Yoruban Religion: How It Survived – How It Exists Today Essay, Research Paper

Yoruban religion: how it survived; how it exists today

“There are never … cultures in contact but rather individuals, carriers of

different cultures. However, these individuals are not independent creatures

but are interrelated by complex webs of communication, of domination-

subordination, or of egalitarian exchange. They are a part of institutions,

which have rules for action, norms and organization (Bastide 1978, p. x).”

The Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria are perhaps the largest and most interesting people of West Africa. They have lived an urban existence for over a thousand years and rank among other West African groups representing the highest levels of cultural achievement, especially in regard to their religion. While numerous tribal wars and the transatlantic slave trade caused significant strife among the Yoruban people, the Yoruba maintained their cultural identity through their religion. Their religion has changed though, as the Yoruba had to hide their religion from a western society whose prejudices prevented an acceptance of their ways. This religion, despite its changes, continues to be practiced by many people today throughout the U.S., Caribbean and South America even though many aspects of it are kept secret and are only revealed to those who believe. The western version of this religion is known as Santeria.

Yoruban religion

For the Yoruba, their life is their religion. The Yourbas believe that they are direct descendants of Olodumare (God). The forces, or ashe, of nature come from Olodumare through deities or “orishas.” It is the orishas that are worshipped instead of Olodumare himself as one might think. Orishas are believed to have lived on earth long ago and, instead of dying, became gods under Olodumare to deliver His ashe to human beings who honor and praise the orishas. Murphy (1988) describes orishas: “… the orishas came into the world at its beginning at the holy city of Ile Ife [Yoruba], where they established such Yoruba arts and sciences as farming, hunting, smithing and divination. For some, they are the arts and sciences themselves. For every Yoruba activity, there is an orisha whose power underlies it (p. 11).” Brandon (1993) goes on to say that the Yoruba depend on (seek guidance from) the orisha for everything in his/her life (p. 17). Occurrences as simple as a lost opportunity or an unexplained feeling of anxiety would be reason enough to consult an orisha. But not just anyone can consult an orisha directly; the orisha must be summoned by a priest, priestess or babalawo; one who is specially trained for summoning the ashe of the orishas.

Divination

Traditionally, the Yoruba recognize as many as 1700 orishas, though only a few have achieved great notoriety in the religion. These great orishas are worshipped and venerated by organized priesthoods of men and women who have dedicated their lives to the service of a particular orisha. Priests and priestesses of the orishas act as leaders of Yoruba worship. They undergo long and careful training in such things as dance styles, prayer, songs and herbal healing. A priest or priestess grows in ashe by his or her growing confidence in learning the mysteries of the orishas. By bringing the orishas ashe to bear on those who consult them, priests and priestesses maintain the link between man and spirit. Idowu (1962) recognizes this interdependence between man and orisha, “Where there is no man, there is no divinity (p. 63).”

The Yoruba illustrate their faith in the orishas in the form of sacrifice or ebo. Through gifts of animals and/or plants, the Yoruba honor the orishas and beseech them to offer gifts in return. The Yoruba view sacrifice as a basic part of life. They recognize that to do anything, one must sacrifice something. To simply change your position in a room, one must sacrifice the current space he/she occupies. Of course, the Yoruba view sacrifice much deeper; “Life for life, ashe for ashe (Murphy, p. 15).” It is in this way, they believe, that humans grow in the divine exchange of energy. The orishas offer health, protection and wisdom; human beings offer sacrifice and praise. Each needs the other, for without the ashe of the orishas, human beings would despair of their God-given destiny, and would surely perish. And without the ashe of sacrifice, the orishas would wither and die. Because the orishas lived on earth at one time, they are not immortal; they depend on human beings for their life, their ashe. Without the energy exchange of sacrifice, where the orisha derives its ashe, they would be powerless to fight for their children (human beings).

The Yorubas have been known to offer human sacrifices to their orishas. Olowola (1983) writes,”[the] Yoruba do sacrifice human beings to their divinities … this [person] may be a stranger, a kin or an offspring (p.187).” This is probably the major difference in Yoruba religion in regard to Christianity. While both religions’ view of sacrifice is “one in purpose…(p.189)”, Olowola acknowledges, “the Israelites were forbidden [by Yahweh] to offer human beings for sacrifice… (Ibid).”

Ifa Divination

Ifa, the path of divination, is the name of a technique of divination held in great esteem by the Yoruba. In the beginning, Olodumare bestowed the orisha Orunmila with Ifa – a flawless method of communication between himself and the orishas. It is perhaps the most reflective and insightful of the ways of ashe. Through Ifa, the Yoruba unlock the mysteries of the will of Olodumare in the events of the world. Ifa can bring order out of chaos and reveal destiny in what might otherwise be dismissed as luck or chance.

Mastery of the Ifa divination requires ten to fifteen years of arduous training to learn. Masters of this religious art are called babalawos, “fathers of mystery,” and are almost exclusively male. Bascom (1984) makes a distinction in regard to babalawos – “the babalawo, as they are known, are both diviners and priests of Ifa … [however] they are distinguished from the “doctors” and “medicine men (p. 70),” even though the babalawo can also prepare charms and medicines. Babalawos are probably the most respected of all Yoruban priests. The mystery they can reveal is Olodumare’s destiny for all beings, including orishas. Wande Abimbola (1976), himself a trained babalawo, describes a song that babalawos sing of Ifa:

Ifa is the master of today.

Ifa is the master of tomorrow.

Ifa is the master of the day after tomorrow.

To Ifa belong all the four days [of the Yoruba week]

created by Oosa on earth. (p. 44)

Ifa and destiny are symbolically linked by the number sixteen. Sixteen happens to be the number of cosmos. This number represents the initial order that was issued by Olodumare during the creation of the world. A palm tree with sixteen branches stood at the center of the world at Ile-Ife. The branches of the tree formed the original quarters of Ile-Ife where Odudua, the co-creator of the city (paired with Obatala) of Ile-Ife lived. Yoruban history says that Odudua fathered sixteen sons who founded the sixteen original kingdoms of ancient Yoruba. Orunmila, the diviner orisha, then taught Ifa to his sixteen sons; they, in turn, passed it down to the babalawos who practice it today, thus explaining how humans learned to communicate with the orishas.

Through the interpretation of the patterns of the random fall of sixteen palm nuts, cowrie shells, kola nut valves or a chain of connected nut valves, a babalawo can decipher Olodumare’s precise destiny of anyone who sincerely asks. The number sixteen represents various states of humanity, the sixteen possible situations of life, called odu, of which sixteen subordinate signs are derived, omo-odu. Thus meaning that there are 256 different combinations of possible answers the babalawo can reveal.

The babalawo, upon being queried, will take sixteen nuts or shells in one hand and then pull away most of them with the other leaving one or two. This process is repeated until there are no shells or nuts left in his hand. The resulting pattern formed by the shells or nuts is interpreted by the babalawo and a poem or song is recited. Through the words of the song or poem, the mystery to the querants plight is discovered.

Migration to the New World

Tribal wars in West Africa in the sixteenth century caused many Africans to be imprisoned and/or enslaved. The sugar plantations and cotton farms of the New World required cheap laborers to work the farms and plantations. The prisoners were sold to traders to fill their need for cheap laborers and ultimately contributing to the nascence of the transatlantic slave trade in the sixteenth century, and with it, the migration of the Yoruban culture to the New World. Over the next 350 years the slave trade would bring between 520,000 and 702,000 slaves to Cuba, where a significant number of Yoruban slaves arrived (Murphy 1988, p. 23).

The Yoruban slaves encountered a world of brutal labor and oppression. As soon as they arrived they were immediately sold and put to work in the fields. During the peak sugar and tobacco trade years of the middle to late eighteenth century, Yoruban slaves in Cuba, also known as “Lucumi” after their way of greeting each other, oluku mi, “my friend,” worked as many as twenty hours a day. The slave poet Juan Francisco Manzano wrote these lines, translated by abolitionists in the late 1830’s:

With twenty hours of unremitting toil

Twelve in the field and eight to boil

Or grind the cane — believe me few grow old

But life is cheap, and sugar, Sir — is gold. (Murphy, p. 24)

Under conditions like these, one may think that the Lucumi would be too scared, too tired or simply renounce his faith for obvious reasons. There were no shrines or temples built for them to worship their orishas and even if there were, they feared, they might be killed for worshipping gods other than their masters’ god. This fear influenced the secrecy of their religion and thus created a subculture.

Integration

Many Lucumi escaped to the hills and established communities with other cimmarones or “wild men.” While these communities of cimmarones lived their lives by hunting and farming and other subsistence means, their major role was one of resistance and constant irritation to the plantation owners. The cimmarones assisted in the escape of slaves and in the raiding of plantations but their most important social function was that their freedom provided the opportunity for their religious traditions to be practiced and to be molded into their changing culture. Bands of cimmarones came together to form settlements all over the Cuban countryside called palenques. These establishments eventually evolved into the formation of a subculture complete with their own social institutions and religious traditions.

While the palenques were sources of hope and sanctuary for many Yoruban slaves, it was the palenques’ urban counterparts, the cabildos, which played a much greater role in the social adaptation and urban transformation of the Yoruban religion. Historically, cabildos in Spain “were religious brotherhoods whose major religious functions were the indoctrination of members in the principles of Catholicism… (Brandon 1993, p. 70).” Brandon goes on to describe the non-religious functions of these social fraternities; “corporate responsibility for the welfare of the members of the fraternity and their families by providing them with clothes, medicine, charity and a decent burial; plus an obligation to help the sick and impoverished of the church parish (Ibid).”

Afro-Cubans whom were either free men, slaves who had bought their freedom or were freed by the British, or slaves working in the cities would gather at these cabildos to drink and dance. A major recreational activity of the cabildos was staging dances. Under the direction of a Catholic priest, the cabildos permitted “the accommodation of African customs to the church’s worship (p. 71).” Through this “guided syncretism (Ibid),” the Catholic church and certainly the Cuban government hoped that the Lucumi would adopt the mainstream Catholic/Cuban religion and thus forsake their traditional Yoruban customs. But, as a result of their tacit participation in Catholic masses, dances, celebrations and other social events organized through the cabildos, Lucumi babalawos realized that the Catholic saints, by virtue of their colors and actions, resembled their orishas.

This discovery, coupled with new freedoms and rights of the Lucumi as abolitionist and revolutionary movements in Cuba began to make headway, led to the creation of a morphed Afro-Christian religion, called Santeria, “the way of the saints.” This description draws its roots from the way the Lucumi venerated their orishas beneath the images of Catholic Saints. The initiates into this new religion that became “priests” of the religion came to be known as santeros. What may have begun as an attempt to fool Catholic observers became a genuine universal religious vision in which a Catholic saint and a Yoruban orisha were regarded as different manifestations of the same spiritual entity. Murphy (1988) describes this transformation: “…in the same way the Yoruba became Lucumi in Cuba, so the ancient Yoruban religion became Santeria; an attempt to honor the gods of Africa in the land of the Catholic saints (p. 32).”

Immigration

Brandon (1993) notes that while the first Santeria priest to come to the U.S. was Francisco (Pancho) Mora (p.106), the majority of the Cuban Santeria initiates of all backgrounds (over one million) came to the U.S. in 1959 due to the Cuban revolution (Murphy 1988, p. 35). The santeros that arrived established the ways of the orisha in Miami and New York, where the majority of Cuban immigrants settled. Again, the immigrants found that they had to adapt into a new culture. Language was one way that the immigrants maintained their ties to one another but it also was a common link that drew other Spanish-speaking immigrants (Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Venezuelans, etc.) resident in these urban areas to Santeria. Santeria also appealed to the urban black population, especially of New York City, where the immigrant Hispanic and black lived together in the same neighborhoods. The adaptive nature of Santeria lent itself well to this change.

As in Cuba where the cabildos became central to the continuation of orisha worship, botanicas came to symbolize the same thing in the U.S. A botanica resembles a small retail store with pictures of the Virgin Mary and other Catholic symbols, but to the initiated, the mysteries of the orisha can be found inside. Unlike the deceptive ways the Lucumi in Cuba had to hide their religious practice, Murphy tells us that “thoughtful devotees [in the U.S.] maintain that the Catholic Saints are not disguises for their orishas [anymore], but rather personae (p. 40).” This relationship illustrates how closely intermixed Catholicism is in Santeria.

Religious sects of Santeria can be found in almost every major American city. Seasonal celebrations are also very visible and open to the general community. In New York city alone, there are said to be well over 100 botanicas where one in search of a santero or the ways of Santeria can find what he is looking for.

The Yoruba have been able to maintain their religious heritage through a process of integration in which secrecy and deception were integral. Gonzalez-Wippler (1982) states that many santeros continue with the secrecy because of the threat of religious persecution – “as if the santeros were still haunted by religious intolerance (p. 82).” While under normal circumstances secrecy and deception would tend to diminish desired results, in this case it was quite useful in order to not only maintain Yoruban traditions, but also conspired to assist in Yoruban socialization and adaptation. More importantly, I believe, is the way that the Yorubas maintained their relationship with their own past. Yoruban efforts throughout their plight not only focused on recognizing both past and present but keeping both past and present “aligned like two mirrors facing each other (Brandon, p. 183).” It this tradition of reflection that ensures us that Yoruban religion will endure far into the future.

Bibliography

References

Abimbola, W. (1976). If? : an exposition of If? literary corpus. Ibadan, Nigeria: Oxford University

Press.

Bascom, W. (1984). The Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland

Press.

Bastide, R. (1978). The African religions of Brazil. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins

University Press.

Brandon, G. (1993). Santeria from Africa to the New World. Bloomington, IN: Indiana

University Press.

Gonzalez-Wippler, M. (1982). The Santeria experience. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:

Prentice-Hall.

Idowu, E.B. (1962). Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief. London: Longmans.

Murphy, J. (1988). Santeria. New York: Beacon.

Olowola, C. (1983). The Yoruba traditional religion – a critique. Ann Arbor, MI:

University Microfilms International.