Bòòríí

Hausa animism or Bori is an African traditional religion of the Hausa people of West Africa that involves spirit possession.

Bòòríí is a Hausa noun, meaning the spiritual force that resides in physical things, and is related to the word for local distilled alcohol (borassa) as well the practice of medicine (boka). The Bori religion is both an institution to control these forces, and the performance of an "adoricism" (as opposed to exorcism) ritual, dance and music by which these spirits are controlled and by which illness is healed.

An aspect of the traditional Maguzawa Hausa religious traditions, Bori became a state religion led by ruling-class priestesses among some of the late pre-colonial Hausa states. When Islam started making inroads into Hausa land in the 14th century, certain aspects of the religion such as idol worship were driven underground. The cult of Tsumbubura in the then Sultanate of Kano and many other similar Bori cults were suppressed, but Bori survived in "spirit-possession" cults by integrating some aspects of Islam. The Bori spirit possession priestesses maintained nominal influence over the Sultanates that replaced the earlier Animist kingdoms. Priestesses communed with spirits through ecstatic dance ritual, hoping to guide and maintain the state's ruling houses. A corps of Bori priestesses and their helpers was led by royal priestess, titled the "Inna", or "Mother of us all". The Inna oversaw this network, which was not only responsible for protecting society from malevolent forces through possession dances, but which provided healing and divination throughout the kingdom.

Bori has a remarkably visible homosexual aspect. Northern Nigerias LGBT community called Yan Daudu is a clear reference to 'Daudu' one of the many spirits in the pantheon of Bori. The Karuwai guild, a class of mostly lesbians and renegade women that refused to subscribe to cultural customs sometimes practicing prostitution also held substantial capital within the cult. These female husbands and boy wives continued to exercise a significant influence in Hausa society throughout the 70's and 80's

Homosexual practices once common within Hausa society continued to survive and found legitimacy in Bori. Since the 1970s the slow radicalization of Northern Nigeria has witnessed continued suppression of the Yan Daudu and Karuwai

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