Couple threads on voodoo/santeria/spiritual type stuff in contemporary Black America up here.
1) It's an interesting because on one hand AAs have spent 400 years solidly in Western Christian confines, but made it our own thing. Even during that time there were outliers that practiced outside the church walls spiritual stuff, buy never was it at the forefront.
2) Now we enter the 21st century, with immigration from West Africa and Latin America setting up communities in more places
outside of NYC and Miami, interacting w/ AAs. Now we have internet where we can explore on our own with no middle man these tribal and cultural practices. Top it off after 400 years, a new awakening about the African Diaspora comes into focus, including more travel to these countries. Plus, the traditional black church is not as prolific as it use to be. Still extremely important, but not as potent.
3) Then the last piece is the whole idea of "conspiracy theory" and again, with no middle man finding out about how certain agendas and institutions and high level people in different sectors also deal with "spiritual" things, but it has outright satanic origins.
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So take all that together and what we have is a period of
examination about for lack of a better word "neo-paganism" is really all about?
- There is no central place, because it is as vast as going to native places in the Southwest and doing peyote, or Peru and and doing ayahuasca, or going to Northeast Brazil in a candomble ceremony, or in Washington Heights in a santeria festival, or just making a funny meme about "Won't Ogun do it"......or tryingv to figure out why Jay-Z has the spirit cooking woman, connected to a lot of "elite/influential" people who have been accused of some questionable stuff, in his video?
It's a ..... "New Age" for spirituality...outside of traditional AA Christian confines.....and so there is a lot of questioning and exploration about what is suitable or not suitable, or sticking with traditional AA Christian values, or even ever present Muslim ones.
Interesting Time to Be Alive.
