This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
African and Diaspora Concepts gathers nine doctrines from West and Central African religion and the Atlantic traditions descended from it, unified by geography and lineage rather than by one shared claim.
Three form a Yoruba cluster that only makes sense read together. Ase is the power that makes things happen, present unevenly in words, offerings and above all the orisha, and distributed by Olodumare at creation. Ori is the innermost self and bearer of destiny, chosen before birth and then forgotten, which is why divination exists to recover it. Iwa pele, good character, is the practical hinge between them, since a well chosen ori can be spoiled by bad character and a poor one redeemed by good, and no offering substitutes for how a person treats others. All three crossed the Atlantic largely intact, surviving as ache and the kariocha in Santeria and as axe and the head preparation in Candomble.
Abosom names the parallel Akan class of lesser deities under the supreme but remote Nyame, a genuine counterpart to the orisha and to Fon vodun. Dikenga, the Kongo cosmogram, states in one diagram that life is cyclical and the dead remain reachable, and reappears drawn on the ground in Cuban Palo and in markings across the American South. Rada and Petwo are the two ritual nations of Haitian Vodou rather than separate sects, opposed by temperature, cool inherited order against hot fast efficacy, and complementary rather than good against evil. Ancestor veneration states the doctrine beneath much of this, that death removes a person from sight without removing them from the lineage. Ubuntu closes the group as ethics rather than cosmology, personhood achieved only through other persons.