# Yoruba Religion · The Canon · The Atlas · The Congregation of Tomorrow

Source: https://congregationoftomorrow.org/atlas/library/canon/yoruba-religion/ · The Congregation of Tomorrow · the Atlas · language: en
The same words a person sees on this page, nothing more and nothing hidden.
Our own words are free to use under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), naming the Congregation of Tomorrow. Words of others keep their own terms.
Every page of the site, listed: https://congregationoftomorrow.org/ai/pages.json · the whole site in one file: https://congregationoftomorrow.org/llms-full.txt

← The Canon: all 125
The Canon · No. 066
Yoruba Religion
Isese; Ifa; Orisa tradition
c.800 CE – present · African & Diasporic · Living · Nigeria, Benin, Togo; and across the Americas
V. THE MEDIEVAL WORLD — c.500 – 1500 CE
### How many
### Who began it
### What it is for
### What it worships
### What it holds
### What it does
### After death
### Its texts
### Its branches
### Of note
### Its timeline
- c.800–1000 CE Ile-Ife flourishes; the naturalistic bronze and terracotta heads produced there stunned European art historians, several of whom initially refused to believe they were African work.
- c.1400–1800 CE Oyo empire; Sango's cult spreads with it.
- <strong>1500s–1860s CE</strong> The transatlantic slave trade carries Yoruba people, disproportionately in the 19th century after the Oyo collapse, to Cuba, Brazil, Haiti and Trinidad. The religion travels with them and survives by hiding inside Catholicism.
- 1830s–1890s CE Christian and Muslim missions expand in Yorubaland; Samuel Ajayi Crowther, a freed Yoruba slave, becomes the first African Anglican bishop.
- 1960s–present Reverse transmission: practitioners from Cuba and Brazil return to Nigeria and Benin to study; Oyotunji Village is founded in South Carolina in 1970.
- 2005 CE Ifá inscribed by UNESCO.
- Present Nigeria is roughly half Muslim and half Christian, with Isese practised openly by a minority and quietly by many more.
### Sources
Not yet checked against named sources. This entry is the house's reading; until it is checked, treat each claim as unverified. Correct it, with a source.
The Atlas The Door