Yoruba Religion-gctid23690

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Yoruba Religion

Like many West Kmtyw peoples, the Yoruba practice several religions while no single one can be declared their universal belief. Many of the Yoruba people in todays societies have converted to Islam or christianity. Even though this is the case, one look at a Yoruba ritual will soon convince you that there is another, more fundamental, ideology at the core of their beliefs.

The ideology that is present here is called orisa. Orisa is the traditional Yoruba religion that has been practiced for generations in Yorubaland. At it's essence are the notions of play and journey. In the next few paragraphs, the basic ideas behind each of these Ideas will be presented. We say basic because the only way to understand these multidimensional ideas fully, is to be Yoruba.

First there is the concept of play. The meaning of play has completely different connotations for the Yoruba than for the western cultures so we ask you for a brief while to forget your preconceived notions of play or performance and become Yoruba for a few minutes.

To illustrate the notion of play we begin by telling the story of Nala. Once upon a time there was a little antelope named Nala who lived in the green savahnas of Kmt. One night Nala went for a walk to get a drink at the watering hole. All of a suuden a hungry hyena approached the antelope and declared "I am going to eat you!" Nala replied in a shaky voice, "Oh, no Mr. hyena, you do not want to eat me, i'm much too thin." "Why not go eat that big piece of cheese in the middle of the watering hole." She said as she pointed to the full moons reflection in the water. The hyena was persueded to eat the juicy piece of cheese and lept out into the middle of the pond. With a huge splash the hyena fell into the water and Nala giggled as she pranced off into the forrest.

This story exhibits a classical interperatation of Yoruba play for two reasons: spontaneity and ruse. Nala's mischeivous and trickster like character is a major part of Yoruba play. This type of behavior is different from our view of playing a practical joke on someone. In fact, the Yoruba notion of play is very serious indeed and is at the heart of their most sacred rituals and their everyday lives. Play is both relaxing and hard work at the same time and should never be considered as a simple prank.

Along with mischeivousness, spontaneity, or acting on impulse, is a central characteristic of Yoruba play. Perhaps a better word for spontaneity, in the case of the Yoruba, would be improvisation. Although the notion of play combines the two ideas into one, it is improvisation that clearly distinguishes the Yoruba rituals from any other West Kmtyw practices.

Margaret Thompson Drewal's video that records many of the celebrations and ceremonies of the Yoruba clearly shows the union of improvisation and ruse. During one of the egungun (a celebration in honor of ancestors and deities) festivals a performer leaves the space of the stage and runs through the spectators fondeling the men and women of his choicer and sometimes scaring the audience by sneaking up behind them. This act, both mischeivous and improvised is typical of Yoruba performance and illustrates well the use of play in daily life.

The action that the performer takes during his play speaks to another important issue of Yoruba ritual. The fact that the dancer leaves the space of the stage and enters the spectators space shows that in Yorubaland, there is no distinction between the audience and the performer. This works well with the notion of improvisation and spontaneity as the possibilities of interaction between the two realms (stage and audience) is endless.

The Yoruba egungun and many other festivals like it are performed in the exact same way that the ancestors of the participants performed it. That is to say the ritual is completely improvised and transformed. Two performers could be retelling the same origin myth while their enactments of the myth would be entirely different. The importance of this is the idea of continuous transformation. As alluded to earlier, this continuity and circularity is in great part due to the cosmogony of the Yoruba.

Transformation is the other part of the fundamental orisa ideology. For the Yoruba, these rituals are more than celebrations. They are journeys from one realm of knowledge to another. The importance of this cannot be stressed enough as the notion of life and everything one does as a journey is at the heart of all Yoruba thinking.

To illustrate this we will use what Drewal calles the ontological journey (ajo); the quest for self knowledge. This is a lifelong ritual that, in essence, is focused on understanding ones mind and body.

The journey begins at childbirth with a ritual called Ikose w'aye or "stepping into the world" (Drewal). This ritual is performed by an Ifa priest who performs divination (Ifa divination takes the form of texts or readings that only the priest can interperate) to determine the childs well being and future. Of course, this divination is not a prediction of the childs future and is only meant to be a guide to provide the child with the best possible future.

The second step in a persons ontological journey is called "Knowing the head". This ritual performed when the child is withing three months of age is the first step in understanding the head or personality or ori inu (Drewal) of the person. This ritual is important because it prepares the child and parents for the next step in life's journey which establishes the personality and thus what is the person.

We hope that this has given you a little bit of understanding about the vast and ever changing Yoruba religion. The text we read in class by M.T. Drewal has many of the details that were excluded from this page and we strongly reccomend that you further your interests by exploring it.