Dahomean religion

Dahomean religion was a form of West African Vodún practiced by the Fon people of the Dahomey Kingdom, located in present-day Benin. People taken from Dahomey to the Caribbean used elements of the religion to form Haitian Vodou and other African diasporic religions. It is a form of vodu worship, in which the vodu or gods protect and provide for the kingdom, and the dead are deified and incorporated into worship.

The Fon people believed that the physical world was only one part of the greater reality that coexists with vodu and divine ancestors. Dahomean religious ceremonies often included human sacrifice (criminals or prisoners of war) in order to connect with the vodún and ancestors. Dahomean priests would receive guidance from the ancestors through divination and spirit possession. There are thousands of vodu, and they, alongside the deified ancestors, inhabited the ''kutome'' (literally meaning the dead country), which was believed to be a direct mirror of the human world. The hierarchy of Dahomean deities begins with the Great Gods, which themselves are pantheons consisting of many gods. Each individual identified primarily with the cult associated with a specific pantheon that their family or lineage was tied to.