Orisa Devotion as World Religion: The Globalization of Yoruba Religious Culture

by Jacob K. Olupona, Terry Rey

Overview

As the twenty-first century begins, tens of millions of people participate in devotions to the spirits called Òrìsà. This book explores the emergence of Òrìsà devotion as a world religion, one of the most remarkable and compelling developments in the history of the human religious quest. Originating among the Yorùbá people of West Africa, the varied traditions that comprise Òrìsà devotion are today found in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Australia.

The African spirit proved remarkably resilient in the face of the transatlantic slave trade, inspiring the perseverance of African religion wherever its adherents settled in the New World. Among the most significant manifestations of this spirit, Yorùbá religious culture persisted, adapted, and even flourished in the Americas, especially in Brazil and Cuba, where it thrives as Candomblé and Lukumi/Santería, respectively. After the end of slavery in the Americas, the free migrations of Latin American and African practitioners has further spread the religion to places like New York City and Miami. Thousands of African Americans have turned to the religion of their ancestors, as have many other spiritual seekers who are not themselves of African descent.

Ifá divination in Nigeria, Candomblé funerary chants in Brazil, the role of music in Yorùbá revivalism in the United States, gender and representational authority in Yorùbá religious culture-these are among the many subjects discussed here by experts from around the world. Approaching Òrìsà devotion from diverse vantage points, their collective effort makes this one of the most authoritative texts on Yorùbá religion and a groundbreaking book that heralds this rich, complex, and variegated tradition as one of the world's great religions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299224646
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	03/10/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	592
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Jacob K. Olupona is professor of African religious traditions at Harvard Divinity School and professor of African and African American studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University. He is the author and editor of many books, including African Spirituality, Beyond Primitivism, and African Traditional Religions in Contemporary Society. Terry Rey is associate professor of religion at Temple University. He is the author of Our Lady of Class Struggle: The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Haiti and Bourdieu on Religion.

Read an Excerpt

Òrìsà Devotion as World Religion

The Globalization of Yorùbá Religious Culture

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THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS

Copyright © 2008 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-299-22460-8

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Chapter One

The Tolerant Gods

WOLE SOYINKA

I shall begin by commenting that this gathering of minds on the eve of the millennium [Conference on the Globalization of Yorùbá Religious Culture, held in December 1999], to explore the Yorùbá world, one that I hope proves to be a quest beyond a mere academic exercise, was extremely timely. By that comment, I do not wish to contribute to the triumphalist hijacking of Time by one specific religion-the judeochristian. Fortunately for my cultural peace of mind, however, I believe that any recognizable watershed of human history, and even a mere calendar notation, deserves to be seized upon and made to serve even those whose mores and cultures maintain their suspicious distance from the genesis and cultural implications of such an epoch-if only as a motivation for their own internal stock- taking, and the relationship of their history to the other world in celebration. You will find, for instance, that many christians today follow, if only partially, the annual moslem discipline of fasting; they see in it an opportunity to embarkon an internal spiritual dialogue, or reflection, through a mortification of the flesh, an exercise that is made easier when it takes place within the supportive context of the extended family of faiths. Mind you, it must be conceded that, for some, it is the ritual breaking of the fast at dusk with its sybaritic dimensions that offers the greatest attraction and fills their hours of self-privation with the anticipation of compensatory excess-don't take my word for it, just ask some of my christian acquaintances why they put on so much weight during the moslem season of Ramadan!

Still, the lesson holds. The millennium is, for the majority, an occasion for the Great Global Party; nonetheless, it cannot fail to trigger, for some of us, a reassessment of some of the great ideas that have dominated the world till now and, in the process, compel us to revisit those that, comparatively speaking, have either fallen or been pushed to the wayside, as if they have been nothing more than fleeting aberrations in the course of human development. Even if such ideas or systems of beliefs have totally vanished, the sense of the "passing of an era" and the threshold of a new one compel us to reconsider whether or not, in a moment of carelessness or globalization intoxication, some grains that once constituted the basis of our nourishment have not indeed been permitted to fly off with the chaff.

Those of us who insist on a belief in the unity, indeed, the indivisibility of the human community, no matter how buffeted such a concept has been within this century, especially by the anti-human excesses of ideology, religion, and doctrines of separatism such as racism, social darwinism, or apartheid, must consider ourselves fortunate if we happen to be heirs to certain systems of beliefs that have survived those overweening themes that appear to have successfully divided up or still contest the world among themselves. Let us name some of these: communism and capitalism, christianity and islam-plus their expansionist organs old and new in the struggle for a shifting world order-the Crusade and the Jihad, fascism and democracy, the judeo- christian Euro-American world and Arabo-Islamic consortiums, etc., plus all their extended families, aggressive offshoots, and client relations-and which, despite demonstrable and glaring errors that prove so costly to humanity itself and constantly disorganize communities, continue to arrogate to themselves the monopoly of Truth and Perfection. This mentality of binary conceptualization of a world order much, much older than many people bother to recollect makes it easy, on the one hand, to simplify "the Other," to belittle or vaporize it. On the other hand, it actually serves an ironic and contrary purpose. Even while remaining an instrument of the original hegemonic project, it eliminates, through a mere wave of the hand or aversion of the eyes, the existence of pluralistic actualities both in ideas and in human organizations, and thus saves up energy for the final onslaught between only two monoliths. To make this concrete: in the struggle between the (communist) East and (capitalist) West, was there ever much of a "worthy opponent" status accorded to any other ideological alternatives? No! Every concept of human organization outside these two was something primitive, inchoate, an aberration, a rudimentary form of one or the other, or a needless distraction.

Exceptions are few and far between. Traverse human history at any moment from antiquity to the present, and you will encounter this pattern of collaboration between the most powerful contending systems: let us join hands to take care of these minnows so we can then roam the ocean at will, devoid of minor irritants-you take the West side of the longitude and we take the East. This has been the pragmatic motivation of numerous historic pacts and treaties in both major and minor keys, from the European wars of possession of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the opening up of the New World to the life-and-death struggle of capitalism and communism that has ended in a pyrrhic victory for one. In the process, alternative models and options in the creation of a just community of man are ridiculed, vilified, crushed, or simply rendered unworkable. Let us, in this connection, always call to mind the lessons of the Hitler-Stalin pact, which remains the most notorious and most chastening political symbol of the collaborationist nature of seemingly incompatible mega-themes within this century.

In the religious sector, the exemplar for this is no less uncompromising. Respect between two "world religions" but contempt or invisibility for all others. One example: the religion of islam accepts one other, judaism (and its gigantesque offspring, christianity) as a partner-rival-the absolute limits of its tolerance-since all others are regarded as offences against the Supreme Deity. Proselytization by its arch-rival is, however, rigidly forbidden, punishable by death in some nations. And conversion is equally fatal, being regarded as the capital crime of apostasy. As for the followers of all other faiths, they are obliged to convert or face permanent social exclusion, harassment, and even, in the case of members of the baha'i faith-death. The christians-roman catholics or protestant-for their part routinely relegate hinduism, buddhism, etc., to a framework of oriental quaintness, certainly not to be considered as belonging to the family of faiths with an equal status. Let us constantly recall that it is within this hegemonic context, the union, not really of opposites but of opposants for the destruction of minor contenders, that our exploration of the Yorùbá world is taking place.

That world-let us begin where it all begins, within human consciousness-that world repudiates the exclusivist tendency, as is demonstrable in its most fundamental aspect-the induction of a new living entity into the world and its dedication to the spiritual custody of unseen forces. A child is born. Quite early in its life, as early as the parents discern in this new organism traces of personality, those rudimentary characteristics that will some day coalesce into what will become known as character-ìwà-this newcomer is taken to the babaláwo-the priest of divination-who adds his tutored observations to the signs that have already been remarked by parents and relations. Sometimes, the babaláwo will take the child through the actual divination process. Mostly, however, it is his shrewd eyes, extensive experience, and honed intuition that decide for him-this, he observes, is a child of Osun, or this is a child of Sàngó, or Obàtálá. It does not matter that neither parent is a follower of any such deity, or that no one in the entire household or in the history of the family has ever been an initiate of the god-the child, it is accepted, brings his or her own orí into the world. It is futile to attempt to change it or to impose one on him or her.

Yet even this allotment of the child's spiritual aura is not definitive, nor is it exclusive. Some other life passage-a series of setbacks, a display of talent, creative or leadership precocity, or indeed some further revelation of earlier hidden traits such as a tendency toward clairvoyance, or simply the child's habit of enigmatic utterances-may lead the babaláwo to conclude that a different guardian deity is indicated for the child, or an additional one. And thus, a new deity is admitted into the household. There is no friction, no hostility. All gods, the Yorùbá understand, are manifestations of universal phenomena of which humanity is also a part. Ifá is replete with odù-those verses that are at once morality tales, historic vignettes as they are filled with curative prescriptions, verses that narrate at the same time the experiences of both mortals and immortals for whom Ifá divined, advised, and who either chose to obey or ignore Ifá. The skeptics are neither penalized nor hounded by any supernatural forces. The narratives indicate that they simply go their way.

Of course, Ifá is not without its own tendency toward a little self-promotion, and so we find that Ifá is also filled with verses that speak of the headstrong and cynics who merely fall deeper and deeper into misfortunes, until they return to the original path already mapped out by Orúnmìlà. There is a crucial difference, however. It is never Orúnmìlà, the divination god of Ifá, or any agent of his who is responsible for their misfortunes-no, it is their orí, destiny, the portion that they brought with them into the world, that very definition of their being that Ifá merely diagnosed before leaving them to their own devices, to their own choices. Nor is it, for instance, the resentment or vengeance of one rejected deity that proceeds to take up his or her own cause by assailing the luckless head of the unwilling acolyte-the gods remain totally indifferent toward whoever does or does not follow them or acknowledge their place in mortal decisions. The priest of Ifá never presumes to take up cudgels on behalf of the slighted deity. No excommunication is pronounced; a fatwa is unheard of.

The gods are paradigms of existence. Monotheism is thus only an attempted summation of such paradigms. Within it, all the inevitable variety and contradictions of human thought and physical phenomena, concepts of which are personified by the multiple deities, aspire to harmonization, representing the ideal to which humanity itself, as a unity, can hope to aspire. We find, therefore, that Revelation as Infallibility is a repugnant concept in Yorùbá religion-how can you reveal as infallible the aspects of what are in themselves only the projected ideal of human striving! If the source of such striving-the mortal vessel-is fallible, then its vision, its revelation of ultimate possibilities, must be constantly open to question, to testing, by the elected human receptacle and other human vessels to which such revelations are transmitted. By the same proceeding, the notion of "apostasy" is inconceivable in Yorùbá religion, that alleged crime of mortal damnation-in the eye of some acclaimed world religions-where the only guaranteed cure is execution, preferably by the supposedly salvationist means of stoning to death.

It was an unfortunate accident that Religion and Theology were ever linked with philosophy, a paradoxical coupling, since philosophy means a love of-and, consequently, a search for, indeed a passion for-truth. I say paradoxical because the experience of our world has been the very opposite. The dominant religions of the world and their theologies as received in present day have meant, not the search for or the love of, but the sanctification and consolidation-at whatever cost, including massacres and mayhem-of mere propositions of Truth, declared Immutable Revelation. It has meant the manipulation of Truth, the elevation of mere Texts to Dogma and Absolutes, be those Texts named Scriptures or Catechisms. This failure to see transmitted Texts, with all their all-too-human adumbrations, as no more than signposts, as parables that may lead the mind toward deeper quarrying into the human condition, its contradictions and bouts of illumination, a reexamination of the phenomena of Nature, of human history and human strivings, of the building of Community-it is this failure that has led to the substitution of dogma for a living, dynamic spirituality. And this is where the Yorùbá deities have an important message to transmit to the world.

There is an urgency about this, as the world is increasingly taken over by the most virulent manifestations of dogmatic adhesion, the nurturing terrain of which even tends to undermine my earlier attribution of such eruptions to Textual or Scriptural authority. In many of these instances, the defenders of the Text have never even seen the Text or are incapable of reading them, yet they swear by them and indeed presume to act on them. The explanation for this, of course, is the power of orality. The interpreters of text-even when read upside down-establish a hypnotic hold on the innate spiritual yearnings of their captive, often illiterate community. Their word is law, and where they claim to interpret the Word, their renditions of liturgy and catechisms take on an extra dimension of divinational authority over their adherents. Yorùbá "scriptural" renditions reduce this danger of subservience by making the people of Ifá key participants in the processes of divination, taking them through a route where the prognostic verses are selected in succession, intoned, and come to rest only when the suppliant recognizes a parallel of his or her predicament in the invocations of the priest. As for the actual worship of the òrìsà, their liturgy does not pursue the path of separation between priest and laity, but the very effacement of distances, a communal celebration of the collective, direct intimacy between the gods and their followers.

If the sole achievement of our voyage into the world of the òrìsà is to open a few eyes and ears to the subtle habit of denigration of African spirituality through the habit of elision, we would have contributed significantly to the ability of the world of knowledge to commence a serious critique of itself. I began by commenting that this voyage is timely, and, of course, that reference was addressed to a global context, the calendar notation that happens to have been universally adopted but remains a religious milestone on a road that is anything but universal. There is, however, a far more specific timing on my mind, one that relates to a hundred million people and is filled with retrogressive portents not only for the nation immediately under reference, Nigeria, which happens to be home to the largest Yorùbá population in the world. This timing serves urgent notice on all other African nations. For recently, in the northern, largely islamic part of Nigeria, a state called Zamfara took the unprecedented step of declaring itself a moslem state within the acknowledged pluralistic faiths of the peoples of that nation.

So far, so troubling. At the same time, however, a two-part series by an academic from Africa, exiled for many years in these parts, was published at this very sensitive moment in the media of that troubled nation, extolling the virtues of this particular religion, islam, especially in the areas of secularist practice and tolerance. This article, exhumed from a different context where it had appeared some time before, offered a comparative account of the West's, and christianity's, claims to such virtues. I offer it here a useful instance of that intellectual binary con trick that I referred to earlier, one that forecloses-by deliberate omission-any parameters that can be evoked from other spiritual worldviews, especially those of the autochthonous religions over which the two foreign contenders have spread their empires. Now, let me make it quite clear-I need to, since this is an academic who is notorious for playing fast and loose with facts-so, for all it is worth, let me state very clearly that I am not about to take issue with his claims; no, not in this essay. True or false, it is of no interest whatever to me. Indeed, in the interest of the avoidance of all distraction, I wish to agree with him, just for the sake of argument, that islam is indeed in every way superior to all religions that the world has ever known, that it is the most tolerant and is imbued with a secularist understanding that puts all other religions to shame. That leaves me free, I hope, to narrow down the cause of my umbrage simply to-its timing.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     xi
Introduction   Jacob K. Olupona   Terry Rey     3
Yoruba Religious Culture in Africa
The Tolerant Gods   Wole Soyinka     31
Who Was the First to Speak? Insights from Ifa Orature and Sculptural Repertoire   Rowland Abiodun     51
In What Tongue?   Olasope O. Oyelaran     70
Orisa: A Prolegomenon to a Philosophy of Yoruba Religion   Olufemi Taiwo     84
Associated Place-Names and Sacred Icons of Seven Yoruba Deities   Cornelius O. Adepegba     106
Twice-Told Tales: Yoruba Religious and Cultural Hegemony in Benin, Nigeria   Flora Edouwaye S. Kaplan     128
Meta-Cultural Processes and Ritual Realities in the Precolonial History of the Lagos Region   Sandra T. Barnes     164
The Pathways of Osun as Cultural Synergy   Diedre L. Badejo     191
Religious Encounter in Southwestern Nigeria: The Domestication of Islam among the Yoruba   H. O. Danmole     202
Yoruba Moral Epistemology as the Basis for a Cross-Cultural Ethics   Barry Hallen     222
Yoruba Religious Culture beyond Africa
Yoruba Religion and Globalization: Some Reflections   Olabiyi Babalola Yai     233
Clearing New Paths into an Old Forest: AladuraChristianity in Europe   Afe Adogame     247
Globalization and the Evolution of Haitian Vodou   Laennec Hurbon   Terry Rey     263
Historicizing Ifa Culture in Oyotunji African Village   Ikulomi Djisovi Eason     278
Ritual Change and the Changing Canon: Divinatory Legitimization of Yoruba Ancestral Roots in Oyotunji African Village   Kamari Maxine Clarke     286
The Dynamic Influence of Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and African Americans in the Growth of Ocha in New York City   Marta Moreno Vega     320
From Cuban Santeria to African Yoruba: Evolutions in African American Orisa History, 1959-1970   Tracey E. Hucks     337
Santeria in the Twenty-first Century   Mercedes Cros Sandoval     355
La Santeria: An Integrating, Mythological Worldview in a Disintegrating Society   Juan J. Sosa     372
Myth, Memory, and History: Brazil's Sacred Music of Shango   Jose Flavio Pessoa de Barros$dTranslated by Maria P. Junqueira     400
Yoruba Sacred Songs in the New World   Jose Jorge de Carvalho     416
Axexe Funeral Rites in Brazil's Orisa Religion: Constitution, Significance, and Tendencies   Reginaldo Prandi$dTranslated by Maria P. Junqueira     437
From Oral to Digital: Rethinking the Transmission of Tradition in Yoruba Religion    George Edward Brandon     448
Orisa Traditions and the Internet Diaspora   Joseph M. Murphy     470
Gender, Politics, and Hybridism in the Transnationalization of Yoruba Culture   Rita Laura Segato$dTranslated by Ernesto Ignacio de Carvalho     485
Is There Gender in Yoruba Culture?   J. Lorand Matory     513
Postscript   John Pemberton III     559
Glossary     573
Contributors     581
Index     589

Editorial Reviews

Shaped by the transatlantic slave trade, Christianity, Islam, colonialism, and, now, globalization, Yorùbá religious culture remains dynamic and inspirational. This volume goes beyond the usual tendency in Diaspora studies to focus on cultural retention. It is a significant contribution.”— Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome, Brooklyn College, City University of New York

“Contributes to a deeper and more sympathetic understanding of Yorùbá culture and religion and will be the definitive text for students, teachers, and practitioners of Òrìsà tradition for a long time.”—Akintunde E. Akinade, High Point University, North Carolina

“The editors have assembled contributions from great minds […] Highly recommended.”—Choice

“A tome of this size, bringing together studies by twenty-eight authors from four continents, around a set of contentious religious issues can only do justice to its subject matter by presenting a set of diverse and often conflicting viewpoints. What emerges is not a Nicene Creed but a portrait of a fractious, global, and growing religious tradition. Its leaders struggle for legitimacy, authenticity, and the authority to tell their history in ways that will help them reproduce their ritual communities. This book will be of interest to those immersed in these debates, but no reader should expect to agree with everything they find in its pages.”—Brian Brazeal, New West Indian Guide

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