ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the spread of the Yorùbá religion from what is today’s Nigeria to Brazil, Cuba, and Trinidad. It addresses the ways the Yorùbá viewed themselves in their homeland, along with the transnational linkages forged between these spaces due to the transatlantic slave trade. It examines the resulting spread of the religion and the ways in which the enslaved population remembered and reconsecrated the belief system in each of these locales. Such analysis compares and contrasts the characteristics of the orishas, the deities, who manifest aspects of human nature or reflect natural phenomena. It elicits the ceremonial differences in the religious practices, examines the significance of these practices, and how they transformed as a result of the policies within each individual slave/colonial state. It further argues that the repertoire of codes, meanings, and knowledge from each ceremonial context animates the transnational bond, passed down generationally, which link Yorùbá practitioners globally.
