Arts of Being Yoruba

Divination, Allegory, Tragedy, Proverb, Panegyric

Adélékè Adéèkó

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780253026729
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

There is a culturally significant way of being Yorùbá that is expressed through dress, greetings, and celebrations—no matter where in the world they take place. Adélékè Adék documents Yorùbá patterns of behavior and articulates a philosophy of how to be Yorùbá in this innovative study. As he focuses on historical writings, Ifá divination practices, the use of proverbs in contemporary speech, photography, gendered ideas of dressing well, and the formalities of ceremony and speech at celebratory occasions, Adéékó contends that being Yorùbá is indeed an art and Yorùbá-ness is a dynamic phenomenon that responds to cultural shifts as Yorùbá people inhabit an increasingly globalized world.

1 “Writing” and “Reference” in Ifá Divination Chants

IN JULY 1897, Bishop Charles Phillips, a leading member of the Yorùbá-speaking clergy of the Anglican Church in Nigeria, wrote a preface to the book of Ifá divination stories collected and annotated by Rev. E. M. Lijadu, a pioneering missionary in the Òǹdó region of southwestern Nigeria. Phillips especially praised Lijadu’s commentaries on the theological ramifications of the stories as a bold first step toward understanding why the church had enjoyed so little success in evangelizing the Yorùbá people. Thinking of conversion work in warfare terms, Bishop Phillips likened Lijadu’s collection and commentary to a brilliant reconnaissance:

Bí a kò bá rí ìdí ibi tí agbára ọ̀tá gbé wà, a kò lè ṣẹgun wọn. Bí àwa Kristian kò bá mọ ìdí ìsìn àwọn Kèfèrí àti àwọn Ìmàle, a kì yóò lè gbé ìhìnrere Kristi síwájú wọn lí ọ̀nà tí yóò fi ká wọn lára. (Lijadu, Ifá, 4) (If we do not locate the source of our enemies’ strength, we cannot defeat them. If we Christians do not fathom the foundation of pagan and Islamic devotion, we will not be able to present Christ’s gospel in the most appealing form.)¹

The bishop decried the unfortunate attitude that had led Christian missionaries in Yorùbá-speaking societies to forget how mastery of pre-Christian practices had helped conversion in biblical places and times.² He rebuked fellow church workers for their intellectual arrogance and for having not acted early enough to understand the thought institutions of pre-Christian Yorùbá religions, judging as unconscionable their believing that they could preach effectively and convert sufficiently without understanding the foundations of action among the people they were charged to persuade about the Gospel:

Ṣùgbọ́n àwa ńja ogun àti-fi ìhìnrere Kristi múlẹ̀ ni ilẹ̀ wa láì wá ìdí ìsìn àtọwọ́dọ́wọ́ àwọn bàbá wa tí ó ní agbára tóbẹ́ẹ̀ lórí àwọn Kèfèrí. Nítorí náà ni ìwàásù wa kò ní agbára tó bẹ́ẹ̀ lórí wọn. Òmíràn nínú wọn rò pé àìmọ̀ ni ó jẹ́ kí àwa máa sọ ìsọkúsọ sí ìsìn wọn. (Lijadu, Ifá, 4) (We strive to plant Christ’s gospel in our country without researching the very strong, albeit pagan, ancient beliefs of our fathers. Our preaching produces little impact for that reason. Unknown numbers among them think that we deride their religions because we know nothing about them.)

Perhaps the most important observation Bishop Phillips made in that short preface concerns the effect he believed publishing Ifá divination stories in book form would have on unbelievers:

Nígbà tí àwọn tí ó ńkọ́ Ifá sórí bá mọ̀ pé wọ́n lè ka Odù Ifá nínú ìwé, mo rò pé yóò ṣí wọn lórí láti kọ́ ìwé kíkà, àti láti fi ọ̀rọ̀ inú Bíbélì wé ti Odù Ifá. Wọn yóò sì rí èyí tí ó sàn jù fún ara wọn. (Lijadu, Ifá, 4) (I believe that when rote learners of Ifá stories discover that they can read Ifá’s words in a book, they will seek literacy eagerly, gain the capacity to compare the Bible to Ifá stories, and discover on their own the merit of the superior text.)

By casting Ifá stories in the comparatively permanent medium of writing, Christians would be creating for the literate unbeliever a self-reflection apparatus with which to critically examine thought spheres hitherto controlled by the guild of divination priests, the babaláwo. Taking divination stories to be Ifá’s main tool of mind control, Bishop Phillips recommended print dissemination of these narratives as a means of freeing up the critical faculty of non-Christians against the shroud of secrecy (awo) with which Ifá priests had misled Yorùbá people through the ages. Print technology, he thought, would separate mystery (awo) from its curators (babaláwo). For Bishop Phillips, the core of Yorùbá idolatry lay not in sculptured icons but in the system. The theological errors of the Yorùbá religion, assuming that Christianity is not Yorùbá, could be easily pointed out if the stories were converted into portable packages comparable to the Bible, the only book authored by the true God. In a palpable, scripted shape, indigenous religious thought could be quoted and disputed, and its false teaching exposed.

Within Bishop Phillips’s manifest desire to accelerate conversion through a literacy campaign sits a noticeable “nationalist” displeasure at the condescension of fellow missionaries who mistook the historical lack of printed scriptures among the Yorùbá as a sign of backwardness:

Àwá fi ojú kékeré wo àwọn kèfèrí ilẹ̀ wa nítorí pé wọn kò ní ìwé. Bẹ́ẹ̀ ni àwa mọ̀ pé ó ní iye ẹ̀kọ́ tí ènìyàn ńkọ́ kí a tó gbàá bí babaláwo. Èdè Ifá jinlẹ̀ gidigidi. (Lijadu, Ifá, 4) (We belittle the intelligence of the pagans of our country because they do not have written scriptures, when the situation shows that babaláwo training truly involves extended and rigorous training. Ifá discourse is very profound.)

Bishop Phillips seems to be insinuating that if the situation were to be considered without prejudice, the unbelievers of “our land” have authored “books” waiting to be transcribed and analyzed. Although this book stops short of saying that Ifá stories constitute one book, this chapter’s characterizing Ifá discourse as revolving around writing shares Bishop Phillips’s representation of the storytelling elements of Ifá divination infrastructure as an instituted, durable signification system.³ To convert Yorùbá people to Christianity, an understanding of their divination system, which I argue below turns on a system of written inscriptions, should be the beginning point.

Bishop Phillips isolated two questions that persist still in academic studies of Ifá: (1) Does the divination system, especially the contents of the stories, elaborate a unified Yorùbá theological or philosophical viewpoint? And (2) Are Ifá divination stories literal, oracular truths or fancy-driven poetic inventions? From the inside, professional custodians of Ifá divination, leaning heavily on the stories’ assertions, claim divine origins for the narratives on which they base their authority to proclaim on the nature of all things and ideas—including ideas and thoughts about things and ideas—across time and space. From the outside, the radical polytheism of religious identification in Yorùbá traditional societies encourages skeptics to suspect Ifá’s arrogation of theological centrality to itself.

As Karin Barber (“Discursive Strategies”) implies, scholars make Ifá the central divinity in Yorùbá religion because they accept too easily Ifá’s elaborate self-justifications, particularly its stories about itself. Scholars and divination practitioners speak as if the illustrative stories used in Ifá consultations are patently guileless and their divine authorship therefore ascertained. Wándé Abímbọ́lá’s plain reporting of his informants’ views that the firsthand knowledge that the divination God, Ọ̀rúnmìlà, gained exclusively by virtue of his presence at creation is the source of the disclosure system he supervises during divination (Ifá Divination Poetry, 1) illustrates Barber’s point very well. In Abímbọ́lá’s account, Ifá divination procedures are retrieval mechanisms for accessing the corpus of Yorùbá primordial knowledge stored in and as divination stories: “Ifá was put in charge of divination because of his great wisdom which he acquired as a result of his presence by the side of the Almighty when the latter created the universe. Ifá therefore knew all the hidden secrets of the universe. Hence, his praise-name Akéréfinúṣọgbọ́n (the small one who is full of wisdom)” (1).

Although he does not trust the truth claims of Ifá’s self-justifying narratives, Lijadu, like Abímbọ́lá, does not question Ifá’s centrality, even in the largely antagonistic first volume of his studies. Lijadu contests the theological basis of many stories, but accepts Ọ̀rúnmìlà’s place next to the Almighty:

Àwọn bàbá wa mọ̀, wọ́n sí ní ìmọ̀ náà lí èrò nígbà gbogbo, wọn kò sì ṣe tàbítàbí kí wọ́n tó jẹ́wọ́ ìmọ̀ yìí pé Ẹni kan ḿbẹ tí í ṣe Ẹlẹ́dàá ohun gbogbo, tí í ṣe Olúwa ohun gbogbo, tí ó sì ní ipa, ọlá àti agbára gbogbo, Olúwa rẹ̀ náà ni wọ́n ńpè lí Ọlọ́run Olódùmarè tàbí Ọba ọrun…Olódùmarè ti fi Ẹni kan ṣe ibìkejì ara Rẹ̀, Òun à sì máa pe Olúwa rẹ̀ sí ìmọ̀ nínú ohun gbogbo, Òun á sì máa fi ohun gbogbo hàn án, Òun sì fí i ṣe ẹlẹ́rìí ara Rẹ́ ninu ohun gbogbo, tóbẹ́ẹ̀ tí kò sí ohun tí Olódùmarè mọ̀ tí Olúwa rẹ̀ náà kò mọ̀, kò sì sí ohun tí Olódùmarè rí tí Òun kò rí. Ẹni náà ni wọ́n ńpè ní “Ọ̀rúnmìlà, Ẹlẹ́rìí ìpín, ibìkejì Olódùmarè.” Lọ́dọ̀ ẹni yìí nìkan ni wọ́n sì gbàgbọ́ pé ènìyàn lè gbọ́ òdodo ohùn ẹnu àti ìfẹ́ inú Olódùmarè. (Lijadu, Ifá, 17–18) (Our forefathers knew, always had the knowledge in them, and did not waiver in witnessing that there is a being by whom all things were made, the Lord whose might, glory, and power surpasses all. That being they named as God Almighty or Heavenly King…God has by his side a second entity to whom he discloses the knowledge of all things and in whom he reposes all confidence such that everything the Almighty knows this person knows, and everything the Almighty sees, he too sees. This person is the one called “Ọ̀rúnmìlà, the witness to the allotment of destiny, second to the Almighty.” This person is the only true source of Almighty God’s plans.)

Although understandable professional interests could have caused the preferment of Abímbọ́lá’s informants, the admiration of indigenous Christian missionaries like Phillips and Lijadu for the promise Ifá stories hold for systematizing Yorùbá theology suggests that goals other than selfish ones are involved in the way Ifá is thought about.⁴

For Ifá priests and scholars—and their Christian antagonists, many of whom are Yorùbá—evidence of Ifá’s supremacy in understanding Ifá comes from Ifá itself, a privilege that no other institution of rationality enjoys. Indeed, all other institutions seek validity in Ifá. It is easy to sympathize with Karin Barber’s materialist, text-oriented critique of the incorporation mechanisms with which Ifá discourse presents its operations as unquestionably pantheistic. In this chapter I propose that Ifá divination discourse holds its position as the central repository of the essential bases of Yorùbá being and thought across time and space because it foregrounds an objective, graphematic approach to how it constitutes intellectual problems, the methods of analyzing them, and the means of teasing out solutions. I begin by briefly explicating the divination processes, their underlying reasoning, and the general problems of inquiry the system raises. I analyze the relationship of the storytelling part of Ifá divination to the inscription gestures that precede it and use this to argue that a referential gap separates the two and that the space between inscription and storytelling is the location from which practitioners derive their authority for creating narrative motifs and commentary making. That space is where new referents are constantly created, historical developments updated, and cultural seamlessness sustained. I conclude with a discussion of how the referential space between writing and storytelling in Ifá enables a view of time that allows divination clients to manage a coherent relationship to the past, the ostensible source of the solutions to their contemporary problems.

Writing in Ifá

The foundation of analysis in Ifá is the systematized, graphic translation o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 “Writing” and “Reference” in Ifá Divination Chants
• 2 Culture, Meaning, Proverbs (For Oyekan Owomoyela, in Memoriam)
• 3 Reading, Writing, and Epistemic Instability in Fágúnwà’s Novels
• 4 Sex, Gender, and Plot in Fágúnwà’s Adventures
• 5 Akínwùmí Ìṣọ̀lá’s Ẹfúnṣetán Aníwúrà and Yorùbá Woman-Being
• 6 Photography and the Panegyric in Contemporary Yorùbá Culture
• Conclusion: Book Launches as Cultural Affirmation
• Bibliography
• Index