In other words, the simple fact that Africans have largely reduced religious thought and practice to everyday practice, that African religions seek to link the supernatural with the natural and the mundane, continues to baffle the Western world. Common Spirits African belief in spirits and juju is just like taking the universal belief in the supernatural to the next logical step. Universal belief in the supernatural and spiritism rests on a conviction of the existence of unseen beings with magical powers that can be harnessed to help the human race in their everyday existence. Africans include the spirits of dead ancestors and relations among these unseen beings. And the belief is that these beings are to be found anywhere and everywhere.
Cults therefore revolve around wherever any such being is presumed to be found.
But the need or desire to harness the powers of these unseen beings is separate from the belief in, and worship of, the Supreme Being, or God. This is true across the continent. The commitment to God is, in other words, unaffected by the need to seek the help of minor deities to solve pressing everyday problems. This explains the paradox of many otherwise devout followers of other religions like Christianity, Muslim and so on also concurrently consulting diviners, fetishes and other cults. This also points to the confusion that arise from the tendency to use words interchangeably while talking about different institutions of religion, and methods of cults and sects.