Month 5, Day 24: Ifa

Ifa is a religious tradition developed by the Yoruba people of Western Africa thousands of years ago—no one seems to be sure exactly how old the practice is.

Ifa has been passed down, mainly orally, from teacher to student over the years, and enslaved Africans brought the tradition with them to the Americas. Today, it’s still practiced widely in both Africa and America.

The beliefs of Ifa can be boiled down to these basics:

•  Everything in the universe was created by a single, unchanging Supreme Being, known as Olodumare.
• Olodumare bestowed the gift of rationality upon human beings (although I’ve got to say, I think he missed a few).
•  Messenger spirits called orisa support human beings, and we can obtain their help by means of special rituals and prayers.
• Believers should practice a strict moral code that includes tolerance, humility, piety, compassion for others, and a prohibition against any type of cheating, stealing, or double-dealing.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve had a hard time finding specific information on African rituals that I can adapt for my own use. Ifa is a definite exception.

I actually managed to find an entire Ifa textbook—a thick volume full of prayers and rituals designed for people who are studying to become members of the Ifa priesthood.

It seemed like a strange book for a Texas bookstore to carry, especially considering the store didn’t even have any books on Buddhism or Hinduism, which are much more popular in the United States than I imagine Ifa would be. Still, I was pretty excited to find it. I even managed to suppress the editor inside me and overlook the punctuation error in the title.

It’s hard to see it in the picture, but the title reads Ifa: The Key to Its’ Understanding. Seriously? Why do people have so much trouble with apostrophes? And yes, I know I’ve jinxed myself now and this post will be riddled with punctuation errors. But let’s just move on.

So I tried reading the book. Wow. Maybe it’s partly the language barrier and the fact that the English translations aren’t great, but man, is it hard to follow!

And I gather that it wouldn’t be much easier to study this book even if you could read the original African text. Apparently, students of Ifa are expected to memorize hundreds of verses within 2 to 6 weeks after beginning their training.

Needless to say, I’m not going to do that. I can barely read this stuff at all—there’s no way I’d be able to memorize it.

Of course, the book did mention one possible solution for students who are having trouble with all the memorization. According to the text: “if the [student] is found to be intellectually below average, it is the duty of the [teacher] to prepare an appropriate Isoye [a medicine used to strengthen memory] . . . in order to increase his intellectual capability.”

Maybe that’s all everybody needs—some “smart” pills.

Anyway, Ifa involves a complex system of divination, using items such as bones, stones, and seeds to seek answers to questions posed by clients about their future.

I’m noticing something. Lots of world religions devote a good deal of their energy to trying to predict the future, and that just seems odd to me. Maybe it’s the residual traces of Catholicism in me, but I always thought divination was a big no-no. I mean, I even felt guilty about going to see the cheesy palm readers at the boardwalk when my friends and I were teenagers.

So maybe the sticks and stones and predicting the future parts of African religion just aren’t for me. I’m still on board with the rest—at least until this month is over.