Voodoo – also known as Voudoo, Voudoun, or Voodun – is a religious system based mainly on beliefs and practices brought from Africa into the Western world, although now incorporating other components and having further developed through time and circumstance.

The name “Voodoo” comes from the Fon word for the system, practiced in Dahomey, of worshipping, and seeking assistance and oracles from divine power, as this was channeled through the visible presence of a specific kind of living creature.

The astral presence of the Loa, and their manifestation through possession of their devotees, however, now apparently suffices.