Ifá Divination, Knowledge, Power, and Performance by Jacob K. Olupona & Rowland O. Abiodun

Author:Jacob K. Olupona & Rowland O. Abiodun
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2016-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Altars: Art, Icons, and Symbols

In the above case study, Beverly mentions setting up altars and establishing connection with her ancestors as very significant aspects of her life. What problematic cultural or psychological situation has been addressed? For Beverly, it was a feeling of alienation, fragmentation, and disconnection. Perhaps for this reason, establishing an altar for one’s ancestors is considered very important in the Orisha traditions. Such rituals of remembrance are integral to the African cosmology and indicate the cultural value placed on the “birth, death, rebirth” life cycle. Death is considered a moment of transition from one form to another, material to spirit, from embodied to disembodied existence. Orisha traditions teach that ancestral spirits can be accessed and engaged as support in the vicissitudes of life. Beverly established a basic ancestral altar, which included one or more glasses of water, a white candle, pictures of her deceased mother and father, a Bible, and sometimes fresh-cut flowers, all attractively arranged on a shelf covered with a white cloth. She prays in front of the altar and seeks guidance from the spirits of her ancestors. One of her deceased relatives often appears in her dreams. Her godfather has told her not to be afraid of shadows or feeling a presence in her room, for accepting and understanding this phenomenon is a part of her spiritual development. Thus the ancestral altar is a critical part of Beverly’s reconstruction of self.

In addition to ancestral altars, Orisha practitioners also establish altars for their most important deities, particularly their guardian orisha, the one who is said to rule the head, the center of spiritual life. In one of her readings, Beverly’s godfather told her that she was a child of Oshun and should find ways to engage the energy of Oshun. After several informal conversations, Beverly learned that “Oshun is creativity, sensuality, sexuality, joy, and love. Her number is five; her symbols include the peacock, the catfish, the pineapple, as well as combs, mirrors, and brass bangles; her colors are yellow and orange.”4 Using items from this list, Beverly erected an altar to Oshun and included more “Oshun colors” in her wardrobe as well as her home decor. In these ways she began to embody the Orisha traditions, reflecting not only a new understanding of self but also a new expression of the energy matrix called Oshun. Thus not only has Beverly changed, but so has the Oshun text. And what we see here is an integration of myth and ritual, signs and symbols in aspects of personal development as well as in the transmission of culture and the expansion of social knowledge.

In explaining this phenomenon, Clyde Ford suggests that the orisha should be viewed as “personifications of those archetypal energies that manifest in nature and within human life. . . . The individual, through ritual address, possesses the gods and goddesses as a way of repossessing those essential, divine aspects of one’s self” (1999, 145). Soyinka refers to these archetypal energies of the Yorùbá pantheon as “essence-ideals,” reflecting the self.

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