Celebrating Black History Month 2024 in the US--The Ifa Divination System in the Western Hemisphere

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From the UNESCO Website:

Inscribed in 2008 (3.COM) on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (originally proclaimed in 2005)

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The Ifa divination system, which makes use of an extensive corpus of texts and mathematical formulas, is practiced among Yoruba communities and by the African diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean. The word Ifa refers to the mystical figure Ifa or Orunmila, regarded by the Yoruba as the deity of wisdom and intellectual development.

In contrast to other forms of divination in the region that employ spirit mediumship, Ifa divination does not rely on a person having oracular powers but rather on a system of signs that are interpreted by a diviner, the Ifa priest or babalawo, literally “the priest’s father”. The Ifa divination system is applied whenever an important individual or collective decision has to be made.

The Ifa literary corpus, called odu, consists of 256 parts subdivided into verses called ese, whose exact number is unknown as they are constantly increasing (there are around 800 ese per odu). Each of the 256 odu has its specific divination signature, which is determined by the babalawo using sacred palm-nuts and a divination chain. The ese, considered the most important part of Ifa divination, are chanted by the priests in poetic language. The ese reflect Yoruba history, language, beliefs, cosmovision and contemporary social issues. The knowledge of Ifa has been preserved within Yoruba communities and transmitted among Ifa priests.

Under the influence of colonial rule and religious pressures, traditional beliefs and practices were discriminated against.The Ifa priests, most of whom are quite old, have only modest means to maintain the tradition, transmit their complex knowledge and train future practitioners. As a result, the youth and the Yoruba people are losing interest in practising and consulting Ifa divination, which goes hand-in-hand with growing intolerance towards traditional divination systems in general. (UNESCO)

Ifa, originating among West African peoples principally the Yoruba people and their neighbors, along with its underlying theology and cosmology, was brought to the Western hemisphere with the slave trade (a quite useful introduction the Ifa Textbook authored by Will Coleman, Awo Fa'lokun Fatunmbi, with assistance from Brad Ost). In the Western Hemisphere it encountered both European Christianity, principally Spanish and Portuguese versions of Catholic sensibilities and forms, along with the variegated Christian practices of English North America. But it also encountered its African neighbors now in a new setting--including significantly Vodun religious practices of the Aja, Ewe, and Fon peoples; and the traditional Kongo religion of Central Africa.

In the Western Hemisphere (and now increasingly also in its African homelands) a process of syncretism between traditional African religions, cosmologies and practices, which enslaved peoples sought to preserve, and the variations of Islam and Christianity of the merchants, settlers, and slave owners encountered by enslaved (and then freed) peoples of African descent, produced a rich and variegated forms of religious practices--and with it the preservation and autonomous development divinatory (descriptive and predictive/oracular) practices sourced in traditional Ifa practice. Among these are the sects aligned with Voudun, Santeria, and Palo (Las Reglas de Congo) in the Caribbean region, and Candomblé in Brazil, along with variations all over the spaces where enslaved peoples were brought. In the English speaking parts of the Western Hemisphere what survived eventually formed part of what is sometimes called rootwork or Hoodoo. All of these drew from the cosmologies, theologies, and practices of a variety of non-African religious tradition linking a rich ecology of variations on their African cores.

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These religious practices have enriched the cultural and religious life of its practitioners. At the same time, many of them were demonized by majority peoples protective of their religious traditions and the need to ensure some connection between enslaved (and then freed) peoples and these religious practices and beliefs. In the Spanish imperial domains, the religion remained racialized (and thus marginalized) and suppressed until relatively recent times. Its practices were undertaken in secret (though an open secret in some societies and during some historical periods). And secrecy reinforced oral traditions of transmission, practice and and organization. That has also persisted until recent times--and the recent efforts to memorialize traditions, practices and the like in text remains controversial. At the same time the traditions of secrecy has also become an important part of the cultures of religious practice practice that are only recently being re-considered. In this century, the inter-connections have come full circle--promoting a new and sometimes lively engagement between traditional African religious traditions in their modern forms and the practices of their Western Hemispheric descendants. Ifa divination remains a critical part of that discussion. 

In the United States, ifa is re-emerging within and alongside Hoodoo practices (eg, Processing Grief Through the Afro-Indigenous Spiritual Practices Hoodoo and Ifa (2021)). IN Caribbean states like Cuba, it has emerged even within a Marxist-Leninist political system, as a noted part of the discursive lanscape. The Ifs driven Letters of the Year have become a widely noted socio-political-religious event (for my commentaries on the Letters of the year, see, The Orishas Speak: The 2024 Letter of the Year of the Yoruba Association of Cuba (Letra del Año para el 2024 de la Asociación Yoruba de Cuba) and My Preliminary Interpretation (with links)).

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