Fon royal Dahomean vodun rites

Record summary

Studies of Dahomean religion describe Fon vodun institutions, royal cults, shrines, priestly offices, offerings, possession, and the historical relationship between kingship and sacred power. The 1958 publication of Melville Herskovits’s Dahomey helped make these materials influential in comparative studies of African religions and Afro-Atlantic traditions. The subject is a historical and living religious complex, not proof of supernatural agency. Reconstruction is complicated by colonial archives, selective oral histories, political change, and later tourist presentation of Abomey traditions.