As Rasta has developed, and as individuals develop spiritually through Rasta, questions arise for many.  Is the religion forced upon Blacks by the slavemasters really the appropriate road back to their true identities as Africans? This question has led many Rastas to look closely at African spirituality, which always found its expression in the slaves’ interpretation of Christianity anyway. Caribbean Christianity and American Black Christianity contain strong elements of far older African traditions. Voudon (or Santeria or Candomble) is a striking example of the wedding of indigenous black spirituality with Christian imagery. In the Yoruba tradition of West Africa, which so many slaves brought across the ocean with them, the gods, or orishas, are close to humans, and it is possible to ‘call them down’ to inhabit human bodies. This belief in some ways could not be more opposed to the Christian rejection of the flesh, but then, one could say that Jesus the man was ‘ridden’ by YHWH in the same way an orisha ‘rides’ his or her human ‘horse’, called down to physical incarnation by drum and by dance.

The Rasta/African preoccupation with history and ancestors also led many back naturally to the Egyptian and Ethiopian Kushite traditions.