Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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This page groups sacred sites by whether UNESCO has formally recognized them. Wikipedia notes elsewhere that cultural traditions can be "recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity," the same kind of international listing that applies to World Heritage sites. Browsing by UNESCO status lets a visitor see which sacred sites carry that international recognition and which do not.

Facts
Overview
What Defines This Grouping
Sites of orisa worship in Yorubaland: groves and rivers attached to particular orisa, lineage and palace shrines, and Ile-Ife, from which Yoruba tradition dates the creation of the world and from which every oba traces the right to rule. 2
Peoples and Traditions Covered
The Yoruba are a cluster of subgroups - Oyo, Ife, Ijesa, Ekiti, Egba, Ijebu, Ondo, Owo, Ketu and others - each with its own dominant orisa and its own account of descent from Ile-Ife. There is no single Yoruba pantheon held unchanged across them. 2
Status
Status Today
Living, in Nigeria, Benin and Togo, and the acknowledged source of the Candomble, Lucumi and other American orisha traditions, whose practitioners travel to these sites as to a source rather than as visitors. 3
Directory
Category
Sacred Sites 1
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Yoruba Sacred Sites

This group holds sacred sites of the Yoruba tradition of West Africa, the sacred groves, shrines and cities bound to the orishas and to the sacred history of the Yoruba people, whose religion also gave rise to the diaspora traditions of the Americas.

The browser will find the sites the atlas gathers. The entries describe each place's association with the orishas and its role in Yoruba religious life.

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Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Sites grouped for the Yoruba tradition.

Source Ifa: An Exposition of Ifa Literary CorpusWande Abimbola
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief
E. Bolaji Idowu, Longmans, 1962on the orisa and their shrinesView the Source
3. Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomble
J. Lorand Matory, Princeton University Press, 2005on the traffic between Yorubaland and the AmericasView the Source
Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
Ifa: An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus
Wande Abimbola, Oxford University Press, 1976
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