However, the word "Comfa" is also a term to define the greater folk religion involving spirit possession originating in Guyana.
Of these beliefs the main influences are from African traditional practices, specifically Kongo religion, Christianity and some elements from indigenous peoples.
[2] Comfa can be traced back to early worship of the water spirit "Watermamma" (known as Mami Wata elsewhere) amongst enslaved Guyanese.
By the 1880s a man named Joseph MacLaren from Grenada along with Nathaniel Jordan founded a church in Guiana and formally began teaching Comfa practices under the title of "Faithism," popularly called the Jordanites.
The entrees are spirits embodying seven different ethnic groups that shaped Guyana: Africans, Indigenous people, Chinese, Dutch, East Indians, English, and Spanish.