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(PDF) Healing Practices of the Ifa-Orisha Tradition | Sonia Cristina Hart Suarez - |
Ifa orisha manual pdf
The feasts of Obatala, Ellegua, and Chango are common days of celebration. The Orisha-worshiping community may request to have their ceremonial meal on one of these days. According to the legends patakis of Orisha worshipers, Obatala is the oldest and wisest of the Orishas. It would be good practice to determine with the Orisha-worshiping community which days the group would prefer to observe for their group ceremonial meal.
It would be best to allow them to discuss this and reach a conclusion about the birthday of the Orisha they desire to observe. The date should be set at the beginning of the calendar or fiscal year, in accordance with local practice. The religious items used by Orisha worshipers vary from group to group and devotee to devotee. Most devotees wear a necklace or necklaces collares, also known as Elekes representing the colors pleasing to their orishas.
Coconut rinds or cowrie shells and a straw mat are used as divination tools. A common divination tool is known as Okuele, a larger size necklace with 6 or 8 rinds of coconut. The best practice with respect to religious items in a correctional setting may be to authorize the number, nature, size, and value of Orisha worshipers religious items, rather than to specifically name them.
Personal items are ordinarily derived from materials at hand, natural goods used as offerings for the gods; e. A paper image of the Orisha, in the form of a saint, should be authorized. Personal Religious Items. The colors and numbers associated with each Orisha are listed in a separate chart. Inmates may retain up to seven necklaces in their possession, wearing only one at a time. A regular practice of a babalao is to use the tools of divination to make a reading on behalf of the Santero.
Santero do not have to be present for a reading to take place. The elements for a shower cleansing may be obtained through an SPO with a Botanica. Security note: It is recommended that the accommodation of a bath for a practitioner not exceed twice per year. Correctional staff must be mindful of any safety and security concerns related to Botanica elements before making an SPO purchase. When the bath is accommodated, the inmate must provide contact information for the Santero priest or Babalao who gave the prescription so the chaplain can legitimize the request.
Personal religious items may include any items listed above, but are not limited to those examples. Security note: Personal religious items may not include: Amulets, live or dead animals or animal parts, birds, or insects; tobacco in any form ; blood; rosaries or necklaces elekes made of any material other than plastic; spoiled or decayed flowers, fruit, vegetables, or meat; sticks larger than a standard pencil; candles.
Up to three drums or bata sacred ritual drums : the iya the mother drum, the itotele the middle- sized drum, and the okonkolou the small drum. Beaded gourds shakeres.
Colorful flower arrangements plastic may be substituted for live flowers. Cascarrila egg shell powder. Smoked fish powder. Manteca de corojo. A shell or dish for burning tobacco. Inexpensive small statues of the saints plaster of paris or plastic. Small bells attached to colored ribbons and fixed to a staff or pole the size of a broomstick. A small amount of citrus-scented water to take the place of alcohol-based Florida Water.
Devotees may add other materials at hand, usually natural items of sacrifice, to the altar to please their respective Orishas. Security note: The cigar is one of many divination tools used most often by the high priest. The ritual involves the burning of two cigars, one to the Orisha and the other for participants as a method of lifting prayers to the Orisha.
In the ceremony, it is considered sacrilegious for participants to inhale cigar smoke. Cigar smoke is also used in a smudging ritual. From a correctional perspective, cutting one cigar in half and offering half to the Orisha and the other half to the participants meets the ritual requirements.
The Orisha-worshiping religions are traditions that require initiation rituals for membership. There are degrees of membership; each is conferred during a different ritual. As the members progress from one initiation to another, they are also taught, or learn from observation of their godparents, more of the secrets of the religion. Other secret rituals are performed, but those not initiated do not know the rituals or responsibilities of these initiations.
Membership requirements are complex and have great bearing on the practice of Orisha worshipers in prisons. Secret rituals are prohibited, as are any practices that include a prohibited act. This is worthy of mention because of the secrecy imbedded in the religious practices and the custom of animal sacrifice for certain rituals. A person who has received the first rite of initiation is an aleyo. Other common names for this initiation are derived from Spanish and African dialects, Los Collares and Elekes, respectively.
The initiation into the warriors Elegua, Ochosi, and Oggun is often conferred at the same time or soon after the Los Collares. Women ordinarily do not confer that initiation on men.
Devotees from Cuba often replace Orunmilla with Babalu-Aye. The Seven African Powers are consecrated into one eleke. However, this should not prevent devotees from observing and studying the practices of Orisha worship while in prison. Whether actually initiated or not, many inmates believe they have a kinship with particular Orisha families. Unless there is a security threat e. Total Membership. The number of initiated Orisha worshipers is uncertain because the tradition is a secret family-based practice, with no central repository of records.
Scholars estimate there may be as many as million practitioners in the United States and Central and South America. There are no documented medical prohibitions. Inmates may choose to participate in healing rituals in conjunction with their medical treatments just as other traditions pray for healing , but the healing ritual must never take the place of professional medical treatment.
There are no documented, required, or recommended dietary laws or customs. It is sometimes customary to consume food products offered as sacrifices to the Orisha after completion of the sacrificial ritual. Most in the tradition believe in some form of reincarnation. There is a 9-day grieving ritual that consists of reading prayers and singing a combination of African, Ladino, and Christian hymns to offer spiritual aid to the deceased.
Daily, a small amount of water and a candle are moved closer and closer to the heavens and final judgement. Orisha worshipers have no written canon or formal texts. The tradition is passed on orally to initiates. Many cherish as sacred the Bible or a book of the saints. At the beginning of every year a group of babalaos and Ifa priests and priestesses meet to make a special ceremony to obtain La letra del ao the letter of the year.
This document contains emphases, directions, and specifications for the entire year. The structure is hierarchical within each family or unit, but there is no overall structure that defines or describes the customs, beliefs, and practices of all Orisha worshipers. Location of Headquarters. There is no headquarters or central location for the collection of information or determination of general practices. There is no centralized authority, but large communities exist in the Miami, New York, and Los Angeles areas.
Orunmila, aka Francis: green; yellow nuts, yams, black hens Orunla. Aganyu Christopher: red; green roosters, fruit, unsalted crackers, palm oil, goat.
Babalu-Aye, aka Lazarus: sackcloth color, grains, garlic, onions, pigeons, all Sonponno, lt. Yemaya, Our Lady of Regla: blue; white watermelon, fruits, cane syrup, she- akaYemoja, 07 goats, ducks, hens Iemanja.
Oshun, aka Osun, Our Lady of Charity white; yellow honey, pumpkins, white wine, rum Oxum 08 cakes jewelry, hens, fruits. Oya, aka Yansa, Our Lady of maroon; all eggplant, hens, she-goats, rice, Oia-Iansa Candelaria: colors except fruit, chocolate black. The roots of Orisha worship rest in Southwestern African indigenous rituals of the Yoruba-speaking tribes of Nigeria and Benin. The rituals were brought to the Americas the Caribbean region, specifically Cuba by enslaved people in the late 18th and early 19th century.
There, West African beliefs and practices were syncretized with the Spanish Roman Catholic practices of the majority. The reason for this syncretization is not fully known. Some believe this occurred as the Nigerians struggled to maintain their own beliefs without the knowledge of their captors. Others believe that this mixture of religions and cultures is a general characteristic of African indigenous religions that is, the tendency in Africa to incorporate the new into the old leads to subsuming Catholic beliefs and practices into their own.
This occurred with slight variations during the same period throughout the Spanish-speaking Caribbean colonies, thus accounting for slight variances in beliefs and practices. An African-American community called the Gullah inhabits a mile stretch of lowlands between Jacksonville, South Carolina, and Jacksonville, Florida.
This community has its roots in 18th-century Sierra Leone and the slave trade of the rice plantation owners of the sea island lowlands. Gullah community members have been very successful in preserving their culture, while other Black communities were more or less assimilated.
The community is largely Protestant today, but has preserved many of spiritist traditions and incorporated these into Protestant rituals, much as Orisha worshipers have done with respect to Roman Catholic veneration of the saints. While Gullah practice the faith healing and divination rituals of their West African ancestors, they would not be likely to identify themselves as Orisha worshipers.
There had always been some Orisha worshipers in the United States, but it is a mistake to believe that this phenomenon flourished among African slaves in the United States during this period. Orisha worshipers were largely introduced to the United States as a result of the Cuban revolution and its aftermath. A small Afro-Caribbean Black Nationalist movement in the 's included the incorporation of ethnocentric religious rituals in an effort to retrieve a uniquely Black culture in the United States.
It is often difficult to separate nationalist rituals from religious beliefs and practices, but an effort should always be made to protect the integrity of religious beliefs. With the arrival of the Marielitos in , however, Orisha worshipers got a strong foothold in the United States. Since then, the large Caribbean immigrant population in the South and in the New York area has resulted in significant growth of the religion. Laws protecting the freedom of religion the Religious Freedom Restoration Act also led to the strengthening of the status of the religion and ensured the right of Orisha worshipers to practice their faith without interference.
This may be due in part to the New Age spiritualist movement, a postmodern amalgamation of nature-based religious beliefs and practices. The religion comprises certain African tribal beliefs. According to John Mason, author of Black Gods: Orisa Studies in the New World, adherents do not believe in the devil because their ancestral West African belief system is not derived from a dualistic theory good v.
There are five levels in the cosmology: Orisha worshipers believe in a creator who is called Olodumare or Olorun God , the Orishas, human beings, human ancestors, and the lowest group, plants and animals. The cosmos is seen as containing forces of expansion and contraction that interacted in complex ways to create the universe. All things have positive aspects ir and negative aspects ibi. Nothing is completely good or completely evil; all things have both ire and ibi qualities.
Similarly, no action is universally wrong or right, but can only be judged within the context and circumstances in which it takes place. A great deal of attention is devoted to each individuals striving to develop good character and doing good works asciento. Good character is defined as doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do, not out of fear of retribution or as a way of seeking rewards. All humans have the potential for being good and blessed people, but also to make evil choices.
The lifetimes of Orisha worshipers are spent perfecting themselves by making good choices. Orisha worshipers believe that the spirit lives on after death and may return as a reincarnated being. Many beliefs and practices are respectfully secreted from non-believers. However, certain beliefs and traditions are disclosed to the public particularly in postmodern times when the religion and spirituality of Orisha worshipers is being once again blended, this time with New Age beliefs and practices.
Olodumare is the one god, creator. All other Orishas represent various manifestations of the one god. Each Orisha possesses and expresses a certain quality or characteristic of Olodumare. It is Olodumare who contains the universe and all that is in it.
The Orishas are forces of nature parts of god who mediate between Olodumare and humanity. Ebo, or sacrifice, is a broad concept including all types of sacrifices and offerings to the Orisha. These can include candles, fruit, candy, and various items or actions that may be appreciated by the Orisha. Ritual sacrifice is an important part of the beliefs and practices of Orisha worshipers. In the community, animals, particularly chickens, are often offered as sacrifices in situations such as serious illness or misfortune.
Fruits and vegetables are used frequently and are pleasing to the particular Orishas. As included in the body of this report, the requests of inmates for specific items must be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Rules of thumb concerning religious items should be applied based on security, good order, and sanitation. Holy water, rosaries, crucifixes, and other blessed items provided for Roman Catholics or other Christian groups should not be used by Orisha worshipers.
If Orisha worshipers require the use of similar items, separate unblessed holy water, crucifixes, rosaries, etc. To do otherwise would be disrespectful of the sacramentals of the Catholic tradition. Glossary: Definitions or descriptions in this section are drawn from the glossaries of scholarly works by Brown, Clark, and Gonzalez-Wippler see Bibliography. Initiates are presented to the community under this lavish canopy.
Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. Need an account? Click here to sign up. Download Free PDF. Kemi Atanda Ilori. Abstract In spite of the numerous articles and books devoted to it, Ifa remains an intractable subject for many, a bewildering cellar of ancient wisdom. Kemi Atanda ILORI In spite of the numerous articles and books devoted to it in recent years, Ifa remains an intractable subject for many, a bewildering cellar of ancient wisdom.
As much the name of the patron deity as of the divination system itself, Ifa is similar in function and linked organically to other divination systems extant among the Igbo, the Nupe, the Jukun and Gwari peoples of Nigeria.
But this similarity cannot be pressed too far. For unlike these other systems the Ifa oracle has a long tradition of hierarchical priesthood, plus an inexhaustible fountain of lores, myths, taboos, etcetera which when appropriately recalled and chanted by the priest have celebrated redemptive powers. Among the Yoruba, Ifa is revered not only for these redemptive powers but also for the cultural link it provides between man and the other gods.
Esu — the erratic god — especially occupies place of prominence in Ifa divination rites. Through these rites the Yoruba mind communes both with its environment in terms of such phenomena as rain, drought, wind, fire, earth and such other elements; and, beyond them, with much more abstracted and practically invisible forces of nature.
The blind incomprehensible attributes of nature combine to form in man a sense of awe, of daring, of defeat and conquest. Tied in this way to the basic fears and dreams of man, to his means of survival and livelihood, it is not surprising that the origins of Ifa date back to the earliest times, to the origin of mankind itself.
According to one popular belief, Ifa or Orunmila as he is also called, was one of those gods who journeyed from heaven to earth to found the ancient Yoruba city, Ife-Ife. In Ife, he fathered eight children, practiced successfully his profession as seer and solver of all problems. He founded a cult of diviners, gathered a band of disciples and was wont to wander from city to city in the course of his profession.
Now it is easily guessed what would happen with the god of Wisdom and — by implication — of order absent from Earth. Chaos and upheaval swamped the land, unheard of events, extraordinary and terrifying in every detail started to occur. Henceforth, these palm nuts or ikin in Yoruba, would become important totems of the god and his priests use them regularly when consulting Ifa. At other times, especially when divining for clients, the priests may use opele, a divining string of nuts made from the opele tree Schrebera golungensis.
Divination begins with the client whispering his prayer into opele, or into a coin which he throws on the divining board. The priest casts his chain, observing meticulously the inner and outer surfaces of the nuts and the combinations of patterns they produce are vital codes of divination which only the priest can read.
If the picture is not clear enough the priest may seek further aid in the efficacious sacred cowrie and the sacred piece of bone. These are used in the manner of a touchstone mainly for casting lots.
The priest is not limited to a single throw of the chain. In practice, he casts his chain several times recording the formation of the nuts in the yellowish powder, iyerosun, contained in the ornamented divining tray. To stimulate his memory and create a conductive environment, the priest uses a short ivory staff, iroke, to tap the tray rhythmically while he chants the relevant odu from the almost endless and untiring corpus of Ifa poems.
There are volumes to this corpus, sixteen of them, lengthy in proportion and featuring the major subjects that may preoccupy the client, are commonly accepted as the principal ones. The remaining volumes are of shorter poems that read normally as prefaces, addenda, or illustrations to the sixteen major categories. Each category or odu has its own signature tune, a combination of strokes made in the iyerosun accompanied by its own specific poem s. The volumes are rich poetic stories grounded in the oral and folkloric culture of the Yoruba.
Fleshy myths, tales, folklore and partly historical precedents are what we have in the volumes. Lyrical and sensitive, the treatments of these precedents is given in various pitches — from serious to the comical, the satirical to the basically realistic, and the exalted to the melodramatic. There are ceaseless declamations to these abilities, to the essentialness on the part of the client to comply with the instructions of Ifa, no matter how unfathomable, absurd, expensive or even trivial.
And most of these instructions are, at least on the surface, of this nature. Sacrifices requiring parts of fish or bird or animal, topped with kola nuts, soaked in oil, wrapped in a piece of white cloth and left at the crossroads are common enough with Ifa.
At other times the sacrifice may be in the form of such edibles as fruits, tubers, palm- kernels, beans, bean cakes and groundnuts. The Odu, however, in spite of its variety, its often expansive and almost limitless details, is not something structurally indeterminable.
In fact, it has now become clear that the priest when chanting the Odu is not engaged in some unconscious process but in a highly controlled and artistically structured activity. Wande Abimbola, a noted Ifa lorist and researcher, has identified eight typical features of the basic Ifa poem. Though he does not discuss their role, these features are not more functional than stop-gaps or stanza margins intended to give the priest a moment to catch his breath or more, shuffle the details of his chosen poem — especially when he has to recite, sing an declaim, in turns, parts of these details.
The competence of the priest is, among other ways, reflected in how carefully and correctly he can pick his way through the meaning, message and rites structurally integrated into each Odu. The first feature of ese Ifa Ifa poem states the name s of the Ifa priest involved in a past divination while the second gives the name s of his client.
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