Serer religion
West African belief system
The Serer religion or Serer spirituality (Serer: A ƭat Roog, meaning "the way of the Divine", "path of God", or "religious life"), is the original religious beliefs, practices, and teachings of the Serer people living in the Senegambia region in West Africa. The Serer religion believes in a universal supreme deity called Roog (or Rog). In the Cangin languages, Roog is referred to as Koox (or Kooh), Kopé Tiatie Cac, and Kokh Kox. Doctor of ethnology and lecturer in ethnosciences, Professor Simone Kalis writes that:
Religious life or "path of God" / a fat Roog is based on the cult of the ancestors / pangool. They are the pivot around which all the rituals that make up religious and therapeutic practices originate. The priest / o yaal pangool, master of the cult, is located halfway between the world of the beyond and the here below; the invisible and the visible, the dead and the living.
The Serer people are found throughout the Senegambia region. In the 20th century, around 85% of the Serer converted to Islam (Sufism), but some are Christians or follow their traditional religion. Despite resisting Islamization and jihads for almost a millennium, having been persecuted for centuries, most of the Serers who converted to Islam converted as recently as the 1990s, in part, trying to escape discrimination and disenfranchisement by the majority Muslim groups surrounding them, who still view the Serers as "the object of scorn and prejudice."
Traditional Serer religious practices encompass ancient chants and poems, veneration of and offerings to spirits (pangool), Serer initiation rites, folk medicine, divination, and preservation of Serer history, culture, and identity which includes forbidding mixed-marriages, and preserving one's sexual purity until marriage – a practice that is strongly adhered to by the Serer-Noon, where the consequence of breaking this custom could mean being sentenced to celibacy for the rest of one's life.
Beliefs
Divinity
The Serer people believe in a supreme deity called Roog (or Rog) and sometimes referred to as Roog Sene ("Roog The Immensity" or "The Merciful God").
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