Articles

Emily Clark’s new work, A Luminous Brotherhood, is an extensive study of a subject that has weirdly been neglected in scholarship: the career of the Afro-Creole Spiritualist Cercle Harmonique from 1858 to 1877. Religious studies scholar Clark has thorough…

It is time for the invisible to reveal themselves. The drums are speaking to the ancient ancestors of Africa. Tonight in a rural garden in central Trinidad, tradition dictates that it will be Shango, the Yoruba god of fire, thunder and lightning who will …

Missing person: The Holy Spirit

Many people may have had an experience like that of the little girl who heard the Holy Ghost (as the Holy Spirit is sometimes called) mentioned in church from time to time, but so vaguely and infrequently she could only gu…

Amid chanting and drumming, a crowd gathers in Sao Paulo and waits for the gods to come to them from the spirit world.

They are celebrating a sacred festival day in honor of Omulu, a deity of life and death. The women wear white dresses with crinolines, …