Across families

Haitian Vodou and Yoruba Ifá

Different families with 12 axes in close agreement — the sort of pairing a quiz weighting only the divine axes would never surface. Mean distance across all seventeen axes: 0.09 (0 would be identical).

Haitian VodouAfro-diasporic

A distant creator and a crowd of lwa who are served, fed and who ride their devotees in ceremony. Initiatory, communal, intensely embodied, and consistently misrepresented by everyone who has not looked at it.

Yoruba IfáAfrican

A vast memorised divination corpus, a remote supreme being, hundreds of orisha, and a personal destiny chosen before birth that can be renegotiated. The source tradition for most of the Afro-diasporic religions in this matrix.

Where they agree

A1 Divine reality
Both sit at a divine reality certainly exists — a gap of 0.00.
C1 Survival of the self
Both sit at continues in some form — a gap of 0.00.
C3 The human condition
Both sit at leaning ignorant but fundamentally sound — a gap of 0.00.
E1 Exclusivity
Both sit at leaning many valid paths — a gap of 0.00.
E4 Standing of nature
Both sit at animate and itself sacred — a gap of 0.00.
A3 Plurality
Both sit at many powers and spirits — a gap of 0.03.
B3 Institutional authority
Both sit at clergy and tradition decide and leaning clergy and tradition decide respectively — a gap of 0.03.
D2 Centrality of ritual
Both sit at essential and prescribed — a gap of 0.03.
A4 Locus
Both sit at fully present within it — a gap of 0.04.
E2 Origin of the cosmos
Both sit at leaning an intentional act — a gap of 0.05.
E3 Locus of belonging
Both sit at leaning a people, inherited — a gap of 0.06.
D1 Mechanism of the ultimate good
Both sit at between given as grace and achieved by effort or insight and leaning achieved by effort or insight respectively — a gap of 0.10.

Where they part company

B2 Reading of sacred text
Haitian Vodou: metaphorical, or no text at all. Yoruba Ifá: leaning literal and binding. A gap of 0.55 on an axis running from “literal and binding” to “metaphorical, or no text at all”.

All seventeen axes

Axis	Haitian Vodou	Yoruba Ifá	Gap
A1 Divine reality	a divine reality certainly exists	a divine reality certainly exists	0.00
A2 Personhood	leaning a personal being one can address	between impersonal principle or order and a personal being one can address	0.17
A3 Plurality	many powers and spirits	many powers and spirits	0.03
A4 Locus	fully present within it	fully present within it	0.04
B1 Source of truth	between revealed and fixed and reason and direct experience	between revealed and fixed and reason and direct experience	0.14
B2 Reading of sacred text	metaphorical, or no text at all	leaning literal and binding	0.55
B3 Institutional authority	clergy and tradition decide	leaning clergy and tradition decide	0.03
C1 Survival of the self	continues in some form	continues in some form	0.00
C2 Shape of time	leaning cyclical return	leaning cyclical return	0.14
C3 The human condition	leaning ignorant but fundamentally sound	leaning ignorant but fundamentally sound	0.00
D1 Mechanism of the ultimate good	between given as grace and achieved by effort or insight	leaning achieved by effort or insight	0.10
D2 Centrality of ritual	essential and prescribed	essential and prescribed	0.03
D3 The body	leaning to be celebrated	between to be disciplined and to be celebrated	0.16
E1 Exclusivity	leaning many valid paths	leaning many valid paths	0.00
E2 Origin of the cosmos	leaning an intentional act	leaning an intentional act	0.05
E3 Locus of belonging	leaning a people, inherited	leaning a people, inherited	0.06
E4 Standing of nature	animate and itself sacred	animate and itself sacred	0.00

Positions for Haitian Vodou rest principally on Haitian Vodou ritual practice and Desmangles, The Faces of the Gods; for Yoruba Ifá, on Odu Ifa corpus and Abimbola’s scholarship. Per-cell sources are listed on each tradition’s own page.

Which of the two is closer to you?

The questionnaire places your answers on these same axes and ranks all 65 traditions by how closely they match. Take it.