For the uninitiated, voodoo is a word that may conjure up images of gruesome zombies, pin-infested dolls and crazy-looking men wearing top hats and practising black magic.

Visit Ouidah, a town in the Republic of Benin, an ancestral home of voodoo, and you may see a different side of an ancient African custom that is practised by as many as 60 per cent of the country’s 7m people. Millions more voodoo practitioners in the US, Brazil, Haiti and Cuba owe their heritage to the transatlantic West African slave trade once based around the town and brought to life in Bruce Chatwin’s semi- fictional tale The Viceroy of Ouidah.

The yearly voodoo festival that now takes place in Ouidah is a feast of colour and dancing, a celebration of a culture that is anchored – as many African cultures are – in the veneration of ancestors who are considered intermediaries to the spirit worlds. The deities that voodoo believers look up to are in step with the different facets of the physical world that surrounded them: Gu, is the god of blacksmithing and war; Sakpata is a divinity of soil and health, and so on.

Banned in 1970s Benin under the Marxist regime of Mathieu Kerekou, voodoo was made an official religion in 1996, alongside Christianity and Islam, by Nicephore Soglo, who succeeded Kerekou, in a ploy to garner more votes for that year’s election. Even though Kerekou returned to power in those elections, he has never dared reverse the decision.

“Whether we want it or not, voodoo is a fact. We breathe it. Not even an outside ideology could stop it,” says Martine de Souza, a voodoo expert and cultural guru from Benin.

On entering the junction to what initially looked like a fairly nondescript town, I follow a sand track towards the coast, crossing over a lush lagoon plied by lone pirogue fishermen. On the pristine palm-fringed beach, hundreds of revellers gather among the polyrhythmic beats of drum troupes to follow the regally clad chiefs buffeting through the crowds under the shade of swirling tapestry parasols.

By the water, groups of women perform sacred rites with bowls of food and bottles of gin in the blistering heat and under the gaze of the giant shackled iron figures that flank the “Point of No Return”, the archway commemorating where slaves began their journey across the Atlantic Ocean.

Weary from the heat, I imagine what it must have been like for those who left their homeland in shackles. Then the unforgiving heat is tempered by a light breeze, a flavour of what may have awaited departing slaves, and I am infused with the drama of the rituals and the reverberation of drum beats that I feel even in my belly. Then, all of a sudden, I am almost knocked over by a large gyrating woman in fine robes, complete with billowing headdress, handbag and layers of make-up melting over her face.

Later that day, I find myself at the Sacred Forest of Ouidah, where drummers concoct furious rhythms to summon the spirits to take possession of the dancers moving to beats said to tap into the various deities. Oracle men mingle with bare-chested maidens and moving thatched conical shapes topped with bull horns.

Escaping the clouds of red earth at the moment some of the devotees collapse to the ground, convulsing in trances, I step into the shady bliss of a rare, huge, contorted iroki tree. Greeting me is a statue of Legba, an intermediary between humans and the spirit world, complete with huge bull horns and erection.

While Benin’s government is working to actively promote the voodoo festival, timing it this year to coincide with a film festival in Ouidah sponsored by French international radio station RFI, the occasion does not feel contrived for the benefit of tourists. An animal sacrifice dance ceremony I attended got round by word of mouth, and was attended by half the local community in the local chief’s compound, offering a rare glimpse into African traditional life without feeling like an intruder.

While Ouidah does offer clean and well-maintained beach shacks with simple and tasty cooking near the Point of No Return, the main draws for many of the foreign visitors are the cultural attractions, including the town’s slave museum. While no visible delegations from Haiti, Brazil or the US were spotted this year, the event is nonetheless a draw for voodoo practitioners from the western hemisphere.

“Coming here is really a reconnection to the spirits. The physical element of voodoo connects me to my body, makes me actually feel who I am,” says Nile, a history lecturer from a US university, and an environmental activist. I pretend I do not understand what he means, but eventually I have to concede that somehow I have been hypnotised by the drumming and startled by some of the things I have seen: the grotesque and macabre sculptures that evoke sentiments you can’t quite put your finger on; the possessed faces of a troupe of women singers; the dripping carcass of a slaughtered goat being tossed around.

That millions in the western hemisphere, including many who are not descended from African slaves, practise voodoo is a vindication of its influence on society. Voodoo in Benin was institutionalised by the royal kingdom of Dahomey, which was founded in the 17th century. The warlord succession of kings who conquered with their fierce “Amazon” women warriors, brought back captured voodoo priests to perform auspicious rites in their  palaces.

The palace at Abomey, Dahomey’s capital, about 100km north of Ouidah, is a shadow of its former self, much of it having been burned down by the king as the conquering French army marched on the kingdom. Today a museum and declared a World Heritage Site by the UN, the palace offers a glimpse of the severe social conditions in which the practice evolved. The prayer room in the inner sanctum was apparently partly doused in the blood of captured enemies of the kingdom. A basrelief on the outer wall of the king’s audience room depicts a traitor being killed by having a mound of hot earth shoved up his rectum.

In part, the rigid social norms associated with voodoo are reflected in the way it is practised in Benin today.

I meet the high priest of Abomey in the interior of a maze of mud brick compounds off a main road, where he shows off the new colonnade where community members who showed disrespect to voodoo would be flogged.

In front of the building, a young planted tree twists forth in a contorted shape, revealing a natural hollow in the principal knot of the trunk. Many of the trees near the local temple have such hollows. It is explained to me that these are due to the sacred fetishes planted alongside the trees. The hollows give the spirits space to enter and leave the trees as they wish.

The adherence to traditions fathered centuries ago has helped keep in balance the delicate equilibrium of kinship ties and societal norms explains the priest.

“Voodoo is the substance of life itself. It is the benevolent and the malignant all at once.”

Dino Mahtani is the FT’s West Africa correspondent

A SPELL ABROAD

*The annual Voodoo festival in Ouidah takes place in the second week of January. Air France operates five flights a week to Benin’s commercial capital, Cotonou. Visa obtainable from Republic of Benin Honorary Consul in the UK at Millenium House, Humber Road, London NW2 6DW, Tel: +44 (0)20-8830 8612.

*You will need a yellow fever vaccination certificate in Benin: obtainable at any travel clinic.

*Cotonou to Ouidah: 40 minutes’ drive. Private car hire should not cost more than €25.

*Euros are more easily changed than US dollars.

*Accommodation: the Oasis hotel in town is basic but clean. The Brazilian Inn at the beach has an outdoor restaurant and rooms with air conditioning. Reservations recommended. www.bda2.com

*Abomey is reachable by car from Ouidah in approximately two hours, best done as a day trip.

*Ganvie, a town built on stilts over the water and one of Benin’s most famous sites is also reachable from Ouidah. Beware, it is a tourist trap.