ancestral cultView the Source
3. Vodun in Coastal Benin: Unfinished, Open-Ended, Global
Dana Rush, Vanderbilt University Press, 2013on Vodun in contemporary Benin
Dahomey: An Ancient West African Kingdom
Melville J. Herskovits, J. J. Augustin (New York), 1938View the Source
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