“One day you will be a great Bokor because you care about family”- the late Bokor Dafliso Agbovi I was a second-year college student at Middlebury College in Vermont at the time. We were filming our first ReVolution film, “Like A Knife: The Real Vodu” which at that point had…

Chronicles of a Ghanaian-Japanese Vodu Priest What are dwarves or Azizaa? Since I was young, I have been fascinated by dwarves. I was captivated by these small beings, from watching Disney’s Snow White And The Seven Dwarves to learning about hobbits in the Lord of the Rings film series. In Ewe mythology, dwarfs are known…

A world that prioritizes Western academic achievement and material accumulation over knowledge of self or nature. A world that tells you to depend on a Eurocentric system that will interminably oppress African people instead of building systems that primarily serve African people. A world where a human being’s value is…

People of Afro-Japanese heritage like me (I am Ghanaian-Japanese) are not considered “true” Japanese due to our darker complexion. People like me are often bullied at school or made to feel like foreigners in our own country. However, we represent Japan too; we are becoming more visible and growing in…

By Sena Voncujovi That the divine energies within the trees, the rivers, the ocean, and the mountains, we rely on to sustain ourselves are evil. That the herbs we use to cure ourselves and families for centuries when there was no “medicine” are somehow superstitious and evil. That our African…

For the first time, the 5000 Mile Report has been written five thousand miles away from Beijing.

Any person in contemporary Ghana will have heard popular unisex Ewe names like Senyo, Selasi, Sedem, Sena, Selorm, etc. — all names that are derived from Se, the Ewe word for destiny or God. But what does Se really mean in Ewe culture? Most people will simply translate it as…

There is a worrying trend of people reading textbooks or Google-searching rituals in African spirituality and claiming to be legitimate practitioners or, in the worst-case, priests. This article will expand on why self-initiation after reading books is unlikely to be effective and sometimes even dangerous. While books and theoretical research…

“Blood is like a battery that empowers spirits and ancestors before they work”-Christopher Voncujovi, Ewe Vodu Priest in Accra, Ghana. In many African spiritual practices like my practice of Vodu, blood sacrifice is a common practice. Vodu practitioners beleive that sacrifice to deities and ancestors are necessary for the progress…