Efunlola Ogunseye

Wole Soyinka on Yoruba Religion: A Conversation With Ulli Beier

2010-05-24T17:18:00.000-07:00

Isokan Yoruba Magazine

Summer 1997

Volume III No. III:

Wole Soyinka on Yoruba Religion

A conversation with Ulli Beier

Beier: I wanted to talk to you about Yoruba religion, because you seem to be the only writer who has seriously tried to come to terms with it. Even many of the Yoruba scholars, who do research into language, literature, history of the Yoruba shy away from the subject - as if they were embarrassed about it ...

Now in your own case, given the type of upbringing you had, I have asked myself how you became interested in Yoruba religion. There is an image "Ake", that has made a very strong impression on me. You were living in the Christian school compound, that was surrounded by a high wall and when the Egungun masqueraders were passing by outside, you had to ask somebody to lift you onto the ladder, so that you could watch the procession going on outside. Your upbringing was designed to shield you from the realities of Yoruba life ... and later on your education in the Grammar school, the University in England - they all were designed to take you further away from the core of your culture.

How then did you find your way back into it? How did you manage to break the wall that had been built up around you?

Soyinka: Curiosity mostly, and the annual visits to Isara - which was a very different situation from Abeokuta! There is no question at all, that there was something, an immediacy that was more attractive, more intriguing about something from which you were obviously being shielded. If you hear all the time "Oh, you mustn’t play with those kids because their father is an Egungun man ..." you become curious: and then you discover that there is nothing really "evil" about it ... that it is not the way they preach about it. Even my great great uncle, the Reverend J.J. Ransome Kuti, whom I never met, composed a song whose refrain was: "Dead men can’t talk ... " One was surrounded by such refutations of that other world, of that other part of one’s heritage, so of course you asked questions about it. Yes, and even if I realized quite early on, that there was a man in the Egungun mask, that did not mean that a great act of evil was being committed - any more than saying that Father Christmas was evil.

I had this rather comparative sense and I wrote in "Ake" that I used to look at the images on the stained glass windows of the church: Henry Townsend, the Rev. Hinderer and then the image that was supposed to be St. Peter. In my very imaginative mind, it didn’t seem to me that they were very different from the Egungun.

So one was surrounded by all these different images which easily flowed into one another. I was never frightened of the Egungun. I was fascinated by them. Of course, I talked to some of my colleagues, like Osiki, who donned the masquerade himself, from time to time.

The Igbale1 was nothing sinister to me: it signified to me a mystery, a place of transformation. You went into Igbale to put on your masquerade. Then when the Egungun came out, it seemed that all they did was blessing the community and beg a little bit for alms here and there. Occasionally there were disciplinary outings: they terrorized everybody and we ran away from them but then, some distance away you stopped and regathered ... maybe my dramatic bent saw this right from the beginning as part of the drama of life.

I never went through a phase, when I believed that traditional religion or ceremonies were evil. I believed that there were witches - I was convinced of that - but at the same time there were good apparitions. And of course I found the songs and the drumming very exciting.

Beier: You never really took to Christianity at any stage ...

Soyinka: Never really - not even as a child. I remember distinctly my first essay prize at secondary school - that was in my first year. My essay was entitled: "Ideals of an Atheist." Yes, I went through all these phases. I just felt I couldn’t believe in the Christian god and for me that meant I was an atheist.

Beier: How old were you then?

Soyinka: I was eleven! But I also enjoyed being in the choir - I was a chorister. I went regularly to rehearsals. I enjoyed the festive occasion, the harvest festival, etc. Then we processed through the congregation, rather than sneaking in through the side entrances. At Christmas and New Year I enjoyed putting on the robes of a chorister. On the way to church I went to see my friend Edun, who lived in Ibarapa. And my Sunday was made even more interesting, when we met the Egungun masquerades on the way - which was quite often.

Beier: Do you remember we went to a conference in Venice, it must have been in 1960 or 1961 ...?

Soyinka: Oooooh yes ...

Beier: There was a writer from Northern Nigeria ... I think it was Ibrahim Tahir. And he made a statement, the gist of which was that Nigeria was, or was about to become, an Islamic country ...

Soyinka: I have actually forgotten that, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

Beier: I am not quite certain what his real argument was or how it was phrased. But I do remember your rather fierce reply! The gist of which was that both Christianity and Islam were conservative forces that actually retarded Nigeria’s ability to copy with the modern world, whereas traditional religions - Yoruba religion at least - was something much more open, and much capable of adaptation ...

Soyinka: Yes, and for the very reason liberating! I am glad you brought up the issue of Islam, because that was also contributory to my entire attitude to imposed foreign religions. You know all this nonsense of religious intolerance which is eating into the country now - it didn’t exist in my youth! During the Ileya we celebrated with our Muslim friends, because they would send us meat from their ram; the Oba would go to the mosque, even if he was a Christian, and vice versa: during Christmas and Easter, our Muslim friends would come to the house. There was always equality between the religions - acceptance. And that in turn made it impossible for me to see one as superior to the other. And of course, the more I learned about Yoruba religion the more I realized that that was just another interpretation of the world, another encapsulation of man’s conceiving of himself and his position in the universe; and that all these religions are just metaphors for the strategy of man coping with the vast unknown.

I became more and more intrigued and it is not surprising that, when I went to study in England. I nearly took "Comparative Religion" as one of my subjects; but then I decided that I would enjoy it more, if I just read into it and visited all sorts of places ... I remember going to this small Buddhist meeting; I visited the so-called fundamentalist religions, the spiritualist churches ... I went to one or two seances. I have always been interested in the spirituality of the human individual. So when people like Tahir - and there have been many of them - have made that kind of statement, I have always risen to counter it very fiercely. Traditional religion is not only accommodating, it is liberating, and this seems logical, because whenever a new phenomenon impinged on the consciousness of the Yoruba - whether a historical event, a technological or scientific encounter - they do not bring down the barriers - close the doors. They say: Let us look at this phenomenon and see what we have that corresponds to it in our own tradition, that is a kind of analogue to this experience. And sure enough, they go to Ifa and they examine the corpus of proverbs and sayings; and they look even into their, let’s say, agricultural practices or the observation of their calendar. Somewhere within that religion they will find some kind of approximate interpretation of that event. They do not consider it a hostile experience. That’s why the corpus of Ifa is constantly reinforced and augmented, even from the history of other religions with which Ifa comes into contact. You have Ifa verses which deal with Islam, you have Ifa verses which deal with Christianity. Yoruba religion attunes itself and accommodates the unknown very readily; unlike Islam, because they did not see this in the Koran - therefore it does not exist. The last prophet was Mohammed, anybody who comes after this is a fake. And Christianity! The Roman Catholics: until today they do not cope with the experience and the reality of abortion! They just shut the wall firmly against it. They fail to address the real problems of it; they refuse to adjust any of their tenets.

Beier: The Yoruba people have always been willing to look at another mythology and find equivalents in their own tradition. For example: when I first met Aderemi, the late Oba of Ife - that was at Easter 1951 - he told me about the different shrines in his town and he said: "You know, in Yoruba religion we know the story of Mary and Jesus" and he told me the myth of Moremi (Mary) who sacrificed her only son in order to save her town. And he said: "Really, Moremi is Mary." I was impressed, because he could see that there was some basic metaphor that remained valid across a variety of cultures: He knew that the basic truth is the same - only the trappings are different ...

Soyinka: The Yoruba had no hostility to the piety of other people.

Beier: Yoruba religion, within itself, is based on this very tolerance. Because in each town you have a variety of cults, all coexisting peacefully: there may be Shango, Ogun, Obatala, Oshun and many more ...

Soyinka: Even in the same compound!

Beier: Even within the same small family - because you are not supposed to marry into the same Orisha!

But there is never any rivalry between different cult groups; they all know they are interdependent. Because they are like specialists: everybody understands specific aspects of the supernatural world. Nobody can know everything. The Egunguns know how to deal with the dead; the Ogun worshippers know how to handle the forces that are symbolized by iron. But for the Ogun worshippers to function, it is also necessary that Shango worshippers and Obatala worshippers and all the other Olorisha perform their part. Only the concentrated effort of all of them will bring peace and harmony to the town.

So naturally: when the Christians first appeared, the Olorishas could hardly suspect ...

Soyinka: ... how hostile the new religion would be ...

Beier: I think that tolerance is one of the big qualities of Yoruba culture. Even the treatment of handicapped or mentally disturbed people - it all shows how much more tolerant Yoruba culture was than Western cultures.

Soyinka: Yes. Europeans tend to hide such people, whereas Yoruba religion actually accounts for them.2

Beier: You said before that Yoruba religion "liberates." Can you expand on that?

Soyinka: I believe that the truly liberated mind is never aggressive about his or her system of beliefs. Because it is founded on such total self confidence, such acceptance of others, that there is no need to march out and propagate one’s cause. That is why Yoruba religion has never waged a religious war, like the Jihad or the Crusades.

Beier: In fact they never make converts! It is the orisha himself who chooses his devotees ...

Soyinka: The person who needs to convert others is a creature of total insecurity.

Beier: There is this beautiful Yoruba proverb: "The effort one makes of forcing another to be like oneself, makes one an unpleasant person!"

Soyinka: And even in practical terms, in day to day terms, take Shango for instance. Shango becomes the demiurge of electricity, so that this new phenomenon does not become an object of terror, it does not alienate you, because Yoruba religion enables you to assimilate it. The ease with which the Yoruba moves into that world and adapts to phenomena that had not come into the purview of his religion until recently - it means that he does not see the need to protect his family or his town from the benefits of this new technological experience. This is another evidence of this liberating attitude, which becomes ingrained in one. It is not just a bag of tricks that helps you to cope with the world: the mind is already prepared.

The same thing applies to human relationships. Social relationships. The whole experimental nature of what the modern world should be. The way other religions absolutely block your entry into new progressive fronts - Yoruba religion just doesn’t do that!

Beier: It is significant that when a Yoruba says "Igbagbo" (a believer) it means "Christian", because it is nonsensical to say "I believe in Shango" or "I believe in "Ogun". One is too secure in one's world view. I think I have mentioned to you once that remarkable reply of an old olorisha, to whom is grandchild said: "The teacher said, your Obatala doesn’t exist!" He simply answered. "Only that for which we have no name does not exist." He could not be shaken.

Soyinka: That is a brilliant way of putting it. And you have been to Brazil and Cuba. In that part of the world you find Europeans - not just Mulattoes - but people of ‘pure’ European descent, who accept the humanism of this religion and who recognize it as their own way of truth. And they cannot conceive of any other way of looking at the world. This proven ability of this religion is well documented.

Beier: A few days before I came to Nigeria, I received a letter from a Portuguese student at the University of Munich. She came across a small community of Olorishas in Lisbon and again she found this a more realistic and intense way of looking at the world.

Soyinka: I know a number of people like that. On the other hand, what you said earlier on about Yoruba scholars and their reluctance to come terms with Yoruba religion ... it is a very curious phenomenon ...

Beier: So you agree with my estimation?

Soyinka: Oh yes, I agree with it absolutely. And the worst part of it is that those fellows who speak about "false consciousness" - and I don’t just mean the dying breed of Marxists - they are all totally preconditioned. Even when they are trying to be objective about African religion in general - or about their own traditional belief system - they are totally incapable of relating to it. They say: "This is a contemporary world. What use is our traditional religion today ...", and I feel tempted to say to them: What use is a system of beliefs like Islam and Christianity in the contemporary world? And they cannot see that they have totally failed to make the leap: to take Yoruba religion on the same level as any system of belief in the world, that they are committing a serious scholarship lapse. In other words they are totally brainwashed by what I call these "elaborate structures superstition" - Islam and Christianity particularly. They have accepted these as absolute facts of life which cannot be questioned.

They lack the comparative sense of being able to see Yoruba religion as just another system - whether you wan to call it superstition, belief, world view, cosmogony or whatever - you have to do it on the same level with any other system. Once you do that, many questions which have been asked become totally redundant, because they have not been asked about other religions. But when our scholars come up against their own religion, their faculty of comparison completely disappears.

Beier: There is a whole body of prejudices - which have their roots in the ignorant or malicious misinterpretations of missionaries - and which still persist in the minds of many Nigerians.

A typical one is the accusation that the Egungun try to "deceive" women and children, by pretending that they are spirits. Whereas of course every child knows that there is a man in the mask ...

Soyinka: Absolutely! I did.

Beier: Everybody knows that the mask is carried by a dancer who is specially trained for that task - but at the height of the dance he becomes the ancestor. That is a totally different matter. These "wicked" man who allegedly try to intimidate women - can’t people see that during the Egungun festival they are in fact blessing women and that those who pray for children dance behind them?

Soyinka: And again, if you take the communion: here is a thing that happens every Sunday, sometimes twice a week. In which the officiating priest actually gives you a wafer and says "This is the flesh of Christ" and he gives you a drop of wine and says "This is the blood of Christ" ...

Beier: Another defamation of Yoruba religion is the notion that is a form of exploitation of the people. But surely it is much less so than Christianity! Take a babalawo, for instance: When you consult a babalawo, you put down threepence. A token fee! There is no money involved in divination. Have you ever seen a rich babalawo?

Soyinka: (laughs)

Beier: A traditional babalawo was a poor man. He was not even interested in being rich. In fact the whole society did not even know wealth in our modern sense. What kind of possessions could you own, that others didn’t have? Another Agbada? Everybody had enough yams to eat. Everybody lived in a spacious compound that would accommodate him, his wives and his children. Everybody had enough clothes to wear ... everybody had access to land. What else could you want? There was nothing to buy.

The grand old Olorisha priests I knew in the fifties: the Ajagemo of Ede, the Akodu of Ilobu ... they were poor people, in spite of their influence. There was no such thing as a fat priest. Whereas now some of these new Churches really do exploit their congregation. Only a week ago one of these self styled "prophets" went to see a friend of mine and told her: "I had a vision. The child you are going to give birth to will be born dead, and you too will die in childbirth. The only way you can survive is to fast for three days without water and to give money to the Church!" Now here is not only exploitation but also blackmail!

Soyinka: It is happening all the time. All the time. This whole spate of prophesying, this competitive mortification of people is nothing but an attempt to bring powerful and wealthy people under the control of the priest. Even ordinary individuals are not exempted. They have succeeded in some cases. Oh yes. They rush to them and say: You must do this and that. And sometimes when people take no notice of them, their relatives will! There was a relation of mine, he got so frightened when one of these prophets predicted a likely death for me, that he ran to him and asked him what to do. And I said to him: I will curse you, if you go again to that church. I will follow you there and break up that ceremony. So they do succeed on so many levels and it has become competitive ...

Beier: Now let us talk about the way in which some of these traditional Yoruba concepts have been used in your plays. If I am not mistaken, it was in "A Dance of the Forest" that you have first used some kind of Yoruba symbolism in a play.

Soyinka: Yes, of course by that time I had written the draft for The Lion and the Jewel, but that was a very different thing. It was on a different level ...

Beier: The striking thing about "A Dance of the Forest" is the character of Ogun. This image of Ogun of your play is a rather personal, "unorthodox" orisha - that you have, in fact, created a new kind of Ogun.

Soyinka: Hmmm ... that is true.

Beier: But of course, even in purely traditional Yoruba terms, that is quite a legitimate thing to do. Ogun has never been a rigid defined being; the orisha can only live through people - by "mounting somebody’s head" - you could go so far to say that when the Orisha fails to manifest himself in this way through his priests and worshippers, he ceases to exist. If the priest who personifies Ogun is an unusually powerful Olorisha he can modify the image of Ogun. So that even in Yoruba tradition Ogun consists of a variety of interrelated personalities.

Any traditional priest would accord you the right to live Ogun your own way, in fact they would think it the normal thing to do. You recreate Ogun - or perhaps one could say you are sensitive to other aspects of his being. Because Ogun is a very complex being ...

Soyinka: Yes, indeed.

Beier: It is again the typical Yoruba openness and tolerance that we are talking about. It applies not only to the relationship between the different orisha cults, it also applies to the variants of interpretations within one and the same cult group.

Soyinka: And in the Diaspora of course - the same thing. the concept of Orishala or Oshun are very different in Brazil or Cuba; and in turn the manifestations of the orisha over there have affected the interpretations of some of the scholars and they in turn have transmitted some of these ideas to our most traditional priests. So that when you speak to a Babalawo you may notice a new perception, a slightly altered perception.

Beier: Actually Pierre Verger was instrumental in establishing contacts between Brazilian olorisha and their families in Dahomey and Nigeria. Messages were sent back and forth, which were ultimately followed by exchange visits. Today there is quite a bit of movement between the two countries. Look at Sangodare, for example: the young Shango priest who grew up in Susanne Wenger’s house. He was invited to Brazil four times by groups of olorisha.

Soyinka: Take Eshu for instance. The stature of Eshu has grown considerably, so that the original myths of Eshu that I knew as a child have grown even more colourful.

Beier: ... the "devil",

Soyinka: That’s right, and again Wande Abimbola admitted once that these new aspects of Eshu are now found here in Nigeria as well. It is this movement ...

Beier: And of course it shows that the whole thing is alive. But you know what Melville Herskovitz thought about Verger’s travels between Brazil and Nigeria? "Terrible man", he said to me "he is destroying laboratory conditions."

Soyinka: Oh perfect! That’s perfect. That’s beautiful: it really sums up the whole lame battle - scholarship faced with a living phenomenon.

Beier: Now the Ogun you created in "A Dance of the Forest" stresses particularly the creative aspect. He is not merely the warrior, he is also the creator!

Soyinka: This was for me very obvious, because the instrument of sculpture belongs to Ogun; many sculptors are his followers and so is the blacksmith, again a very creative person, not just an artisan. And then of course there is the Ijala3 - he is therefore by implication the father of poetry. All this made me delve more into the complexity of Ogun and given my own creative bent, I explored that a lot more. And also given my own acknowledged combative strain, I found a fine partner in Ogun. It was a kind of liberation for me, having grown up in a narrow form of Christianity.

Beier: Which is very simplistic.

Soyinka: Very simplistic, everything has to be black or white: you are either a good child or a bad child. When I grew up and was given a little bit to self-analysis and introspection, I wondered why I should be inclined towards the creative - I really feel alive when I am creating - while at the same time I would readily drop my pen or typewriter without hesitation and pick up whatever combative instrument necessary ...

Yoruba religion made me see that there was no contradiction - it was the most normal thing in the world to have within the same person these two or more aspects.

Beier: Each orisha contains and bridges contradictions, and human beings are the same. To pretend otherwise is hypocrisy. People don’t realize how unrealistic Christianity is. Yoruba religion portrays the world as it is and makes you live with it, the way it is. It teaches you how to turn a dangerous situation, how to diffuse tension, how to turn a negative situation into something positive even.

But in "A Dance of the Forest" you created another character called Esuoro. I find it hard to relate this figure to any Yoruba tradition - I am tempted to say you simply invented him.

Soyinka: Oh, that was purely dramatic. That is something I have not taken beyond the pages of the book. It’s purely dramatic. I created him in the same way - I suppose - in which Puck was created by Shakespeare, taking parts from various mythological beings. As you know: Oro is one of the most intangible beings ... so I fleshed him out, somehow.

Beier: By far the most important statement you have made about Yoruba culture is your play "Death and the King’s Horsemen". I don’t know whether you remember this, but it was Pierre Verger who found out about this famous incident in Oyo. He was even able to verify it, by writing to the District Officer, who was then living in Canada.

Soyinka: I do remember that you gave me a kind of summary of the story ...

Beier: I thought that the material was crying out for a play. But for several years, you didn’t do anything with it.

Soyinka: Well, I wasn’t ready for it.

Beier: I then gave the material to Duro Lapido who produced "Oba Waja" in 1964. Then, maybe a decade later you wrote the "Horseman." What was it then that prompted you to go back to this material finally? What new insight had occurred? What new preoccupation with Yoruba religion, maybe?

Soyinka: That’s a question that’s always very difficult to answer. Because it has to do with the entire active creative process: gestation, something that takes place on different levels of consciousness or subconsciousness. But don’t forget, I wrote this play in Cambridge, when I was there for a year as a fellow in Churchill College.

And it could have been the resentment of the presumption! Because you know in a Cambridge College named after a personality like Churchill, you have encapsulated the entire history of the arrogance of your colonizers; the supercilious attitude towards other cultures, the narrowness, the mind closure - it could be all of that. It was not a year which I enjoyed particularly. There were a few stimulating intellectual contacts, which made it worth while; but I think there was the basic underlying question "What the hell am I doing here? What the hell are we doing here?"

I felt like a representative; a captured, creative individual having to deal with another culture on its own terms, in its own locale. And passing the bust of Churchill on the top of the stairs almost every day - with all that Churchill meant. The big colonial man himself! It could have been all of this that brought back the memory of this tragic representation of the way their culture would always impinge on ours. I suspect that is the way it must have been. I must have been tempted to challenge this: How dare this smugness be! How dare it be exported ...!

Beier: They came without the least attempt to come to terms with the culture they ruled.

Soyinka: Hardly ever!

Beier: This was particularly so in Southern Nigeria. They referred to Yorubas and Igbos as riff-raff, whereas Northerners, of course, were gentlemen.

Soyinka: Of course, the North appealed to their sense of feudalism.

Beier: You have given a very plausible explanation for the immediate stimulus that prompted you to write this play. But of course the far more difficult question is: what actually happens in the poet’s mind? What are the secrets and maybe subconscious processes that produce the particular images and the particular kind of magic of a play like "Death and the King’s Horseman"?

This is almost unanswerable, and many writers would simply refuse to be drawn into any discussion about it. But you have in fact attempted to find a metaphor for the creative process which you described at length in "The Fourth Stage". I am fascinated by that essay because it seems to me that you are giving a very Yoruba explanation and one that seems to have some parallels in Yoruba religious thought. You speak about the artist going on a kind of journey; a trip into another dimension from where he returns with a kind of boon ... and inspiration ... but maybe you better summarize it yourself.

Soyinka: I think what I was referring to was the mystery of creativity itself. Which is almost like a dare, a challenge of nature secrecies. One goes out almost in the same way in which Ogun cleared the jungle - because he had forged the metallic instrument. He is very much the explorer.

The artist is in many ways similar; each time, he discovers a proto world in gestation; it’s almost like discovering another world in the galaxy. The artist’s view of reality creates an entirely new world. Into that world he leads a raid; he rifles its resources and returns to normal existence. The tragic dimension of that is one of disintegration of the self in a world which is being reborn always, and from which the artists can only recover his being by an exercise of sheer will power. He disintegrates in the passage into that world. He loses himself and only the power of the will can bring him back. And when he returns from the experience, he is imbued with new wisdoms, new perspectives, a new way of looking at phenomena.

I was using Ogun very much as an analogue: what happens when one steps out into the unknown? There is a myth about all the gods setting out, wanting to explore and rediscover the world of mortals. But then the primordial forest had grown so thick, no one could penetrate it. Then Ogun forged the metallic tool and cut a way through the jungle. But the material for the implement was extracted from the primordial barrier.

This I took as a kind of model of the artist’s role, the artist as a visionary explorer, a creature dissatisfied with the immediate reality - so he has to cut through the obscuring growth, to enter a totally new terrain of being; a new terrain of sensing, a new terrain of relationships. And Ogun represented that kind of artist to me.

Beier: I can find parallels to Yoruba concepts here on several levels. The artist as the "creature of dissatisfaction with the immediate reality" is really very reminiscent of the orisha, who starts life as a human being - a king or a warrior - but because of his dissatisfaction with the immediate reality "leads a raid into that other world", losing himself on the way: Shango hanging himself at Koso, Ogun descending into the ground at Ire, Oshun turning into a river at Otan Aiyegbaju - all these are examples of the creative human being breaking through the limitations of ordinary human existence.

Of course, the orisha does not return - he undergoes a metamorphosis and becomes a divine being. But he is there to remind us of the existence of that other world, to remind us that we can dare to penetrate, however briefly, that other sphere of existence.

Similarly the olorisha going into trance crosses the border, "rifles the resources" of the divine world and returns with a new understanding. His personality undergoes significant changes through such repeated experiences. The maturity of the old orisha priests, their wisdom and tolerance, their insight into the human mind are the result of these raids into the divine sphere. Am I right in thinking, that this is something very similar - almost identical to the experience you are describing in the "Fourth Stage"?

Soyinka: Yes, definitely!

Beier: I think you can describe the act of the priest who goes into trance also as creative act; because he has to personify the orisha, recreate him through his performance, through song and dance. So in that sense there may be some real hope left: for a while we must helplessly watch the culture crumble in front of our eyes, there are still some individuals, like yourself, left who can capture something of the spirit of this culture through the very individual process you have described and who can keep the orisha alive in some new form of existence.

Soyinka: There is a lot of hope left. I’ll give you an example: when I gave a lecture in Ibadan recently titled "The Credo of Being and Nothingness", when I explained certain aspects of Yoruba beliefs, the role of the orisha, the reaction, the forcefulness of response which I could see on the faces of the young people was really very encouraging. It was more than just an expression of their misgivings towards the way in which they were brought up, more than just a feeling of deprivation. These young people are really looking for new directions in their lives. I believe there is real hope.

1 Igbale: The secret grove of transformation, where the mask is donned.

2 The Yoruba creation story relates that Obatala created human beings out of clay and that one day he was drunk on palm wine and made cripples, albinos and blind people. Since then, all handicapped people are sacred to him.

3 Ijala: The poems of Yoruba hunters. The hunters are worshippers of Ogun, because they use iron.

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"Asen, Ancestors, and Vodun"

2010-03-19T22:46:00.000-07:00

The Changing Face of Asen

Much of our understanding of Fon "asen" comes from Edna G. Bay's seminal 1986 catalog, "Asen: Iron Altars of the Fon People of Benin", in which she presents a well-documented, though largely ahistorical, analysis of these iron sculptural staffs used for memorializing the dead. Bay's new book on the subject traces the history of asen over more than two hundred years from their pre-nineteenth-century Yoruba roots, when they functioned solely in the context of "Vodun" (the Fon word for spirits), to their demise in the face of Christianity and the growing popularity of photography for memorializing the dead. Bay's main point is that asen have transformed significantly over time with their ancestral association being essentially a nineteenth-century invention.

The first of the seven chapters of her book ("Vodun, Sacrifice, and the Sinuka") looks at asen prior to1800, when iron staffs were non-ancestral and used primarily in the context of Vodun. Present everywhere in the environment, Vodun were venerated through objects, shrines, and even the human body when manifested through public performance. Though the majority of Vodun shrines at that time were furnished with objects made from wood, unbaked clay, or terracotta, an occasional non-figurative iron staff was also noted. Bay
suggests that the latter were rooted in Yoruba staffs associated with their god of medicine, Osanyin, a connection evident not only in their shared shapes and uses but also in the similarity of their names (Osanyin vs. asen).

Chapter 2 ("The Invention of Ancestral Altars")

Takes us to the late precolonial period of the nineteenth century when Fon kings, responding to rising imperialism and changing dynamics of trade, expanded and enhanced their authority by moving their power base southward from inland Abomey to the coastal town of Ouidah and drawing attention to and celebrating their royal ancestry. Asen were among the props kings used to attract attention to their lineage. Drawing on a rich array of contemporary written sources, including the writings of J. A. Skertchly and Sir Richard Burton, Bay paints a detailed picture of contemporary politics and the artistic developments involving asen
that helped to support it. King Gezo, the great nineteenth-century innovator and patron of the arts, used
asen and other inventions to strengthen his royal status. During the time of his rule (1818-38), Gezo oversaw the construction of thatch-roofed commemorative shrines ("deho") in which asen staffs were placed to pay homage to the spirit of dead kings.

Royal asen also figured prominently in a ceremony known as Sin Kwain (meaning "water sprinkling") that called for the living king to sprinkle water on asen dedicated to each deceased monarch. Other nineteenth-century inventions aimed at enhancing royalty included the royal ceremonial cycle of Hwetanu and the rise of Fa divination. The Hountondji lineage of metalsmiths, the subject of Bay's next chapter, was key in this transformative process. Working in a variety of imported materials (iron, silver, brass, glass), these metalsmiths copied a range of European artifacts, from guns and swords to animals and chariots, to which they assigned meanings specific to Fon royalty. The ship became a symbol of foreigners frequenting the Fon area, while crucified crocodiles, cats, or hawks became communicative devices directed at Vodun spirits.

The Hountondji metalsmiths even copied European brass casting techniques to create these sculptural forms, a claim Bay supports by comparing their lost wax technique to that of Akan immigrant brass casters, whose casting techniques are more indigenously African in feel. Bay then turns to the impact of colonialism, which brought with it the imposition of the French language, European school systems, and Christianity,
as well as the demise of royalty. This shift, Bay argues, led to a kind of democratization of Fon material culture. Once the prerogative of royalty, asen were now available to any individual of rank and power, including chiefs, royal descendents, and the educated. Bay delves deeply into the peculiar form that colonialism took in Dahomey.

Compared to other West African colonies, Dahomey, as it was then named, had relatively few natural resources, making colonial powers less brutal and more tolerant of local practices. Reverend Father
Francis Aupiais was among those who recognized the importance of embracing local customs and combining them with Western ones. Likening this change to the Negritude movement in Senegal, Bay sees it leading the way for Dahomey's modernity while celebrating Fon history and culture. The next two chapters turn our attention to the changing iconography and meaning of asen over time. Bay begins with a useful discussion of how the Fon read visual imagery, noting the strong relationship they saw between it and the
spoken word and its potential ambiguities and multiple meanings.

Not surprising, the images on nineteenth-century asen emphasized the supremacy and invincibility of royalty. Centralized images of animals, people, or objects functioned as mnemonic devices for particular kings. For example, an asen featuring a hand holding an egg evoked the Fon proverb "a world holds the egg
that the earth desires," calling to mind King Behanzin whose accession to power had been strongly challenged. During the colonial period, when asen became available to anyone of high rank,
deho were transformed from shrines devoted to royalty into a family space for the display of lineage asen. The asen also changed, with figural groups replacing individuals, and "narrative" replacing the "allusional."

Hountondji descendents abandoned the static, singular figured asen of the nineteenth century in favor of animated figures engaged in narrative scenes of modern life. The Hountondji were also now using a vast array of materials, everything from aluminum and iron to brass and silver depending on what the patron could afford. As would be expected, asen commissioned by the wealthy or better educated were more elaborate in their materials and imagery. Sometime during the colonial period, appliquéd cloth usurped the asen's role as a visual means for commemorating the dead. According to oral tradition, the late eighteenth-century King Agonglo introduced appliquéd cloths for use as flags, banners, and umbrellas to honor royal ancestors.

The deho structures invented by Gezo were covered by richly appliquéd cloths made from newly
introduced imported cloth. Like asen, cloth appliqués experienced a kind of democratization during the colonial period. The wealthy and educated were decorating their walls with appliqués bearing "royal" imagery to celebrate their status. Other forms of appliqué bore narrative imagery that commemorated
and memorialized ancestry. But whereas appliqué production has persisted until today, largely for
tourists, asen are vanishing.

In her last chapter ("Death and the Culture Wars"), Bay offers several reasons as to why asen are now disappearing. One important one is the impact of rising capitalism, with its emphasis on individuality over kin solidarity, a cash economy, and individual wealth. During the late precolonial period, when kingship was strong, a king's strength depended on the allegiance of family; during the colonial period, the patrilineal household replaced kingship, with asen staffs serving as the anchor that held the family together. Now the traditional family structure is breaking down with growing tension between individual and family. Among the evidence Bay cites is a common taxi sign that reads "I fear my friends, including you," and
to a Fongbe song ("Me Dida," meaning bad person) that warns people to be cautious of family members who may kill you and then claim your ancestors were responsible.

She also notes the impact of Roman Catholicism, with its emphasis on the church as the focus of devotion at all levels, including ancestry and its incorporation of asen-like imagery as part of church décor. Even the Vodun religion, today strongly encouraged by the government as a form of national identity, has taken on a new form that emphasizes individual wealth and success over kin solidarity. Bay's photographs, though small and monochrome, are very effective in illustrating her points. For example, she begins the chapter discussing the recent demise of asen with a photo of a shrine-like room decorated only with framed photographs of deceased family members and ends it with a photo of discarded asen near the same family's abandoned deho.

The real strength of Bay's book is its rich array of written sources, and the thorough and judicious way that she draws on and analyzes them to build and support her arguments. Bay's study of the evolution of Fon asen is one of the best historical studies of an African art form I have yet to see in the field of art history, and one that I strongly recommend for anyone looking for good scholarship on the "history" of African art.

Citation: Lisa Aronson. Review of Bay, Edna G., "Asen, Ancestors, and Vodun:
Tracing Change in African Art". H-AfrArts, H-Net Reviews.
March, 2009.

Spiritual Forces

2010-01-23T09:15:00.000-08:00

SPIRITUAL FORCES

àasà Female Spirits.

àbikú The Spirits of young children who live a short life between

reincarnations.

àjínde The spirit of a deceased ancestor (Egún) who speaks at their own funeral through a medium.

agbasà The Spirits of a sacred stones.

ajobi Ancestors of a woman, matralineal ancestors.

Ajogún Destructive Spirits that bring death, disease and poverty. These Spirits are generally associated with the Spirit of the Divine Messenger (Èsù) and are considered an aspect of the balancing dynamic that occurs in Nature.

Àríwa The Spirits of the North, ancestral Spirits.

Aronimoja Spirits of the forest, elemental spirits.

Ayélalà The collective Spirit of Ancestral Mothers.

elénìní Elemental spirits that block human growth, they are usually generated by interalized fear.

èbora The Forces of Nature (Òrìsà), that provide protection, ie the Divine Messenger (Èsú), the Spirit of the Guardian of Consciousness (Osun), the Spirit of the Tracker (Òsóòsì), and the Spirit of Iron (Ògún).

eburu Destructive elemental spirits.

eburú Elemental spirits that work with the Spirit of Infectious disease (Babaluaiye).

Égún The Spirit of an ancestor.

eléré The Spirit of a child who dies young and reincarnates with the same destiny, same as àbikú.
emere Elemental spirits.

Èmí Òrìsà Spirit of a Force in Nature (Òrìsà).

Guusu Spirits of the South, a reference to Spirits who bring spiritual transformation.

Ìbamolè Spiritual Forces in Nature (Òrìsà) that are worthy of respect.

Ìgbamole Calabash of light, reference to the primal polarity of Creation at the beginning of time, and a reference to those Spiritual Forces that bring Light into the World.

ilà Óòrùn Spirits of the East, a reference to Spirits of wisdom.

Ìmólè Forces of Nature (Òrìsà) in their earliest manifestation as expressions of light, meaning: "House of Light."

Ìranse -Olórun Messengers of the Source of Being (Olódùmarè), praise name for Forces in Nature (Òrìsà).

Irúnlè The Spirits of all the Ancestors (Egún).

Irúnmòle Forces in Nature (Òrìsà) that created the Earth.

Iwin The spirit of ghosts, a reference to earth bound human spirits.

ìwò Oòrun Spirits of the West, a reference to nuturing Spirits.

Olorí Spirits that organizes personal consciousness, guardian Spirit, a reference to the Òrìsà associated with a person's character and destiny.

Olose Force in Nature, same meaning as Òrìsà.

Oluéri Spirits of the Rivers.

Òòsà Force in Nature (Òrìsà).

Òrìsà Spiritual Force in Nature that guides evolution through the expression of its own unique form of consciousness.

Òrìsà Ìdílé Spirits of an extended family.

Òrìsà ìlú Spirits who are the guardian of towns and cities in traditional Yoruba culture each town honored a particular Òrìsà.

Òrìsà orí Spirit of personal consciousness, guardian Òrìsà.

Òrìsà - Oríle Spirit of the Nation.

Osara Forces in Nature, same as Òrìsà, meaning: "One who gathers

children."

Osi Spirit of the Ancestors (Egún).

Olokanran Spirits of Prophecy, those Spirits who speak of the future.

wòròkò Elemental Spirits who work with the Spirit of Infectious disease

(Babaluaiye) to help spread disease.

SPIRITUAL FORCES

Aàjà Spirit of the Whirlwind.

Abanigbele Spirit of Fire, this is a reference to the animating

consciousness that exists inside a burning flame.

Agayu Spirit of the Fire at the Center of the Earth.

Àgbìgbò Spirit of the Forest that causes trouble.

Agemo Spirit of the Forest worshipped in the Ijebu region of Nigeria.

Àguala Spirit of Venus.

Àjàlá - mòpin Spirit who shapes the head and forms the consciousness of each new born child.

àjé Spirit of a Bird used by women (Ìyáàmi) to invoke powers used for abundance and justice. This same power is used to consecrate the crown of the Yorùbá Kings. Also used as a reference to money or abundance.

Aje Saluga Elemental Spirit of Abundance, sacred to the Spirit of the Mothers (Ìyáàmi).

Akódá Spirit of one of the Prophet Òrúnmìlà's first two students.

Alááànú Spirit that helps shape consciousness prior to birth, "The

Merciful One."

Alúdùndún Òrun Guardian Spirit of personal destiny in the Realm of the Ancestors, the Source of personal destiny.

Àmòká Spirit of the Sun.

Amúsan Spirit of one of the children of the Spirit of the Wind (Oya).

Apetebi Spirit of the wife of the Spirit of Destiny (Òrúnmìlà).

Àpárí - inú Spirit of the inner self.

Aroni Spirit of the forest, elemental spirit with the body of a human

and the head of a dog.

Arúku Spirit who transforms and elevates the spirit of the ancestors.

Àsedá Spirit of one of the Prophet Òrúnmìlà first two students.

Abanigbele The Spirit of Fire, this is a reference to the animating consciousness that exists inside a burning flame.

Babaluàiyé Spirit of the Surface of the Earth, this is the Spirit associated with those infectious diseases that are carried by the wind across the surface of the earth during dry and hot times of the year.

Dada The Spirit of Vegetables, also the guardian Spirit new born

children with large tufts of hair.

Ejufiri The Spirit that shapes consciousness, the foundation of inner strength.

elekeji eni Spiritual double, higher self.

Erinlè Spirit of Song.

Èsú The Spirit of the Divine Messenger, who also as a role as the Spirit of the Divine Trickster and the Spirit of the Divine Enforcer.

Èdán Spirit of the Male aspect of the Spirit of the Earth (Onilé).

Egbéògbà Spirit honored by the society of women (Ìyáàmi).

Èlà The Spirit of Purity, the First Reincarnation of the Spirit of Destiny

(Òrúnmìlà).

Elédà Creator, associated with the power center between the eyes.

Ibeji Spirit of Twins.

Ìbéta Spirit of Triplets.

Ikú Spirit of Death.

Ìpònrí Higher self, described in Ifá scripture as a person's spiritual double that lives in the Realm of the Ancestors (Ìkòlè Òrun).

Iponri The Force in Nature (Òrìsà) that guides the consciousness of a particular individual.

Ìpòrí The Spirit of the Big Toe, in Ifá Ancestor reverence the big toe is the place where personal consciousness (Orí) forms a link with Ancestral consciousness (Orí Egún).

Ìràwò alé The star Sirius, the Spirit of Sirius refered to as the canoe

star in Ifá scripture.

Irépò Spirit of Cooperation

Korí Spirit who creates the calabash of the inner self.

Mágbéèmitì Spirit who shapes consciousness.

Odù Spirit of the Womb of Creation.

Odùdúà Same as Odùdúwà.

Odùdúwà Spirit of Black Character, black is a symbolic reference to that which is invisible, the opposite of light. In some regions of Nigeria this spirit is the primal Goddess, in Ile Ifè this Spirit is the original male Ancestor of Yoruba culture. Odumare Regional variation of Olódùmarè who is the Source of Creation.

Ofere Spirit of the Morning Star.

Ògún The Spirit of Iron.

òjìjí Shadow spirit created by the physical manifestation of a person's negative emotions.

Òjòntarìgì Spirit of the wife of the Spirit of Death (Ikú).

Olódùmarè Spirit of Creation.

Olófin Spirit of the Law, meaning: "Owner of the Law."

Olojongbodu Spirit of the Wife of Death (Ikú).

Olókun Spirit of the Ocean.

Olóore Spirit who shapes the head of infants before birth.

Olorí -Mérìn Spirit who protects towns, meaning: "Spirit with Four Heads."

Olosa Spirit of the Lagoon.

Olumu The Spirit of Understanding.

Olúworíogbó The Spirit who makes Heads, meaning: "Creator of the heads in the forest."

Onílé Spirit of the Earth, meaning: "Owner of the Earth."

Oòrùn Spirit of the Sun.

Òòsàoko Spirit of the Farm.

Opèlé Spirit of the wiife of the Spirit of Destiny (Òrúnmìlà)

orí Spirit of Consciousness, also means head in common usage.

Òrìsà agbala Guardian Spirit of the back yard, the younger brother of the Spirit of the Farm (Òrìsà Oko).

Òri s à - bi Spirit of the wife of Orungan.

Òrò Spirit of the Forest, invoked as part of Ifá funeral rites.

Osu Spirit of the Moon, daughter of the Spirit of Lightning (Sàngó).

Òsùmàrè Spirit of the Rainbow.

Osun Spirit who protects individual consciousness.

O'yansa Spirit of the Mother of the Spirit of the Wind (Oya), meaning: "Mother of Nine."

Oye Spirit of the Harmattan Wind, lives in Igeti hill with the Divine Messenger, the male aspect of the Spirit of the Wind (Oya).

Oba Ìgbàláyé Spirit of the Four Seasons, meaning: "King of the Calabash of the Earth."

Obalùfòn Spirit who protects Artists.

Oba Oke Spirit of the Mountain.

Obàtálá Spirit of the King of White Cloth.

Obba Goddess of the Iba River.

Olórun Ultimate Source of Being.

Olósà The Spirit of the Lagoon.

Oramife Spirit of the Father of the Spirit of Lightning (Sàngó).

Òranmiyàn The Spirit of War, considered the Father of the Spirit of Lightning (Sàngó) in Ilé Ifè.

Òrò Spirit of the Power of the Word.

Òrungan Spirit of the child of the Spirit of the Mother of Fishes (Yemoja).

Òrúnmìlà Spirit of Destiny, the prophet of Ifá, physical incarnation of the Spirit of Purity (Èlà).

Òrun Òkè Spirit of the Mountains in the Invisible Realm of the Immortals.

Òsányìn Spirit of Herbs and Medicine.

Òsóòsì Spirit of the Tracker.

Osun Spirit of the River, fertility, sensuality and abundance.

Oya Spirit of the Wind, Spirit of the River Niger.

Òràányàn Spirit of the First King (Oba) of Oyo.

Òràngun Spirit of the grandson of Odùduwa.

Poripon Sigidi Spirit of Combat.

Sàaragaá Spirit that shapes consciousness (Orí), meaning: "The Strange place of Uniqueness."

Sùngbèmi Spirit that shapes consciousness (Orí), meaning: "Be Closer to Me."

Sàngó Spirit of Lightning, also the fourth Aláàfin of Oyo.

Sigidi Messenger Spirit for warrior spirits who protect a particular family lineage.

Sigidi Sugudu Spirit of Nightmares.

Sòponnà Spirit of Small Pox.

Yemò Spirit of the Wife of the Spirit of the King of White Cloth (Obàtálá).

Yemòwó Spirit of the Wife of the Spirit of the King of White Cloth (Obàtálá).

Iyemòja Spirit of the Ògún River, meaning: "Mother of Fishes."

PRAISE NAMES

ÈSÙ

Agongo ogo He Who Carries a Club.

Alajìki One Who is Addressed First.

Amónisègùn - mápò He who has all the Knowledge of Powerful

Medicine.

Bara Strength.

Elégbà Spirit of Good Character.

Elégára Spirit of the Trickster.

Olóf ín -àpèká -lúù Enforcer of the Law Giver.

ÒSÓÒSÌ

Ata mátàsé The Sharp Shooter.

Olog arare Master of Himself.

Òrìs à ipapo adun Spirit of Sweat Togetherness.

ÒGÚN

Atóónàlórógùn Hefty Hunter.

Àwàlàwúlú Rugged and Rough Spirit.

Àwònyè Òrìsà The Enraged Spirit.

Lákáyé Chief of the Earth.

Olú irin Chief of Iron.

Olumaki Chief of Strength.

Oni're Chief of the Town of Ire.

Osibiriki The One who Bursts out Suddenly.

Òsìn Imole Chief of Spirits.

Olona Owner of the Road.

Òsìn Imolè First Among the Immortals.

OBÀTÁLÁ

A - kè - bí - àlà Radiant White.

Alábalese He Who Predicts the Future.

Alamorere Owner of the Best Clay.

Oluorogbo Chief of the Medicine of Truth.

Oluwo Igbo Chief Diviner of the Forest.

Òòsáálá Spirit of Mystic Vision.

Òòsà Ìgbowújìn The Spirit who lives in the Distant Forest.

Òrì s à Al ase Spirit with the Power of Dreams.

Òrí sálá Spirit who Creates Light.

Òrìsà -og'enia The Spirit who Owns Humans.

Oba - i gbó King of the Forest.

Obalofun King of Pure Speech.

Obanla King of Purity.

Obàtálá gbingbin iki The Big Big Spirit of the King of the White Cloth.

Oba - ti - álá King of Vision.

Òsèèrèmògbò Source of Good Things from the Forest.

Pàkelemò The Calabash of Wisdom.

OLÓKUN

Àjíbáajé The Spirit Who Wakes up to Discover Money.

Oba Omi King of the Waters.

AGANJU

Elekú o Owner of the Cave.

YEMÒJA

Olúgbé - rere Giver of Good Things.

SÀNGÓ

Àrìrà Fast as Lightning.

Bámbi Spiritually Reborn.

Kábiyèsí Greeting of Respect.

Kábíyès ìlè Greeting of Respect.

Olúbambí The Creator helped me before I had this child.

Olú kòso Àìrá The Controller of Lightning.

Olúòrójò King Who Must Not See Rain.

Oluoyo Chief of Oyo.

Obakòso King of Kòso.

OYA

Afefe - jeje Whirlwind.

Aférifélégélégé Mysterious Wind.
Àjàláiyé Winds of the Earth.

Àjàlórun Winds of the Realm of the Ancestors.

Efufu - lege - lege Gentle Breeze.

Iyansan Mother of the Child of Nine.

Olúwèkù The controller of those who wear the Ancestral masquerade.

OSUN

Olodo Owner of the Brook.

OSÁNYÌN

Atoobajayé The adequate Protector.

BABLUAIYÉ

Asin - mo - l'égbàá - ìyànjú The Mystery of Power that Comes from

Eating the Yam.

Obalúaiye "King of the hot earth.

Omolú Child of heat.

ONILE

Ilè Ògéré House of Perfection.

Yeye Aiye Mother of the Earth.

ÒRÚNMÌLÀ

Àáyán - awo - inú - igbó Ayan Tree is the Mystery of the Inner

Sanctum of the Sacred Grove.

Agbónire Hunter of Good Fortune.

Agbónìrègún Hunter of the Medicine of Good Fortune.

Aje - ju - Oogùn Stronger than Medicine.

A - kò - mò -ó - tán Not to Have Full Knowledge of You is to Fail.

Amáiyégún The Guardian of Medicine on Earth.

Amodídá One Who Cuts through Sickness.

Amòlà Ifé Owòdáyé "The Savior of Ifé from the Early Days.

A - sòrò - dayò One Who Makes Things Prosper.

Ibìkejì Èdùmàrè Second to the Creator.

Ifá Olokún Diviner of the Sea.

Ká - mò -ó - ka - là Whom to know is to be saved.

Ló - l'òla Master of tomorrow.

Ló - l'òní Master of the Day.

Ló - lòtunla - pèlu -è Master of the day after tomorrow.

Obírítí The Immense Orbit.

Olónìímoro Owner of Cleanliness.

Olúmmaàmi Òkítíìrí The Chief Averter.

Olùnrin - dúdú - òkè - Ìgèté Black Man from Ogeti Hill.

Olúwà - mi - àmò - imò - tán Who Can Most Understand the Source of Being.

Onílégangan - ajíkí Owner of the Spirit of the Traditional Drum that is

saluted first.

Òpè Palm Tree.

Òsígbìwa The One who brings the right hand path.

Ti npojó ikú dà The Changer of the determined day of Death.

OLODÙMARÈ

Èkèmí First Soul.

Èmi Mimo Spirit of All Wisdom.

Oga - ogo The Brave One.

Olúwa Chief of Character.

Oba Àlórí Almighty Chief.

Oba Òrun King of the Invisible Realm of the Immortals.

Obayíya Highest King.

Olójó Òní Owner of the Day.

ÒRUN

Ìkòlè Òrun The invisible realm of Spirit.

lé Ifè The Spiritual capitol of traditional Yorúbà culture, also refers to a Spiritual City in the Realm of the Ancestors (Ìkòlè Òrun).

ilogbon House of Wisdom, mystical home of the Spirit of Destiny (Òrúnmìlà).

Ipò - okú Ancestral home of the a person's spiritual shadow (ojiji), place

where the spirit of the deceased lingers if it does not receive proper

elevation.

ìsálú -Òrun The entire Invisible Realm of the Ancestors.

làí - làí The beginning of time.

òde -Òrun The entire invisible realm, home of the ancestors (Egún) and the Immortals (Òrìsà), the Source of Creation.

Oríta The boundary between the visible realm of Creation and the

invisible realm of Creation.

Òyígíyigì The primal stone of Creation, the Source of Creation.

Ònòméfà The six sacred directions, meaning the four directions of the compass plus up and down, or the center axis.

Òrun - Apadi Home of disruptive earth bound ancestor spirits

SPIRITUALITY AND APPLIED ETHICS: AN AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE

2009-09-23T22:35:00.001-07:00

West Africa Review (2001)
ISSN: 1525-4488

SPIRITUALITY AND APPLIED ETHICS: AN AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE

Kölá Abíðböláwo

Abstract

This paper provides a philosophical assessment of two institutions and their practices: the institution of traditional medicine and the ethical issues generated by its practice; and, the institution of contemporary African philosophy and the relevance of its practice to African societies. Taking one contemporary African society as an example, I argue that the metaphysical assumptions implicit within the practice of medicine provide new insights into the relationship between morality and religion. These assumptions also provide new guidelines on how to make philosophy more relevant to contemporary African societies.

Introduction

The term ‘ethics’ can be used to include normative ethics— thought about the basis and justification of moral rules and principles; meta-ethics—the meaning of moral terms; applied ethics— the nature, content and application of specific moral guidelines; and, descriptive ethics—accounts of how people actually behave in situations requiring moral action. Contemporary thinking on ethics in African philosophy is primarily concerned with normative and descriptive ethics.

In fact, much of contemporary scholarship on ethics from an African point of view is preoccupied with the question of whether moral rules and principles arise out of religion (in which case, they are valid because the gods command them), or whether these rules arise out of reason (in which case they derive their validity from some non-religious base). Because these scholars also make claims about the nature of the principles implicit within traditional African societies, much of their work is also on descriptive ethics.
My topic is not this well-worn issue of the basis and justification of moral rules and principles. In fact, I have very little to say about them. My primary concern is with applied ethics. I will examine the question ‘what should I do?’ against the background of spirituality in the practice of medicine in contemporary Yorùbá society. I will argue that the issues of applied ethics that arise in Yorùbá culture (traditional and contemporary) are by far more complex than anything ventured by most contemporary African philosophers.

The crux of the matter has to do with the nature of ethics itself. In contemporary Western conceptions of ethics, ethical and moral issues arise within the context of interactions and contact amongst natural beings. That is, issues of ethics come into discussion when we consider the implications of human and/or animal actions vis-à-vis other humans and animals. Let us describe this Westernized conception of ethics as the “this-worldly” approach to ethics.¹ I will argue that in Yorùbá culture (both traditional and contemporary), ethics is a three-way relationship among: (i) natural beings and other natural beings; (ii) natural beings and spiritual beings; and (iii) spiritual beings and other spiritual beings.

Morality and Religion

The question of the relationship between morality and religion has preoccupied philosophers since the inception of philosophy. Plato puts this question well: ‘Do the gods love piety because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it?’ Put in this manner, the question becomes a variant of the age-old ‘is-ought’ problem. For this Socratic question is really interested in the logical connections between what the gods’ will is, and what we ought morally to do. Is there a logically persuasive connection between what the divine will is, and what we as humans ought to do? Does this divine will derive its moral force of appeal from the simple fact that it is willed by the gods? Or is there a logical gap between the is and the ought such that we can derive the moral force of the ought independently of the gods’ will?

The question of the role of religion and ethics in African society has been addressed by people with two opposing points of view: those like John Mbiti and Moses Makinde who maintain that morality derives its validity from religion, and those like Segun Gbadegesin, Kwasi Wiredu and Polycarp Ikuenobe who maintain that it does not.² Despite the irreconcilable differences between proponents of these two views, implicit in their work is the assumption that (just as in mainstream contemporary Western philosophy) ethics in Africa is about those action-guiding principles on the basis of which individuals within a community (and, of course, the community as a whole in relation to individuals, or in relation to other communities) regulate their conduct with other humans beings (and, of course, with other communities). Morality is primarily a this-worldly affair in which we focus on issues of co-operation, actions, attitudes, emotions, character, etc., vis-à-vis relationships with other sentient human beings and animals.

While I do not deny that ethics is and should be a this-worldly affair, my contention is that, from the Yorùbá perspective, this is a very limited view of ethics. Ethics, in traditional and contemporary Yorùbá society is not just about the nature and quality of interactions between sentient natural beings. In Yorùbá culture, ethics has a supernaturalistic dimension in the sense that moral issues also have to do with the relationship between spiritual beings and humans, and indeed, it also has to do with the relationship amongst spiritual beings.

It is important to be clear on the contrast I want to draw between my views and those of most contemporary African philosophers. My claim is not that philosophers such as Makinde, Gbadegesin, and Ikuenobe accord no role whatsoever to the supernatural world in ethics and morality. In fact, that which distinguishes African ethics from Western ethics is the role of religion in African thought. My claim is that implicit in the work of these African philosophers is the (contemporary) Western conception of ethics as a field in which the primal focus of attention is the relationship amongst natural beings. Morality and ethics are primarily about human conduct within human communities. Ethical questions are raised about those human conducts that affect other humans and other natural beings. In the philosophies of these African philosophers, religion and the spiritual realm are outside of the moral equation in the sense that questions about the proper role of religion in ethics are pertinent only in issues of the source, origin, bases or ultimate justification of moral rules and principles. For these African philosophers, the role of religion and spirituality in African ethics can be encapsulated by the following questions: From whence does ethics derive its moral force of appeal? From God and the gods, or, from the force of reason? A more precise way of putting these questions is to say that much of contemporary African philosophizing on the relationship between ethics and religion is squarely within the domains of normative and descriptive ethics.

My position on the role of religion in the justification of moral rules and principles in Africa can be stated very easily because I do not always accept the law of excluded middle. I do not accept that the question: “do African moral rules and principles derive their validity from the gods, or do the gods command these rules because they are valid?” is exhaustive of all the possible options. When it comes to logic, I am an intuitionist, and, hence, on the issues of the basis of African moral rules and principles, my answer would be: we should not assert the truth of statements of the “P or Q” form when there is no specific justification for P, nor any specific justification for Q. Consequently, within some specified contexts, religion merely supplies prudential and pragmatic justifications for moral conduct. In its prudential or pragmatic functions, religion merely serves as the motivation for moral conduct, thereby encouraging or discouraging conduct. However, in Yorùbá culture, morality does not exist outside of religion in its this-and-other-worldly view of ethics. This is due to the fact that the spiritual and natural planes of existence form the same continuum in Yorùbá culture. In this intuitionist view of the relationship between morality and religion, the middle ground excluded by standard “either ... or” logic is not excluded.

The Spiritual and the Natural in the Yorùbá Cosmos

As with most religions, Yorùbá religion divides the cosmos into two realms of existence: the spiritual world and the natural world.³ The spiritual world is the abode of supernatural forces such as Olódùmarè (the Yorùbá High God), the Òrìsà (all the Yorùbá divinities), the Ajogun (anti-gods or the malevolent supernatural powers), the Àjë (who are translated inadequately into English as “witches”), and the ancestors. The natural world is composed of humans, animals and plants. Spiritual beings visit the natural world regularly. And through divination, sacrifice and spirit possession, natural beings can also partake in the spiritual world occasionally. The spiritual and natural worlds are, therefore, interdependent.
At first, the Yorùbá cosmos might appear to be like that of Christianity and Islam. Õrun is somewhat equivalent to heaven, and aye is somewhat equivalent to this world. What is more, Yorùbá theology also has a place in the supernatural world comparable to hell, namely, Õrun-Àpáàdì. Indeed a host of scholars of Yorùbá theology have compared and re-interpreted Yorùbá theological accounts of the cosmos and its inhabitants in such a way that Yorùbá theology is not distinguishable from that of Christianity. Consider, for instance, the following claims of Bolaji Idowu, one of the most cited scholars on Yorùbá theology:

The creation of the earth was completed in four days; the fifth day was therefore set apart for the worship of the Deity and for rest.⁴(Idowu, 1962, p. 20.)

It would seem that when the world began, everyone could travel to heaven and back as he wished and that all could have immediate, direct contact with Olódùmarè. The oral traditions say that heaven was very near to the earth, so near that one could stretch up one’s hand and touch it. ... There was a kind of Golden Age, or a Garden-of-Eden period. Then something happened, and a giddy, frustrating, extensive space occurred between heaven and earth. The story of what happened is variously told. One story is that a greedy person helped himself to too much food from the heaven; another that a woman with a dirty hand touched the unsoiled face of heaven. The motif is all one—man sinned against the Lord of Heaven and there was immediately raised a barrier which cut him off from the unrestricted bliss of heaven. The privilege of free intercourse, of man taking the bounty of heaven as he liked, disappeared. (Idowu, 1966, p.22.)

Idowu claims to be describing Yorùbá theology as presented in the Ifá Literary Corpus, the sacred text of Yorùbá religion. Indeed, he quotes extensively from the Ifá Corpus. But unfortunately, to any Ifá priest, Idowu’s translations and re-interpretations would be representative of anything but Yorùbá theology.⁵

Consider for instance the first quotation above from Idowu. In a footnote reference to his claims that in Yorùbá theology the Deity created the world in four days, Idowu refers us to page 112 of his book, were we read the following:

It appears that, originally, the sacred day of each divinity came round every fifth day, and it is possible that the same sacred day was observed for them all. This would be based on the belief that the creation of the earth was completed in four days. There is a saying that Ifá l’ó l’òni Ifá l’ó l’õla, Ifá l’ó l’õtúnla, Ifá l’ó ni ‘jö mërin Òrìÿà dá’lé aiyé—”To Ifá belongs today, to Ifá belongs tomorrow, to Ifá belongs the day after tomorrow, to Ifá belongs the four days in which the Òrìÿà created the earth”.

This so-called saying of Idowu is actually an excerpt from a poem contained within Ògúndá Méjì, which is the ninth book the Ifá Literary Corpus. As some of the theological ideas contained in this poem will become important later on in this paper, I include the full text of the poem.

The first thing to note about this poem is that it makes no reference whatsoever to creation of the earth, much less to of days of creation. The only reference to creation here is the number of days within the Yorùbá week. Hence the poem is of very limited relevance to the Yorùbá creation story. The Yorùbá creation stories are contained in other books of the Ifá Literary Corpus, the most important of which are: Ogbèyêku, Òtúrúpõönwönífá, and Èjì Çlëmçrç (also known as Ìrçtê Méjì). The phrase: “Ifá l’ó ni ‘jö mërin Òrìÿà dá’lé aiyé” which Idowu has translated as: “To Ifá belongs the four days in which the Òrìÿà created the earth”, has nothing to do with creation. Rather the phrase means something like: “To Ifá belongs the four days established here on earth by the Òrìÿà”.¹²

But Idowu is not alone in the Christianization of Yorùbá theology. In discussing Olódùmarè (also known as Ôlörun), the Yorùbá High God, and Ôbàtálá (one of the major divinities of Yorùbá religion), Benjamin Ray also claims that:

Yorùbá myths say that Ôlörun (whose name means “Lord or Owner of the Sky”) delegated the task of creating the world to one of his sons, Ôbàtálá. (Ray, 1976, p.53.)

There are many flaws within this one sentence. First, the source of Ray’s assertion that Olódùmarè is male is a complete mystery. In all Ifá poems (and other traditional Yorùbá genre such as Ijala and Iwi Egungun), Olódùmarè is gender neutral. The fact of the matter is that, taken all together, Ifá poems suggest that Olódùmarè is, in essence, a spiritual entity; as such, describing Olódùmarè as male (or female) is inappropriate. Since Olódùmarè lacks gender and corporeality, Olódùmarè is better described as an it.

Second and most importantly, although Ray is quite correct in claiming that the task of creating this world was assigned to Ôbàtálá, he is in error to refer to Ôbàtálá as Olódùmarè’s son. Although Ôbàtálá, just as the other gods, is lesser than Olódùmarè, it is quite clear from Ifá poems that three divinities have always co-existed with Olódùmarè. These are Ôbàtálá, Ifá, and Èÿù.
This also means that power relations in the Yorùbá supernatural world are completely different from those in Christian theology. The best way to understand power in the Yorùbá supernatural world is to distinguish between existential and functional hierarchies. In the existential hierarchy, we can identify four levels of chronological/existential superiority:

Level 1: Olódùmarè, Ôbàtálá, Ifá and Èÿù.

Level 2: The other divinities; the Ajogun (i.e., evil supernatural forces—we can call them anti-gods); the Àjë (often improperly translated as ‘witches‘).

Level 3: Humans; plants and animals.

Level 4: The ancestors.¹³

In the functional hierarchy, Olódùmarè is undoubtedly supreme as the chief executive. Olódùmarè is the final arbiter in all functional issues in the Yorùbá cosmos. Nonetheless, one should not say of Olódùmarè that: “He is creator” “He is king”, “He is Omnipotent”, “He is All-wise, All-knowing, All-seeing” (Idowu, 1966, pp.39-41), thereby equating Olódùmarè’s role with that of the Christian God.
Olódùmarè in Yorùbá theology cannot be all-knowing because Olódùmarè frequently consults Ifá (i.e., the god of wisdom) for knowledge and advice through divination! Olódùmarè cannot be the creator if by this we mean to suggest that Olódùmarè alone created everything else. As we have seen, Olódùmarè did not create Ôbàtálá, Èÿù and Ifá as these three have always co-existed with Olódùmarè. Moreover, when it comes to the creation of humans and the world, it is quite clear from Ifá poems that there was a division of labor among Olódùmarè, two other divinities, and a third spiritual entity who is not regarded as a divinity. It was Ògún who fashioned skeletons, Ôbàtálá molded forms and shapes, and Olódùmarè imparted the breath of life. We also have Ajàlá, an entity who is not regarded as a divinity, but who molds the Orí (i.e., “inner-heads”) of humans. Orí is the principle of “destiny” in the sense that it embodies each individual’s potentialities for success and/or failure on earth.¹⁴

Moreover, when it comes to day-to-day administration of aye (the natural world) and Õrun (the supernatural world), Olódùmarè has delegated responsibility to the divinities. This is precisely why the Yorùbá do not often pray to Olódùmarè. They do not worship, offer sacrifices, nor build temples for Olódùmarè. Indeed, in terms of the day-to-day administration of the cosmos, Èÿù, who functions as the universal policeman, is the most important divinity.

Scholars such as Bolaji Idowu and Benjamin Ray also give the impression that the Õrun of Yorùbá theology is somewhat equivalent to the heaven of Christian theology. This is not quite so. First of all, Õrun, (often improperly translated as heaven) is divided into two parts: Õrun Òkè (i.e., Õrun above) and Õrun Odò (Õrun below). Only three supernatural entities reside at Õrun Òkè: these are Olódùmarè (the Yorùbá High God), Õranñfê, and, ßàngó (the god of thunder and lightning). Õrun Òkè as the name suggests is located above in the skies, while Õrun Odò is located inside the earth’s crust. All the other supernatural entities (ancestors, the other divinities, the Ajogun, etc., including Olódùmarè, who resides in Õrun above) reside at Õrun Odò.

But the differences do not end here. There are also many differences between the Christian and Yorùbá conceptions of evil. All evil in Anglo-Christian theology ultimately derives from one source, Satan. All evil acts, deeds, etc., ultimately result from the fact that Satan has a supernatural ability to overcome, persuade or entice humans into improper conduct. But in Yorùbá religion, evil does not emanate from one source.¹⁵ Evil emanates from the evil supernatural forces called the Ajogun. There are two hundred plus one of these forces in the cosmos.¹⁶ These forces are all separate and distinct entitles, and as such they are individually responsible for a specific type of evil. The Ajogun have eight warlords: Ikú (death); Àrùn (Disease); Òfò (Loss); Êgbà (Paralysis); Õràn (Big-trouble); Èpè (Curse); Êwõn (Imprisonment); Èÿe (Afflictions). Hence, one can engage in some linguistic license and claim that, while Christian theology has a mono-demonic conception of evil, Yorùbá religion has a poly-demonic conception of evil.¹⁷

One final point to note about the Yorùbá cosmos is that the Yorùbá do not regard the spiritual world as a place that is so far removed from the natural world that humans can gain access to it only after death. These two realms of existence are interdependent in the sense that there is constant communication between the two worlds. It is because of the constant inter-relationship between these two realms that the Yorùbá poly-demonic conception of evil has much bearing on ethics.

Healing and Applied Ethics in Yorùbá Culture

What has all this got to do with applied ethics? The answer lies in the fact that, because contemporary African philosophy assumes mistaken accounts of Yorùbá religion like those of Idowu and Ray, the import of the spirituality on day-to-day living is overlooked. This inevitably leads to a situation in which African philosophy has little or no relevance to African societies.

One clear-cut example of this is in the field of medicine. Medicine, whether implicitly or explicitly, assumes a conception of a person. The Yorùbá conception of personhood divides a person into two parts: the body, and the soul. But it further subdivides the soul into three parts: Orí (a personal divinity which functions as the principle of earthly success or failure for each individual); êmí (which is the breath of life); and çsê (which is the principle of freedom, and which functions as the “will to success”). Despite the fact that many African philosophers have examined the Yorùbá conception of personhood, and despite the fact that the most widely used method of medicine in Yorùbá society today relies upon this conception of personhood, the ethical issues generated by this view are never fully explored.

I will examine ethical issues in traditional medicine by looking at the role of the god called ßõnpõnnö, and the role of the malevolent force called Àrùn (Disease), in the practice of traditional Yorùbá medicine. As we shall see, ßõnpõnnö and Àrùn do not merely play important roles in the conception of illnesses, they also raise important moral issues vis-à-vis the treatment of illnesses and the control of epidemics.
It is customary in contemporary Western cultures to distinguish between traditional and alternative medicine. Contemporary Yorùbá culture also has a comparative distinction, except that the meaning of the two terms are reversed in Yorùbá culture. In the West, traditional medicine nowadays refers to orthodox medicine, which is medicine as practiced by a doctor who has undergone training in a medical school that is approved by the Medical Association. Alternative medicine is a generic term used to describe any other approach that employs principles and methods that are different from those of orthodox medicine. Chinese acupuncture, Indian ayurveda, and the healing aspects of Sufism are all regarded as alternative medicines in the West. In contemporary Yorùbá society, traditional medicine refers to the age-old holistic, non-Western, approach to medicine. By default, what is called traditional medicine in the Western world (i.e., orthodox medicine) becomes alternative medicine in Yorùbá society.¹⁸
What is significant is the stark contrast between the principles and methods of traditional (Yorùbá) medicine and those of orthodox (Western) medicine. The best way of introducing these differences is to start with a characterization of the differences between orthodox medicine and alternative medicine in Western thought. Orthodox medicine is, by and large, allopathic in the sense that its methodology for the treatment of diseases is based on what may be called the contrary principle: it attempts to treat diseases with chemical agents that produce effects that are contrary, or in opposition, to those of the disease being treated. Moreover, allopathic medicine is also concerned primarily with the elimination of symptoms.

Homeopathic medicine, on the other hand, treats like with like: it employs herbal remedies, which, if given in minute doses, would produce in a healthy person symptoms similar to those of the sick person. Moreover, while allopathic medicine is preoccupied with getting rid of symptoms, homeopathic medicine is also very much concerned with identifying the causes of illness and disease in an effort to restore holistic balance in the biological system. Yorùbá traditional medicine is homeopathic vis-à-vis the two main points above: it is interested in getting rid of symptoms, and it is also interested in identifying and removing the causes of illness. But there is also a spiritual dimension to the treatment offered by the Yorùbá herbalist (called onísègùn).¹⁹ So, in their efforts to restore holistic balance in the patient, the onísègùn will also be interested in finding the spiritual causes of illness (if there are any), just as much as s/he will be interested in restoring spiritual balance in the patient (if necessary).

Restoring spiritual balance is important for two main reasons. First, as already hinted in my earlier discussion of the creation of human beings, in Yorùbá thought the human being is made up of four main components: (i) ara, the body, i.e., the skeleton created by Ògún, and the form molded by Ôbàtálá; (ii) êmí, that aspect of the soul which is imparted by Olódùmarè. (Since the word êmí is also the Yorùbá word for breath, it is quite obvious that the aspect of the soul derived from Olódùmarè is the breath of life.); Orí, the principle of material actualization; and (iv) çsê, which introduces the principle of individual effort, strife or struggle before the potentialities encapsulated in one’s Orí can be actualized. Çsê, in short, represents the idea that, ultimately, success is up to the individual. Note that êmí, çsê and Orí are all spiritual. Strictly speaking, one should say that the person has two parts: ara (the body) and the soul complex (êmí, Orí and çsê).

Divination is one important means of diagnosis employed by the medical practitioner. In the divination process, the priest establishes a link among the client, the clients Orí, and the god of wisdom, in a series of steps. So as to protect the integrity of the divination act, the priest is not told this complaint until after the divination.²⁰ After a series of invocations, the priest divines so as to determine the book of the Ifá Literary Corpus to select a poem from. The priest then proceeds to explain and interpret the message of the poem. Although there might be variations in the depth of knowledge the priest brings to bear on his or her interpretation of a poem, every specific poem has a specific message.²¹
If after having divined, the oníÿègùn determines that the source of disease, illness or affliction is spiritual, then in addition to herbs and medications designed to treat and repair the body, the oníÿègùn will also prescribe something for spiritual repair. Sacrifice is compulsory after every divination. But the oníÿègùn’s prescription may include incantations and/or Ifá (Ifá here meaning special herbal talismans, the recipes of which are contained in Ifá poems).

Indeed it is precisely because of this that we have the Yorùbá saying: “çbô gíngín, òògun gíngín níí gba aláìkú là.” That is, “it is a little bit of sacrifice and a little bit of medications that saves the patient who is not going to die.” Moreover, because it is only through divination that a bad or defective Orí can be repaired, one of the praise names of Õrúnmìlà (the god of wisdom) is: “Baba mi õmõn tíí to Orí elémèrè kéri elémèrè ö má ba à ÿe fö.” That is, “my father, the molder who prevents the shattering of the inner-head of the (bad) spirit child by re-molding such heads.”

But it is the role of the Ajogun called Àrùn that is most significant for our current discussion. Àrùn has at least three layers meaning in the Yorùbá cosmos. First it refers to an anti-god, (i.e., one of the Ajogun’s warlords). In Yorùbá theology, the Ajogun are completely evil and as such they have no redeeming virtues whatsoever. The avowed aim of all the Ajogun, including Àrùn, is the complete ruination of mankind. Only sacrifice and special pleading to Èÿù by one’s individual Orí can save one from the powers of the Ajogun.

The divinities, including Õrúnmìlà himself, can be afflicted by the Ajogun. It is precisely because of this that I have given the full version of the Ifá poem above. In this poem, Õrúnmìlà himself was the subject of the Ajogun’s attack, and was saved only by sacrifice. The poem tells us that the principal warlords of the ajogun—Ikú (Death), Àrùn (Disease), Òfò (Loss), Êgbà (Paralysis), Èse (Afflictions), and the other Ajogun—were covertly visiting Õrúnmìlà’s household. This suggests that these anti-gods were attacking Õrúnmìlà’s household in such a way that these calamities, to all intents and purposes, appeared natural. It was only through divination that Õrúnmìlà was able to diagnose the problems befalling his household as supernatural. He succeeded in restoring balance only after he had performed some sacrifice. It should be noted also that this poem contains some Ifá (i.e., incantations). The last 16 lines of the poem contain incantations, which in conjunction with amulets and talismans function as remedies against evil spirits.
In addition to Àrùn (Disease) as an evil supernatural force, the word “àrùn” also means illness or disease. Àrùn as a biological defect in a human being can be caused by natural causes, or by Àrùn (the malevolent supernatural force). This explains why divination and sacrifice are important in Yorùbá medicine. Just as in the Ifá poem quoted above, it is only through divination that a medical practitioner can determine whether the cause of an illness is natural or supernatural. Illnesses caused by natural causes require herbal and pharmacological remedies. But illnesses caused by supernatural forces require the offering of sacrifice, the use of talismans and amulets, or the recitation of incantations. The practice of medicine in Yorùbá society is, therefore, not merely homeopathic in the sense that it relies only on physical wholeness, it is also interested in spiritual balance.

Iwill now turn to another clear-cut illustration of this view in practice. This example has to do with ßõnpõnnö in Yorùbá culture. As with the word Ifá and àrùn in Yorùbá culture, ßõnpõnnö has various levels of meaning. At one level, ßõnpõnnö is one of the divinities within the Yorùbá pantheon of 400+1 gods. ßõnpõnnö is the god that brings smallpox, and as such smallpox also goes by the same name in Yorùbá.

In Yorùbá culture the illness called ßõnpõnnö actually includes less serious illnesses such as chicken-pox. So, ÿõnpõnnö as an illness in Yorùbá culture is better defined as a family of related illnesses all of which are connected by three factors: the god ßõnpõnnö, the wind, and what is called “hot earth”.
Since ßõnpõnnö is the name of the god as well as the name of the illness, people are reluctant to call the god by the name ßõnpõnnö because calling him by that name might be an invitation of both god and illness. So the god is more frequently referred to by the name Ôbalúayé (‘lord of the world’). For similar reasons, the illness ÿõnpõnnö is also known as illêëgbóná or êgbóná (‘hot earth’). The Ifá priest and oníÿègùn Babalôlá Fátóògùn of the town of Ìlobùú in Nigeria explains these connections as follows:

Whenever ßõnpõnnö comes into the world, he is accompanied by êbùrú (spirits) otherwise known as wõrõkö. These are the things that cause bad wind (atëgùn búburú). When this wind blows on to anyone this will become Ègbóná (smallpox), the person will become hot and ßõnpõnnö will be coming out of his body. ßõnpõnnö uses a type of arrow known as ôfà ßõnpõnnö. Wherever he shoots his arrow (ôfà) into the air, smallpox will affect the person, or tree, or animal, wherever the wind from the arrow touches. Wõrõkö comes out of the arrow in the form of wind. This is why old men pray that ‘evil wind may not beat us’ (afëfë burúkú kò ní fë lù wá o).

Another way ßõnpõnnö affects someone is through the witches (Ìyààmi Àjë). Witches borrow the wind of ßõnpõnnö and fight anyone they want to fight with it. It is as if a man goes to borrow a cutlass (àdá) from another man that the witches borrow the wind from ßõnpõnnö. This is why, if ßõnpõnnö affects anyone and they consult Ifá about it, Ifá may tell them that it is the witches who are fighting against them.

Another way ßõnpõnnö affects someone is that there are some men who know about medicine, who can prepare a medicine that they can put in the house of a person they want to fight, so that ßõnpõnnö can affect the person.

ßõnpõnnö always visits the world during the months of the dry season. Then he will visit the world (ayé) and also the heaven (Õrun) and he will affect both plants and human beings, so that the plants will shrivel up (ro). (Quoted in Buckley, 1997, pp.100-101.)

Fátóògùn is making some very important connections. First he gives a clear-cut analysis of the spiritual and natural dimensions of the disease called smallpox. In the spiritual dimension, the illness can be caused when the god ßõnpõnnö pays a visit to the world. ßõnpõnnö himself may cause smallpox by firing his arrow. It is also the case that wherever he goes some terrible spirits called wõrõkö accompany him, and cause the ill wind of smallpox. The witches also can cause smallpox, and, indeed, Fátóògùn mentions that smallpox can be caused by biological warfare.

But the question can be asked: why does ßõnpõnnö sometimes seek to infect people with smallpox? There is one myth recounted by A. B. Ellis that attempts to account for this:

Shan-kpanna [ßõnpõnnö] is old and lame, and is depicted as limping along with the aid of a stick. According to a myth he has a withered leg. One day, when the gods were all assembled at the place of Ôbàtálá, and were dancing and making merry, Shan-kpanna endeavoured to join in the dance, but, owing to his deformity, stumbled, and fell. All the gods and goddesses thereupon burst out laughing, and Shan-kpanna, in revenge, strove to infect them with smallpox, but Ôbàtálá came to the rescue and seizing his spear, drove Shan-kpanna away. From that day Shan-kpanna was forbidden to associate with the other gods, and he became an outcast who has since lived in desolate and uninhabited tracts of country. (Quoted in Buckley, 1997, p.105.)

With this myth, the relationship between ßõnpõnnö and morality becomes clear. Moral conduct in Yorùbá culture is intimately connected with Ìwàpêlë (good or gentle character).²² Ìwàpêlë is a conglomeration of principles of moral conduct. These principles are explained in various Ifá poems. The most important of these principles include: ìtçríba (respect), inú rere (having good mind to other), and otítö (truth). Good character is often simply referred to as iwa (character).
The root meaning of the word ìwà is ‘to exist’. Hence Yorùbá culture recognizes the point that questions of moral behavior and conduct arise vis-à-vis issues of co-existence amongst beings. But, as already mentioned, the spiritual world, just as the natural world, is very much part of day-to-day existence in Yorùbá culture. Hence ìwà as the state of existence of spiritual beings engenders ìwà as moral character. In the myth recounted by Ellis, some of the gods and goddesses failed to exhibit ìwàpêlë in their conduct. They did not show respect to the old and lame man who also wanted to participate in the merriment. In response to their bad ìwà, ßõnpõnnö himself exhibited an even worse ìwà by threatening to inflict all with smallpox. It was as a result of this bad character that ßõnpõnnö withdrew into the forest, and has since then disliked festivals and merriment of any kind.

Because it is common knowledge in Yorùbá society that ßõnpõnnö dislikes merriment, games, festivals, drumming and dancing are forbidden during outbreaks of smallpox. The Yorùbá generally bury the dead in their extended family compounds. The burial of victims of ßõnpõnnö has, however, always been one of the few exceptions to this. Buckley quotes an oníÿègùn, Awótúndé, on this very point:

When ßõnpõnnö kills a person, no one should rejoice. For if there are any (funeral) celebrations he will be annoyed that despite the evil he has done to these people, they are still happy. He will then affect many other people. God has given ßõnpõnnö such a power that if he kills in anyone’s family they must not be angry but must instead be thanking ßõnpõnnö or else he will be angry that people are not aware of the evil that he has done. This is why people usually call ßõnpõnnö “Alápadúpë’ (‘the owner of kill and thank’). Anyone that ßõnpõnnö kills, we should not say that he died, but rather ‘ó yõ lô’ (‘he rejoiced and went’), because if it is said that the person died, (ó kú) ßõnpõnnö will be annoyed that people are calling him a murderer. (Buckley, 1997, p.104.)

ßõnpõnnö’s (i.e., the god’s) role in smallpox must therefore be examined against the background of an ongoing cycle of revenge, punishment and vengeance against the descendants of the other gods.²³ This chain of events was started by other spiritual entities when they exhibited ìwà búburú (bad character) by laughing the old man who was trying to make merry.

This cycle of spiritual and natural events has many practical consequences for the treatment and control of smallpox in Yorùbáland. As already mentioned, merriment, dancing, and games are prohibited during outbreaks of smallpox. Sacrifices will be offered to the god in an effort to appease him. Also, the broom called ôwõ is that which is normally used for sweeping the floor in Yorùbá society. This broom, which is made from the mid-ribs of the palm-tree, is also one of the symbols of the god ßõnpõnnö²⁴. The use of ôwõ is banned during outbreaks of smallpox.

The foregoing has various sorts of implications for the practice of traditional medicine. Consider, for instance, the health professional/patient relationship. What sorts of duties, responsibilities and rights attach to the roles of the oníÿègùn and the client? Is the oníÿègùn ethically bound to tell the whole truth to the patient even if this might be inimical to a speedy recovery? The Hippocratic oath, which has traditionally been the basis for Western medical ethics, is silent on the issue of truth. In fact, with this oath doctors merely pledge to “apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to [the doctors’] ability and judgment.” (Arras, 1995, p.54.) Above all, doctors promise to protect their patients from “harm and injustice”. (Arras, 1995, p.54.) Based upon the Hippocratic oath in which protection against harm is paramount, the traditional model of responsibility that emerged within the practice of Western medicine was that of paternalism in which the physician’s duty to tell the truth was subordinate to that of not harming the patient. In contrast to paternalism, many have argued that patient autonomy should be the basis of physician-patient relationship. Neither of these models suits the oníÿègùn-client relationship because even the oníÿègùn is an interpreter who is decoding or attempting to decipher the message of Ifá.

Consider also the problem of euthanasia. If, after having divined, the message of Ifá is that there is no remedy for the illness (there are, indeed, a handful of poems with this message), and the patient chooses to die, should an oníÿègùn help the patient commit suicide? If the message of Ifá is clear, isn’t the oníÿègùn morally bound to help alleviate the suffering of the patient? At one level, the answer to this problem seems to be clear, the oníÿègùn might divine to enquire about what to do. But the oníÿègùn might also realize that, according to Yorùbá theology, if an individual dies before his or her pre-chosen time here on earth, that person will be sent back at the gates of Õrun. So considering euthanasia requires a consideration of its moral implications on the soul of the patient.

The point then is this: if one does not pay adequate attention to the role of the spiritual realm in the practice of medicine in Yorùbá society, we will not fully understand aspects of medical ethics such as the priest-patient relationship, attitudes to euthanasia, health care policies, etc. Moreover, as already mentioned the spiritual dimensions of divination also has profound methodological implications. For unlike in the Western methods of inquiry, in which secrecy is inimical to the pursuit of truth, secrecy is in fact that which eliminates bias within the divination process.²⁵ This is precisely why the patient never starts by disclosing the subject of her concern to the diviner.

Another Level

I began this paper with a brief characterization of the standard philosophical classification of the branches of ethics. As is often the case when one moves too closely with pre-set conceptions, the precise thrust of my arguments about the role of spirituality in Yorùbá culture might be lost (this is especially so if one has been reading this paper with the trained eye of the academic philosopher). Therefore, I will attempt here a re-explanation of the points from a different perspective.

Morality is made up of judgmental claims of value vis-à-vis human (and non-human) conduct: it is about what one ought or ought not do in relation to human (and spiritual) conduct. A moral theory, however, is a systematic account of one’s morality. One may have a morality without having a moral theory. For instance, one may guide one’s conduct by rules and principles such as: “stealing is wrong”, “adultery is immoral”, “murder is inimical to society”, etc., without having a moral theory (i.e., a systematic theoretical framework for explaining why these rules and principles are wrong). Applied ethics is the bridge between morality and moral theory, and it is concerned with the application of a systematic moral theory to human conduct. It is the connection between theory and practice.

The main thrust of my assertions in this paper is that contemporary African philosophy is seriously defective because it fails to provide a critical assessment of the application of traditional African moral theories. Much of contemporary African philosophy is impoverished because it fails to assess the conduct of institutions and individuals on the basis of the moral theories upheld by individuals in contemporary African societies.

My claim is that there is a “group theory of ethics” that is prevalent in contemporary Yorùbá society.²⁶ This theory of ethics departs radically from much of standard, Western-style philosophy because it is a spiritualist theory of ethics in which moral conduct encompasses spirits within the equation of moral conduct itself. Spiritual beings in this moral theory therefore are somewhat like the lawmakers of most democratic societies: the moral codes which apply to the general populace (in this case the Yorùbá human) also applies to the lawmakers (in this case the divinities).

Of course, the question can be asked: can there be a coherent and consistent group theory of ethics? While answering this question in the affirmative might be problematic for some societies, this is not the case in Yorùbá society, primarily because of the role of the Ifá Literary Corpus in Yorùbá culture. The body of knowledge on the basis of which the spiritual account of morality is based is somewhat fixed in the sense that it arises out of a sacred oral text. At the same time, people do not adopt a close-minded attitude to these texts. The poems of Ifá are not regarded as an inflexible dogmatic creed. Indeed, the whole point of the Ifá ‘text’ is hermeneutic: it is meant to serve as the basis on which various sorts of advice and counsel that is germane to day-to-day life can be identified. Hence, while parts of the text are fixed, they are at the same time open.

This point requires more explanation. Each poem has eight parts, four of which are compulsory, four of which are non-compulsory. The compulsory parts are compulsory in the sense that when chanted (anywhere in the world), they are chanted in exactly the same way.²⁷ The non-compulsory parts are non-compulsory in the sense that: (i) a priest might decide not to chant them at all; (ii) a priest might decide to tell these parts in prose; (iii) or, a priest might decide just to give the gist of these parts to the client. But Ifá is also open in yet another sense: it is up to the priest and the client to decide what hermeneutic stance to adopt in relation to the content of the poems. A priest, for example, might adopt a literal interpretation of the poem, in which case s/he might believe that there was in fact a time when the spiritual forces that attacked Õrúnmìlà in the poem recounted above attacked him. The client might decide to adopt a figural interpretation in which the characters in the poem are not regarded as real-life entities, but rather much like the characters of a play.

Whatever interpretation is adopted, the centrality of sacrifice remains constant. As already mentioned, within the Yorùbá cosmos, there are two groups of supernatural forces, the Òrìÿà (i.e., gods) and the malevolent supernatural forces (of which the Ajogun are the most important). These two supernatural forces are locked in an unending cycle of enmity—an antagonism in-between which humans are caught. This is where sacrifice comes in. For it is only those who offer sacrifice to Èÿù (the god who is regarded as the “universal policeman” because of his role as the impartial adjudicator between these two opposing supernatural forces of nature), that will succeed in overcoming the evil of the anti-gods. Sacrifice is, therefore, a strategy for overcoming evil.

It is important to re-iterate a point already made. Evil in Yorùbá theology (and, in traditional and contemporary Yorùbá societies) is concrete in the sense that the anti-gods can manifest themselves as tangible, real, or natural effects. This is precisely why the most important warlords of the Ajogun are Ikú (death); Àrùn (Disease); Òfò (Loss); Êgbà (Paralysis); Õràn (Big-trouble); Èpè (Curse); Êwõn (Imprisonment); Èÿe (Afflictions). The consequence of this is that although the Yorùbá distinguish between natural and moral evil, both types of evil can be the handiwork of natural and supernatural beings.
Sacrifice is also the means by which the Yorùbá repent from moral evil. The person who has sinned or committed an anti-social act can only fully indemnify himself by first, changing his ways, and then offering sacrifices to the appropriate god. For example, because the god called ßàngó is responsible for punishing thieves and crooks, a thief who has changed her ways can only fully indemnify herself by offering sacrifices to ßàngó.

It should be noted that sacrifice is not merely meant for the gods and the anti-gods. Sacrifice in Yorùbá culture is also a social act. This explains why when someone is asked to offer a sacrifice to either a god, an anti-god, or, as redemption for sin, will invite friends and neighbors to a feast. The person will explain the reason why he or she is offering the sacrifice, and his invitees will offer prayers and blessings for that person. In the case of sacrifice as redemption for moral evil, someone who has not truly changed his or her ways is unlikely to receive prayers and blessings from friends and neighbors.

The point then is that in both natural and moral evil, sacrifice performs a similar role: it is a strategy for indemnity, compensation, or salvation. A person who is afflicted by the evil supernatural force called Àrùn (Disease) will only succeed in indemnifying herself by offering sacrifices to Èÿù. A person who has changed his evil ways also concludes his redemption with a sacrifice to Èÿù. In both types of sacrifices, Èÿù will then present the offering to the appropriate supernatural force.

The role of sacrifice in Yorùbá culture, therefore, becomes crystal clear: it is the application of a spiritualist theory of good and evil to particular problems of day-to-day living, namely, those requiring of indemnity from supernatural and moral evil.

Conclusions: Which Way Forward?

While I do not wish to denigrate the importance of normative ethics, meta-ethics, or any other division of ethics, I think applied ethics provides one in-road to making philosophy more relevant to contemporary African societies. Applied ethics has to do with the systematic application of a moral theory to issues of life, death, and day-to-day living. In contemporary Yorùbá culture, there is one such systematic theory prevalent within the practice of medicine. This theory is based on the sacred text of traditional Yorùbá religion, namely the Ifá Literary Corpus. And in this paper, I have provided a preliminary exploration of how this systematic theory can be used to explain and assess one class of human conduct, namely those of health and wholeness.

More work needs to be done, not only on ethical issues of traditional medicine, but also on many other problems of death and living in general, e.g., the moral implications of ancestor worship on ethnicity and warfare; the role of new religions in the now increasing phenomena of “witchcraft” in Africa; and, indeed, the moral implications of institutions of sacred kingship on the existence of two-tier systems of government and power in all African societies.²⁸ Until we move moral discourse from the level of ‘justifications’, ‘foundations’ and ‘theorizing’ to the level of mundane, day-to-day living, academic Western-style philosophy will be of little relevance to Africa.

Endotes

1. Actually, this is not entirely accurate. There is a very long tradition of scholarship on the role of spirituality in Western ethics as well! One important scholar of recent times within this tradition is Norbert Rigali (1969, 1975, 1981, 1986). The catch however is that this tradition of excellent scholarship is now generally classified as "Catholic moral theology".
2. There are many possible variations within each point of view. Any one of the following claims could be upheld: (i) morality and religion are identical, and as such each is logically derivable from each other; (ii) morality and religion are not identical but, via a process of non-deductive reasoning, one can argue from religion to morality; (iii) religion is derivable from morality, but not vice versa; (iv) morality is derivable from religion, but not vice versa, (v) morality and religion are in fact incompatible with each other. These options, of course, do not exhaust all possible options. While I know of no one who maintains option (v), it is sometimes unclear from the discussion what position is been upheld and criticized by these philosophers. As will become apparent later on, based upon an intuitionist view of logic, my own position is (ii).
3. I will be employing Anglo-Christian theology as a comparative frame of reference in my discussion of Yorùbá theology. This is purely for exegetical purposes.
4. This sentence alone shows that Idowu’s analysis is not based upon the Yorùbá conceptual scheme. Traditional Yorùbá society operated on a four day week, and as such there is no fifth day that is "set apart for the worship of the Deity". Idowu’s view might be based on the fact that priests and priestesses of Yorùbá religion say that they worship their divinities lörôôrún, i.e., "every fifth day". But "every fifth day" in Yorùbá numerology is actually "every fourth day" in Western numerology! This is because Yorùbá society operates on an inclusive counting system while the Western system is exclusive. For instance, if today is a Monday and we have scheduled a meeting for next Monday, then, from the Western conceptual scheme, one would say our next meeting is in seven days time. But from the Yorùbá conceptual scheme, next Monday is in eight days time because we count the current day as well. So although the traditional Yorùbá priest would say that s/he worships the divinities at least "every fifth day", there is actually no fifth day in the Yorùbá week.
5. Ifá priests are the custodians of the Ifá Literary Corpus, the sacred text of Yorùbá religion. The Corpus is made up of 256 books called Odù, each having in number from 400 to 600 poems (called çsç. Although a small number of these poems have been written down, most have not. When written down, the length of each poem ranges from 8 lines to about 20 pages. An Ifá priest has to know about five poems from each of the 256 books. The training of an Ifá priest takes about 15 years of full-time study, and up to 35 years of part-time study. There are thousands of Ifá priests currently practicing in Nigeria. Outside of Nigeria, Ifá priests are found in significant numbers in Cuba, Benin Republic, Togo, Puerto Rico, and the USA. As we shall see below, Ifá priests are also practitioners of traditional medicine in the parts of the world in which they live.
6. These are the lines Idowu interprets as the four days of creation. These are actually praise names of Õrúnmìlà, the Yorùbá god of wisdom. Every Ifá poem has an eight-part structure (see W. Abíðbölá, 1976, pp. 43-63). The first part of each poem states the name (or names) of the Ifá priest (or priests--this is because there might be more than one priest involved) who first chanted this poem during a divination. These names are either praise names of Õrúnmìlà himself, or praise names of priests he trained in the art of divination. Note that these names are meant to be ‘secret’ names. The real names of these priests are never mentioned in Ifá poems. (See Abíðbölá & Hallen (1993), and Abiodun (2000), for further explanation of the role of secrecy in Yorùbá culture.) So even when it is Õrúnmìlà himself who was engaged in the past divination, his praise names are those given in the first part of the poem. Line 12 of the poem suggests that it was Õrúnmìlà who divined for himself on this occasion. Hence these four lines are better regarded as praise names of Õrúnmìlà himself.
7. Each individual has his/her own personal divinity called Orí. Divination in Yorùbá culture is an attempt to make a connection with the spiritual world through one’s Orí. Each person’s Orí is unique and personal, and it is also one part of the ‘soul-complex’ in Yorùbá thought. That is, although the Yorùbá divide the person into the body and soul, the soul is made up of various attributes such as: Orí, êmí, and çsê. I explain the Yorùbá conception of personhood in detail below.
8. Ògúndá Méjì is one of the 256 books (Odù) of the Ifá Literary Corpus. Hence this phrase means something like this: divination directed him to analyze the situation with a poem from this book of the Yorùbá Holy scriptures.
9. Lines 22 and 23 are playing on the meaning of the word Ifá. In line 22, Ifá, the god of wisdom is singing the praises of his Ifá priests. But in line 23, Ifá’s Ifá priests are singing the praises of the divination process! The word "Ifá" has 6 layers of meanings: (i) the god of wisdom; (ii) the divination process; (iii) the entire body of knowledge called the Ifá Literary Corpus; (iv) any one specific poem from the Corpus; (v) a special herbal mixture or talisman prepared for medicinal purposes--the recipes for these are explicitly stated in some Ifá poems; and (vi) there are some special Ifá poems that function as incantations or powerful words. When uttered, these words reveal truth in the sense that whatever they state will come to pass. These Ifá incantations are used mainly for medicinal purposes--for example, reciting one such poem in the appropriate manner "calls out" the venom of certain types of snakes from the human body. These multi-layered meanings for the same word might appear strange and confusing to someone who is not familiar with the Yorùbá conceptual scheme.
10. Ewé means "leaf" (and/or "leaves"), and þlá means "big". Oori (also known as êkô) is corn-starch pudding, a very popular meal in Yorùbáland. This pudding is usually wrapped with leaves such as those of the banana, cocoa, iyá, or iran trees. Because the leaves of these trees are wide or broad, and, as such, can be used to wrap-up the pudding into individual potions, Ifá adopts the generic name "big leaves" from them.
11. Ètípön-ôlá is a shrub that grows on the ground just as grass does. This shrub spreads-out and covers the ground copiously such that the soil is almost invisible to the eye.
12. Even this translation follows Idowu’s mis-interpretation too closely. A better translation of this phrase is: "Ifá is the master of all the four days (of the week) established here on earth by the divinities". This is a better translation because (bearing in mind that traditional Yorùbá society operated on a four-day week) the Ifá priest is regarded as having access to a hidden knowledge on the basis of which day-to-day life in Yorùbá culture is regulated. The divination process attached to the Ifá Literary Corpus accesses this hidden knowledge. This part of the poem is therefore a statement of the overall importance of Ifá in the regulation of day-to-day life. It is also important to note the following curious point: Yorùbá is a language that allows for the contraction two separate words into one. For example, from the two words "ilé" (house) and "ìwé"(book), a new word "iléèwé" can be coined for "school". These contractions can result in different meanings being attributed to words. But this is usually only a problem when a phrase or word is taken out of its original context. This sort of out of context mis-interpretation is at the heart of Idowu’s translation. The phrase in question, as rendered by Idowu is "...Òrìÿà dá’lé aiyé [also spelt ayé]", which he interprets as "... the Òrìÿà created the earth." Here Idowu has used "dá’lé ayé" which, if taken out of context could be "dá ilé ayé" ("create the earth") instead of "dá silé ayé" ("establish here on earth"). When Ifá priests chant the poem in question (see line 4 of the poem quoted above), the full version of this phrase is often given as: "...Òrìÿà dá silé ayé " (and I have translated this to be "... the Òrìÿà establish here on earth"). Because Idowu has given us the contracted version, "da’le", even a competent Yorùbá speaker who is not given the full context of the phrase (i.e., the Ifá poem from which it is taken) could be misled into thinking the phrase is indeed about the creation of the world!
13. The ancestors come after humans because one condition for becoming an ancestor in the Yorùbá cosmos is to have lived a morally worthy life here on earth. Hence one must have lived life as a human before becoming an ancestor. But, if one does not pay careful attention to the details of Yorùbá theology, it is easy to misunderstand the status of the ancestors. This is because within the functional hierarch, the ancestors are above humans (but are placed below the divinities).
14. The role of Orí in the Yorùbá conception of personhood is often mis-understood. Having been weaned on the staple Western diet of freewill and determinism, many contemporary philosophers of African thought have spilled much unnecessary ink on the question of how the Yorùbá can maintain free will, punishment and reward alongside the conception of ‘inner head’. The fact of the matter is that this is all much ado about nothing. Ifá poems make a very clear-cut distinction among Orí (the principle of actualization and earthly success or failure), çsê (the principle of individual strife and struggle), and Ìwà (good character). Most of these philosophers quote various Ifá poems from W. Abíðbölá (1968, 1969, 1973). Despite the fact that the poems themselves (and Wande Abíðbölá’s own expositions) discuss Orí within the context of earthly success and failure, and despite the fact that there is a concept of Ìwà in which freewill is made crystal clear, because Western Anglo-American philosophy makes no distinction between determinism vis-à-vis earthly success and determinism vis-à-vis moral character, Western conceptual schemes are transmitted wholesale into Yorùbá thought! Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, there is an Ifá poem from Èjì Ogbè, the very first book of the Ifá Literary Corpus, in which the distinction between Orí and Ìwà is stated concisely. Unless one can point to situations in which Yorùbá culture punishes people for lack of earthly success and achievement, discussing Orí in relation to moral responsibility and autonomy is misplaced.
15. Actually, a distinction should be made between moral and natural evil. The status of natural evil in Christianity often is not fully explicated. Does natural evil emanate from Satan? In Yorùbá theology, this issue does not arise because evil supernatural forces are associated with both natural and moral evil. Thus, while Ikú (the supernatural force called death), might be responsible for a car accident, another evil force called Omìmì is responsible for earthquakes and earth tremors.
16. Note that 200+1evil supernatural forces is not the same as 201 supernatural forces! The extra 1 is actually the set of all those evil forces that did not originally descend from the supernatural world at the time the natural world was created. In short, the Yorùbá conception of evil contains what we may call a principle of elasticity that allows it to incorporate any new force of evil into its pantheon. The principle of elasticity also applies to the divinities who are 400+1 in number.
17. The full import of the Yorùbá poly-demonic conception of evil is often not appreciated. Elsewhere (K. Abíðbölá, 1994) I have relied upon this conception in a discussion of the problem of evil. The focus of my analysis was not the standard problem of evil in relation to the existence of God. Rather I posed an epistemological question about the rationality of the belief in God given that moral and natural evil exists in the world. The answerimplicit in Yorùbá theology seems to be following. We ought to distinguish between concepts and instantiations. The concept of good makes no sense independently of a concept of evil to contrast good with. In fact, Yorùbá theology suggests that there can be no such thing as a perfectly good world unless we understand the meaning of evil. But a concept need not have instantiations. In the Yorùbá cosmos, instantiations of evil are the handiwork of natural beings (such as humans) and supernatural beings (such as the anti-gods, Ajogun, who attacked Õrúnmìlà in the Ifá poem above). Contemporary Yorùbá society operates on this poly-demonic conception of evil and responsibility. As we shall see below, in Yorùbá culture, the malevolent supernatural being called Àrùn (Disease) can be held responsible for disease, just as a human being can be held responsible for an evil act that was up to that person (and not up to a malevolent force). The question, of course then is this: how do we determine when a malevolent force is responsible for an evil act? The answer supplied by Yorùbá theology is: divination. This is precisely why, up till today, all Yorùbá medical practitioners are also diviners.
18. Since the focus of this paper is Yorùbá culture, I will use the dichotomies employed in Yorùbá society. Hence, unless otherwise stated, I will use traditional medicine to refer to holistic medicine, and I will use alternative (or orthodox) medicine to refer to medicine as currently practiced by the Western doctor in a standard hospital or clinic.
19. It is important to note that traditional oníÿègùn are also Ifá priests and diviners. There are two main interrelated methods of divination in Yorùbá culture: divination with the Ifá Literary Corpus in which there are 256 books, and hundreds of poems within each book; and, the Çërìndínlógún (sixteen cowries) divination system, a system which condenses the 256 books of the Ifá Literary Corpus into sixteen. The traditional oníÿègùn will be competent in at least one of these two divination systems. I should also point out that there are other traditional methods of divination (for example, kola-nut divination). Also, in contemporary Yorùbá society, there are now many healers whose methods are not based on traditional Yorùbá medicine. These would include: Christian healers who eschew almost all forms of medication and concentrate on the power of prayers and the holy water; and Islamic healers who make use of the power of words derived from the Qur’an. Islamic healers also depend heavily on talismans and amulets. My assertions in this paper apply only to the healing techniques of those healers who derive their methods from traditional Yorùbá conceptions. I should also add, however, that there are some traditional Yorùbá healers who do not divine at all. They are, however, not called oníÿègùn, they are called adáhunÿe (a term which means something like "s/he who does it alone").
20. Even this is not mandatory. It is not uncommon for clients to choose not to reveal the precise nature of their problems to the diviner. The client might, therefore, decide to listen to the priests chants, and interpretations of the poems chanted, and then ask that the appropriate sacrifice for a particular poem be performed.
21. See W. Abíðbölá 1976 for details of the divination process.
22. See W. Abíðbölá (1975).
23. According to various Ifá poems, the cradle of humanity is a town called Ilé-Ifê, in the South-Western part of Nigeria. According to Yorùbá theology, this was the first settlement established by the 400 plus 1 divinities that created the earth. (In Yorùbá thought, the "plus 1" functions as a principle of elasticity which allows for the addition of new divinities into the Yorùbá pantheon. Hence, this 1 is better regarded as the set of new divinities.) Although not all humans are regarded as descendants of the divinities, individuals can be re-born into the extended family of any divinity. This is one way of interpreting the initiation rites undergone by those who are initiated into the cult of any divinity. Indeed, the Yorùbá name for those who have been initiated into the cult of any divinity is ômô-Òòÿà, i.e., "child of the divinity".
24. Note, however, that when the broom is used as an icon of the god ßõnpõnnö, it is called safara as opposed to ôwõ which is its usual name.
25. See W. Abíðbölá and B. Hallen (1993) for further explanation of the role of secrecy in divination.
26. What does it mean to say that a spiritual theory of ethics is prevalent in contemporary Yorùbá society? I have explained this point in some details elsewhere, K. Abíðbölá (forthcoming). Re-hashing this explanation would take us too far afield, so a very brief summary will suffice. What I call thepsychology of belief is at the heart of the matter. Specifically, I think we need to make a distinction between implicit and explicit beliefs. Someone’s explicit beliefs are those claims s/he would profess to uphold, while implicit beliefs are those beliefs which we, as onlookers, can decipher from a person’s practical conduct. Someone’s implicit and explicit beliefs may cohere: that is, the beliefs that a person claims and pro-claims to adopt could be those which are consistent with that person’s conduct. But often, implicit and explicit beliefs diverge. Before my claims about the prevalence of the Yorùbá spiritualist theory of morality can be valid, one needs to include those whose implicit beliefs are consistent with that theory. The practical effects of this claim of mine can be very easily illustrated. My uncle, Chief Abíðbölá Ìrókò, is a practicing oníÿègùn in the town of Õyö in Nigeria. His clinic is part of our extended family compound, and whenever I am at home in Õyö, I usually spend a lot of time with him. His days begin around 5am when he and his assistant mix and brew various medical herbs. The first patients begin to arrive around 6am and by about 10am when the morning rush diminishes, he might have attended to over 30 patients who have various medical requirements. A substantial part of his diagnoses requires physical examinations and divination with sixteen cowries, and his clientele include many who openly profess to be Christians and Muslims, just as it includes many who claim to be traditionalist. On many occasions when he did not deem it necessary to diagnose with sixteen cowries, many of his clients would specifically request a divination. About 100 meters from our family compound is a Western-style private hospital in which only allopathic medicine is practiced. By 10am when my uncle would have attended to about 30 patients, this private hospital (on a good day) might only have attended to 10 patients. This pattern is the same all over Yorùbáland in Nigeria. Indeed it seems to be the case that in Yorùbá society, most people use the Western-Style hospital only in cases of trauma. This explains why the homeopathic (plus spiritual) approach to the treatment of illnesses is regarded as traditional in most African societies. Orthodox Western-style medicine is the alternative reserved for cases requiring urgent treatment. The point of all this should be clear: the Yorùbá person who explicitly claims to be a Christian, a Muslim, or an atheist, but who consults the oníÿègùn for medical treatment (and who uses/takes the herbal prescriptions in conjunction with the spiritual prescriptions) is implicitly subscribing to the Yorùbá spiritualist view of the world.
27. William Bascom, who has collected various Ifá poems from priests in Nigeria, Benin Republic, and Cuba observed in surprise that priests in Cuba, who had never had any direct contact with Africa, chanted Ifá poems exactly as they were chanted in Africa. In some parts of the New World, especially in Cuba, the whole extensive structure of the Ifá Literary Corpus (with its 256 books and numerous poems within each book) survived through slavery and into contemporary times.
28. This is a Pandora's box that is best left unopened. But open it, at least in a footnote, we must. About two years ago, Nigeria was once again returned to civil democratic rule. But the age-old traditional political institutions of government and power (i.e., sacred kingship) remain firmly in place. The new Nigerian constitution still does not mesh very well with these traditional institutions. Whilst I do not wish to suggest that contemporary African philosophers are not providing critical assessments of political conduct and institutions (Gbadegesin, 1991, is one good example of critical reflection on contemporary concerns), I think it is fair to say that most philosophers do not view the problem of politics and government as a problem of spirituality and applied ethics. Hence, often, we end up with the same potpourri of irrelevant ideas: socialism; African socialism; negritude; consciencism, etc. A discussion of the moral implications of the existence of these inconsistent institutions on day-to-day living is often left out.

References

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Abíðbölá, K. 1994. God and Evil. Philosophy Now 8: 23-25.
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Copyright 2001 Africa Resource Center, Inc.
Citation Format
Abíðböláwo, Kölá (2001). SPIRITUALITY AND APPLIED ETHICS: AN AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE. West Africa Review: 3, 1.

A Prevalence of Witches: Witchcraft and Popular Culture in the Making of a Yoruba Town

2009-04-15T21:08:00.000-07:00

Volume XVIII: Spring 2008

A Prevalence of Witches: Witchcraft and Popular Culture
in the Making of a Yoruba Town

William Rea
School of Fine Art, Art History and Cultural Studies
University of Leeds
Abstract
This paper considers two instances of witchcraft representation. The first is a representation that develops from the author’s fieldwork and his own experience of witnessing a witchcraft trail. The second is in Nigerian graphic comics that were popular in the 1990s and which to an extent influenced the current form of popular Nigerian soap opera and video films. This paper contrasts attitudes toward witchcraft in the Ekiti Yoruba town of Ikole outlining the multiplicity of moral attitudes toward witchcraft among the various constituents of the town, and the way that these generate local understandings of the town’s identity.
[1] After a gap of some years, the witch is firmly re-established in Africanist discourse. Recent studies seek to go beyond the point where earlier studies left off, beyond the notion that a witch is simply a cipher of social tension, a functionalist release valve or in some way a symbolic figure of marginality in social relations. Rather the witch, or the rumour of the witch, is made to stand for a whole series of issues around the penetration of global structures into African life (Englund 1996). The thrust of the new witchcraft problematic, as Rutherford points out, is to examine “[t]he signifying practices involved in witchcraft (accusations and beliefs) and to view them as moral registers of local responses to the wider modern changes of which they are a part.”[1]
[2] There are problems with this increasing literature on the witch; not the least of these is that issues in Africa’s encounter with modernity seemingly become centered on the figure of the witch. The witch becomes a “localizing figure” (Fardon 1990) for Africanist writings, becoming the lens through which everything is viewed. There is clearly a risk of here simply adding one more paper to an already full list of publications dealing with the position of the witch in contemporary (African) society, joining the consensus that it is appropriate to write about Africa, or at least Africa’s encounter with modernity, in terms of witchcraft (Van Binsbergen 2000). Parallel to the “localizing strategy” within this writing is the problem that Meyer (1998) identifies when she questions the possibility of writing about politics and sorcery in Africa without invoking an image of the continent as hopelessly backward, fundamentally different and exotic. Or, as Van Dijk (1999) argues, a discourse that seems to primitivize the other’s capacity to deal with the uncertainties and the porous quality of social life, which result from engagement with the global economy.
[3]That this should be so suggests that there is more of a hint within some of the current writing about witchcraft that refers to, but disguises, older debates about rationality and patterns of thought. It is a reference that suggests that in their responses to global modernity African societies invoke different idioms of reason in order to deal with global processes, particularly capitalism, and that the idiom that is reverted to is that of the witch or of sorcery. It almost begins to appear that once again witchcraft is the instrumental response of choice, one that is in opposition to the “rational cosmology” that is science. Despite the attempt to disengage with the binary opposition of tradition versus the modern there is the trace of Frazerian argument about the relationship between magic and science embedded within many of these studies. An effect of this is to make what seem to be sophisticated accounts of the articulation of different peoples with global capitalism into a theory of instrumentality. What strikes me about many of the debates around “the economy of the occult” (Comaroff 1999) is that however historically situated and nuanced, much of the recent work on witchcraft seems to return to that old formulation of religious practice—that what this is about is really explanation, predication and control. In part scholars of witchcraft reproduce the functionalist style of older polemics, relating these beliefs to wider causal patterns in society. This concern is one raised by Kapferer who warns against the reintroduction of “the psychologism of functionalism that reinsists a foundationalism that deflects analysis away from considering mediating structural dynamics” (2002, 19).[2]
[4]The fact that the studies have mainly concentrated upon the modern arena does not negate the fact that for the most part they seem to be involved in exactly the same sort of questioning of an African mentality as the older polemic. An effect of this is that although the debates on witchcraft are an attempt to understand the rationality of Africa, and although they attempt to provide a global context which denies binary opposition between a Western modernity and other modernities (there is only one process but local forms of response) these discourses are ultimately caught up in the rationality of the enlightenment academy (Bowman 1997) that places the analyst at a distance from their subject.
[5] An effect of the preponderance of writing on witchcraft in Africa seems to have turned the witch into a form of “material thing” that has the status of a social object (Harre 2002), one that works effects in the narratives of the anthropologist as much as it works within the rumours and reports of the activity of the witch. As Kapferer further argues, inherent in this is an over sociologisation or an excessive rationalization of practices. External categories dominate the subject matter and explanation is once again provided by anthropological domestication. A problem with this, as this paper hopes to point out, is that the diversity of responses to the phenomenon of the witch gets flattened out, every account within each paper conforming to a pattern of thought that is often, in turn, related to some expression of current, modern practice, without recourse to the nuance of tradition.
[6] Is the witch, then, only a metaphor of wider African differences in modernity created by a North Atlantic world keen to maintain its cultural difference? This is clearly not the case, as the witch is very much a part of life and imagination within many African communities. What is often not clear is which version of the witch.
[7]What this paper suggests is that there are differing versions of witchcraft at play in the field of the modern. In the attempt to view processes such as modernity through the figure of the witch, that figure has in turn become somewhat monolithic. This is not a new insight; it has always been a danger within discourses on witchcraft. Hallen and Sodipo’s (1986) exposition of the Yoruba term Aje clearly shows how writers on African witchcraft have drawn upon other (often European) models in their formation of the identity of the African witch. And the European intervention into African ideas about witchcraft or the occult has been thoroughly explored by a number of authors (White 2000). What is clear from the cases that I outline below is that within the specific local arena of Ikole the witch does not conform to a single category of either perception or imagination, and that within the local arena attitudes toward witchcraft are influenced by identities that are no doubt a part of the modern, indeed offer plural modernities, but that within that plurality are also multiple identities that do not necessarily draw from an idea of the modern.
Yoruba Witchcraft
[8]This paper is based upon the particular circumstances of witchcraft in Ikole Ekiti, which lies within the eastern Yoruba speaking region of south western Nigeria. In general, writing about Yoruba witchcraft has tended to emphasize one of two aspects. On the one hand the witch is regarded as a force of malevolence and disruption. On the other, there is a definite discourse, best exemplified by Drewal’s (1983) work on Gelede, which argues that witchcraft be regarded as a positive force underlying Yoruba conceptions of the universe. On the one hand the Yoruba witch is Aje, a purveyor of occult arts and on the other witchcraft is a benign power that in the form of “the mothers” (iya wa) underlies societal reproduction. Clearly these two views are not unconnected and may be seen as complementary views in a diverse and multi-layered set of cosmological principles.
[9] Functionalist explanations of Yoruba witchcraft have generally drawn upon the structural role of women in lineage relations. The concentration has been upon the internal dynamics of virilocal polygynous agnatic lineages (Morton-Williams 1956). Women were not fully incorporated into husband’s compounds until the production of the first male child. The highly competitive nature of Yoruba lineage relationships also meant that when a woman is released from her obligation to live in her husband’s compound, either by divorce or as a widow, she not only becomes marginal to the aggrandizement of the compound but may also become a potential rival to male household heads. The ambivalence toward women is especially pronounced in tropes of self-aggrandizement. Barber (1991) and Schiltz (1982) have both pointed to the well established fact that female aggrandizement is regarded as anomalous and held in deep suspicion by household members, especially by men. To develop and enlarge a reputation as a woman is a risky business. In part reputation relies upon the symbiotic relationship between patron and supporters. The most trusted of these is bound to be members of the lineage.
[10]There is little surprise then that in the terms outlined in this functional explanation of witchcraft that the most common accusation of witchcraft is that of disrupting the proper order of lineage reproduction. Witches eat children, either their own or most commonly those of co-wives. Nor does the child necessarily need to have come to term. Witches are accused of attacking the child in the womb. Belief in the ability of the witch to disrupt fertility was very much a theme running through explanations of the performances of the witch’s cosmological/metaphysical alternate: the senior masquerades of Ikole. Masquerades come for children, but at least a part of their structural position and performative action is preventing activity of witches. The performance spaces of the most senior masques are the alleyways of the market place, places where witches are said to congregate.[3] It is also clear that, as I document below, masquerades have (or had) a role in ridding the town of witches in a most physical manner—literally escorting the accused witch from the town (if not also executing any punishment prescribed).
[11] There is, however, a flip side to this “witch as maleficium.” The notion of “the mothers” (Iya Wa) stands as a more general proposition surrounding the fertile and reproductive potential of women. Apter (1990) and the Drewals (1983) elegantly argue that these powers are those that underpin the ultimate reproduction of the social formation and that this is the ultimate “secret” of Yoruba ritual. For Apter the esoteric power of women, embodied in the Orisa priestesses, encodes not only fertility, but also the reproduction of the social polity. Although Apter does not overstress the benign aspect of female power to the same extent as the Drewals, both analyses tend toward an emphasis on the witch as ultimately conducive to upholding moral order.
[12] Wherever the stress is placed, what is clear is that the category “Yoruba witch” does not allow for singular interpretation. There are obviously a number of different ways that the Yoruba witch can be conceptualized. I was certainly aware of the aspect of the witch as “Iya wa” as an underlying attitude to certain elements of the ritual cycle in Ikole. However, the somewhat symbolic analysis of the Drewals (and to an extent Apter) makes little comment on the “practical practice” of witchcraft as it is worked on a day to day basis. One event particularly brought this into focus for me. Let me at this point introduce a witch.
Story and Narrative
[13] At times living in the Ekiti Yoruba town of Ikole would take on a sense of the unreal, a sense of being within (or at least close to the near past of) the narratives of a fairy tale. There was a disjunction between everyday normality and a life that allowed for things that were enchanted. People’s lives, particularly those of the young men that I worked most closely with, were full of stories; of strange meetings on forest footpaths, of rings brewed in potions that gave the wearers superhuman strength, of bowls of still water wherein a mother could see her sons whatever the distance that lay between them. Any number of stories that suggested that this place was a place not only founded upon and supported by myth or legend (although it certainly was that), but also a place that was full of stories recognized from my childhood and which I can only describe as fairytales.[4] And of course every fairytale needs to have a witch.
[14] I was introduced to witches in the town of Ikole by a babalawo (lit: “father of secrets”), Ogunleye, whose dual role as babalawo and onisegun (owner of knowledge of medicine) made him well qualified to discuss such matters. Questions on the masquerade performances in the town led to discussions of childbirth, which in turn led to the discussion of witchcraft. Although content with discussing witchcraft in the abstract, there still seemed to be an element of the fairytale about the presence of the witch, and a heuristic device I suggested that this might be the case, recounting stories from my childhood, arguing that this was all that the witch could possibly be, a distant figure from a story. Sitting in the local beer parlor that evening Ogunleye nudged me and as a number of women passed heading back from the evening market he nodded to each women (and one man) and then told me who was or was not a witch. Many were, and suddenly I was living in a town full of witches.
[15] Although (under Ogunleye’s terms) I had clearly been living in a town that had many witches, the only time that this fact seemed to have a direct impact was an encounter that, in the overall context of my fieldwork in Ikole, seemed so out of the ordinary that it remains for me a enduring image of my time in Ikole. This incident occurred in the village of Ikoyi, one of the satellite districts of Ikole town, a former village of the Ikole empire that had become incorporated into the main town in the early twentieth century. I was alerted by a large gathering of people of the type that generally only occurs during the festival period. The crowd had assembled around the Baale (chief) Onikoyi’s compound. People were running down the road in some excitement to join the agitated crowd. Judging from the state of excitement there were “miracles happening,” of the type that is grist to the anthropological mill.
[16] At the back of the Onikoyi’s compound was a huge bonfire, made mainly from rubber tires spewing out black smoke. In front of this bonfire was a committee of three men, in front of them was a desk, and in front of this was a woman accused of being a witch.
[17] An old lady, seemingly abject, bent double and in some distress, was standing in front of her accusers, senior men of the town. The story (told to me by onlookers) was that she had apparently taken a knife to her son while he slept and cut out his heart so that she could take it to her coven where it would either be eaten or used for making money. She had had to do this because the coven to which she was attached had demanded that she prove her loyalty to them. Apparently as confirmation of this crime two goats had been found to have juju (a generic word for forms of magical medicine) in their throats. The juju—a pile of what seemed to be oily rags—was sitting on the desk. The woman and some others had fed this to the animals and kept it brewing there through unnatural means. It was to be used at a later date to make money.
[18] Discussions around the central square became more and more heated. There was much shouting and general protestation as well as directed vilification and curses at the woman. Among the onlookers, there was also quite clearly a sense of shock and of outrage. The things that this old woman was charged with were clearly heinous and there was real anguish that such things should have happened. There was a sense of shame that these things should have happened to the village of Ikoyi.
[19] Thankfully, as things were becoming more and more heated, and I found myself dreading the fact that I might have to either interject or (more likely) walk away from an execution, the Olomodikole, leader of the Elegbe (war chiefs) cadre of chiefs in Ikole arrived from the central palace. Clearly the palace had been alerted and had taken action. The old woman was led away, her case to be tried behind the closed doors of the palace sometime later.
[20] This was not the end of the day’s events however. Seemingly minutes after one witch had been led away, another was making a confession in the neighboring village of Araromi. The rumour of this event spread and my friends and I, in just about the same state of excitement as everybody else, joined the rush to the next baale’s palace. There a smaller crowd had gathered and there was little of the formality of proceedings that had accompanied the “trial” at Ikoyi. The witch in this case was a teenage girl, in her school uniform and confessing that she was indeed a witch and that people should believe it. There was very little actual interest in this case. Once the outline of what was going on had been grasped, that the “witch” was self declared, and that there was no formality attached to the case, people began to turn away, and there was quite a lot of joking and laughter as they dismissed the young woman’s claims. This seemed anti-climatic after the previous excitement and, although she was taken into the Ara’s palace, the friends with me could hardly suppress their amusement at this case, demanding from me, at my stated astonishment at so many witches, if I could explain how this girl could really be a witch. To them she was clearly making it up, seeking attention. We returned home.
[21] The trial of the old woman seemed to generate a number of conflicting emotions in the audience that witnessed it. There was clearly an aura of excitement, that here was something out of the ordinary. The friends that I was with did not question that the juju that had been taken from the goat’s gullet and were clearly pleased to show the skeptical Oyinbo (white man) that such things really did happen. Among the younger men this trial seemed to act as a type of confirmation that what they had been telling me about magical rings and miracles taking place was all true.
[22] Yet among much of the audience to this event there seemed to be a genuine sense of anger. Much of this was clearly directed against the old woman and there is no doubt in my mind that at that moment people genuinely believed that she was responsible for the murder of her son. There was, however, also a palpable sense of anger about the very fact that this accusation had happened that the case had had to be brought to trial and that it had happened in their town. This was shameful, particularly in the light of the fact that the central palace had been called to intervene. It felt as if the community were in some way, if not responsible, then at least tainted by the proceedings. (That the community was tainted was borne out by the fact that a community ritual had to be carried out in which a number of protective and cleansing medicines were buried in front of the Baale’s palace and sealed under a small concrete dome).
[23] A number of relevant facts and issues however, remain interesting from this first case. The first is that I knew the woman’s son, a young man who had suffered from polio. He used to sit outside the post office, and we were on greeting terms. I didn’t see him after this case. The second is that I never saw the woman again (rumour had it that she went to live with her daughter in Akure), and third that the incident occurred during the run-up to elections for the local government, the first stage of President Babingida’s ill fated march to democracy. I don’t know if these events were connected, but for a number of people in the town the connection was clear: witchcraft was about the generation of money through sacrifice and elections required a great deal of money ergo sum the boy had been sacrificed and the mother, if not responsible, had been blamed for the death. Here then would seem to be a clear example of the use of witchcraft in a context
The Story so Far
[24] The next example of the witch that circulated in Ikole is one that offers the witch up as a representation, not only of witchcraft but of a larger world outside Ikole Ekiti. It is a representation that seems to correspond well to the issues outlined by the witch-in-modernity thesis. It is a type of representation that has been commented upon many times. This representation might be called the media witch and in its various manifestations it is an extremely popular portrayal of witchcraft. The media witch sells newspapers, provides the standard character in popular videos and is a staple of soap opera. The media witch is a star, but she/he lives outside the experience of most of Ikole’s citizens, if not outside their imaginations. The instance of the media witch that I want to explore is found in comic books, but these comic witches are indicative of, and largely copied from, other representations circulating in Nigeria.
[25] Comics enjoyed a considerable vogue among the youth of Ikole (12-25) during the early 1990s. These comics largely came from Lagos, they were relatively cheap to produce, used few colour graphics and cheap paper, and had a limited production team. The main costs seemed to be in distribution (which is why the oil hikes in the mid 90s may have killed them off in Ikole). Although the market was led by Ikebe Super (literally, super ass), which undoubtedly had the best production quality and highest circulation, other titles such as Lolly, Fun Times and Fantasy had a following among the young men and women of Ikole. Apart from the comic graphics, they also specialized in cheap trick photography (for instance the headline “Boy six months old and only 4 inches tall” was accompanied by a photograph of a figure “standing” in someone’s hand), and sensational headlines such as “woman divorced 34 times looking for husband 35.” Text stories in these magazines were salacious, and sex and sexuality had a high profile, although placed within a context where looking for true love was a constant theme (Renee 1993). Often stories were accompanied by crude illustrations and pages of single joke cartoons.
[26] The main item in each of these comic books was the serialized story. The themes of these stories were pretty much the same, and in many ways can justly claim to be the forerunners of Nigerian soap opera.[5] Essentially, the themes centre on the trials and tribulations of well-off urban families in their pursuit of love and happiness. True love is usually disrupted either by bad/infertile initial marriages, adultery, accidental death (usually in car accidents or at the hands of armed robbers), and witchcraft. The scenarios that the characters inhabit all tend toward the highly commoditized, and the detailing in the drawing is quite accurate enough for readers to recognize the model of Mercedes Benz, type of lace cloth or leather upholstery. Added to this, many of the scenes were set in the ultimate indicator of prestige, “Overs.”
[27] It is overseas where we meet Tunde and his family in the story “The man is not to blame.” This was a popular serialized story in the magazine Fantasy.[6] The story goes that years after marriage to Sandra, there was no child between them. Dr Femi Teujosho, medical doctor and family friend, discovers that the problem is Tunde’s. Sandra already has had two children with Dr. Teujosho. Later, “finally rid” of Sandra, Tunde Awomolo finds another wife, Arewa who unknown to him is a witch and who has made it impossible for Tunde to have another woman. Exasperated, Tunde takes his maid to bed, but still “can’t do.” Fortunately the maid’s father, an herbalist, restores Tunde’s manhood and he begins to have regular liasons with the maid with the approval of the father. Trouble erupts when Arewa finds out and glues them together. In far away Scotland, the maid’s father hears the news and rushes to London in a daredevil race against time.
The Story Continues …
[28] The herbalist Pa Shofola arrives at the hospital; he is about to be unceremoniously thrown out by the hospital staff until a Nigerian (or at least African) doctor intervenes, leads the herbalist to the stricken couple, and despite the white hospital staff’s complaints, works his magic. The event is proclaimed a miracle by the hospital staff but the herbalist knows better, and that “These Oyinbo people sabi nothing.” Tunde returns home with suspicions of witchcraft, much to the astonishment of his wife Arewa, who thought that she had killed him off. She immediately runs to Yeye, high priest of the Nigerian witches in London, who is also incidentally the founder of the church that Tunde attends. She goes to Tunde, allays his fears by throwing suspicion on to the house girl and her father, dictating that as a Christian family they should trust each other and not allow the devil into their home. Later that night Yeye and Arewa plan to kill the maid’s father. Arewa leaves her body as a bird and flies to attend the witches’ meeting, where they call upon the herbalist to kill him. He turns the tables and kills the Yeye. See next month for the conclusion.
[29] The story “The man is not to blame” clearly contains many elements that have become the staples of popular Nigerian video dramas. Most clearly perhaps are the portrayals of the morality of wealth. The young man Tunde gains wealth in a sanctioned and justified way through hard work and good living (there seems to be little moral censure of the fact that he is engaged in an adulterous liaison with his housemaid—Tunde is the hero of the piece—and the babalawo returning from Scotland is the maid’s father). On a darker moral note is the connection between the avaricious spouse (male or female, but usually female) and the use of occult powers or witchcraft, a theme that reappears endlessly in popular Nigerian video plays. More than this however is a popular “playing to the gallery” that the authors of these graphic stories clearly know resonates well with their audience. Thus there is a clear commentary on the moral ambiguity of the Pentecostal churches in the way in which the church is used as a front for the head of the London Nigerian witches, and more than this the practices of the church in gaining money. In similar vein, the Oyinbo are cast as incredulous believers in a rational science that can make no account of the actions of (superior) Nigerian magic (being ready to deprive Tunde of his manhood through surgical operation—an almost exact mirror of the scares that run through Nigerian cities of magically disappearing body parts—usually genitals).
[30] In many ways these graphic stories correspond to the category that has been described as Fabu (Harding 2001). Okwori is surely right about the popular forms of representation of witchcraft when he writes:
There is in Nigeria today a kind of romance between ritual and secularity, between traditionalism and modernity. This romance represents an interface which captures the dichotomized consciousness of an average Nigerian; a belief in rituals, juju and witchcraft while at the same time admitting that such belief is just superstition. [7]
What is not so clear is how this dichotomized consciousness reacts when confronted with the reality of the non-(media)ted witch.
Two Stories
[31] The two stories above are based around the central figure of the witch and two forms of representation. One is the retelling of a field event (first hand, witnessed and more generally presented as a form of “objective research”), the other a representation enjoyed by the young men and women of Ikole. They have equivalence in as much as story (event) and story (comic book) act as data in the formation of the anthropological representation, in this case a representation of popular attitudes toward witchcraft in Southern Nigeria.
[32] That equivalence troubles me. Using a comic book to establish an argument about the way that witchcraft is viewed in Southern Nigeria might seem somewhat trivial. After all, when confronted with the very real possibility that an old woman, far removed from the ambiguities of the commodity world so beloved by both the graphic comic book and by western commentators on African witchcraft, might be killed, these representational forms of witchcraft seem very tame, if not insulting. Is it fair to compare a witchcraft trial with its surrounding actions of divination, cleansing and (fortunately curtailed) execution with a product of the Nigerian popular culture? Should the anthropologist ignore the populist representation in favour of the seemingly authentic event? Perhaps one way of resolving these problems of equivalence is to look for a register that encompasses both stories—one that asks what links them.
[33] Reading through the comic book text, one is struck by the similarities that can be drawn with the current Africanist witchcraft discourses. It is almost a reflection of the anthropology of modernity in (comic book) microcosm. Centrally the graphic detail, the attention placed on a Western world of commodities (a world that in the comic novel that is accessed through the powers of the occult) seems very much a part of the fetishized or enchanted modernity that is often touted by anthropologists as an African response to overwhelming commodity form and the disparity that exists in people’s access to those forms. There is also, however an implicit set of contrasts depicted in the story between the rationality of western science and that of the Babalawo. “These Oyinbo sabi nothing” becomes a comment on western rationality from the other side, the failure to understand the taken for granted fact of witchcraft.
[34] Much of the recent witch discourse works equivalence and comparison through the register of modernity, a global force that, precisely because it is global, allows incidents occurring within its ambit to be compared—we are all modern now, but with obvious differences, other differences. Whether the focus on modern is the alienating power of the capitalist economy (Comaroff and Comaroff 1993, 1999) or the bureaucratic nation state blind to the concerns of its citizens (Geschiere 1997) this focus on the form of modernity allows for comparison—for equivalence.
[35] The “meta narratives” model has of course been critiqued. In its place a model of local responses to modernity has been suggested (Englund and Leach 2000); that responses are from within modernity but not necessarily about modernity tout court. Clearly my descriptions rely upon something like an idea of locality. Yet I agree with Gupta’s (2000) commentary—that cultural definitions of locality are open to debate among the peoples that constitute that locality, and different groups will enjoy different views of how that locality exists in the world of the present.
[36] Perhaps then there is no equivalence? These two stories highlight the way in which the witch offers a space within which different communities within the same locality manage their relationships to modernity and tradition. Perhaps the problem of equivalence lies not with the witch but with the forms of community that are forced into presence by the existence of the witch. What is pointed up is a debate not about witchcraft but about how a community deals with a model of the ideal community (and attendant moral jurisdictions) that they would like to see in existence—an imagined community or, in the words of Van Binsbergen (2000), a “virtual community.”
Community, Witch and Subjectivity
[37] Ikole-Ekiti is the second largest town in Ekiti state, and lies twenty miles east of Ado-Ekiti, the new state capital. When the state was formed in 1996, Ikole mounted a campaign to become state capital, seeing this as a logical move toward gaining access to state resources, bolstering its amenities and increasing its educational facilities. Ikole is a town that undoubtedly regards itself as progressive and modern. The town elite, those men and women who quite consciously see themselves as providing leadership in the local arena (and are thereby different from the emigré elite who return from Ibadan and Lagos increasingly rarely), are well aware of the town’s difficulties, particularly in the provision of basic utilities. They are all too conscious that the basic provisions of civil society in modern Nigeria have broken down, and the modernization promised has proved little more than illusory. No one sees this more than the Elekole, Oba (King) of the town.
[38] Ikole is in fact a town formed by a process of fusion initiated in the 1920s by the current Elekole’s father Adeleye I and encouraged by the British colonial administration. Noticing that towns such as Ibadan and Ilesa had benefited in resources and political influence by increasing their size through incorporating surrounding villages, Adeleye I decided to follow this path toward increasing Ikole’s influence within the modern colonial state. The ostensible reason given to the surrounding villages was that they would then be in a position to found a school in Ikole, the symbol par excellence of modernization and enlightenment in Nigeria, although there was no doubt that Adeleye I also wanted to centralize Ikole’s control over the satellite villages, in turn reinforcing his position vis à vis the colonial administration. In other words, it is very clear that inscribed into the modern history of Ikole is the consciousness of taking part in twentieth century processes of modernization from the start.
[39] That different moral perspectives play back and forth between tradition and modernity within the same locale should not really be surprising. The Ilu (town) has been the source of identity for any number of different constituencies, each having an investment in the town; whether living at a distance as an urban (i.e., Ibadan or Lagos) elite, or operating as a local elite or living in the town as a day to day existence, the town defines a form of identity. Clearly however there is competition over this identity—over how it might be imagined, and clearly in the case of Ikole, this imagining has been operative through out the twentieth century.
[40] Yet it is an imagining that crucially relies upon competition over the versions of traditions allowed into being within the modern. For the Elekole (the Oba or King) the fact of a witchcraft trial was clearly precisely the wrong form of tradition. His responses to the case were expressed to me with an air of exasperation about the whole business; this was something I should not concern myself with. Not in the sense that, as an outsider, this was secret business and therefore I had no business sticking my nose into such secrecy but rather, that, as an educated person like himself, I should not be paying such attention to these matters. The whole thing was regarded, it seemed, as a little embarrassing, a fracas that was a little de trop. It was something that in his capacity as traditional ruler of the town he had to take an interest in, if only to prevent bloodshed, and he had appropriate representatives in form of the Olomodikole to deal with such matters.[8] However, as far as he was concerned this was not the light in which he wanted his town represented. It was not the “tradition” that he wanted marketed as part of the package that surrounds “Ikole-Ekiti” as an identity. This was part of general attitude among the town’s elite, tradition was there to be used selectively, when and where it bolstered the reputation of the town. Thus festivals such as the Ogun festival, the major celebration of the Palace’s articulation with the town’s ritual system, had been “promoted” by the town’s elite to the status of an Ikole day festival, whereas the festivals surrounding Orisa Ojuna had been quietly left to fade away as the main adherents to this cult died.
[41] It is in the context of this re-evaluation of what tradition means that the embarrassment surrounding the discovery of “a witch” needs to be regarded. The trial of this old lady, at least to some members of the town, particularly those of an educated elite, was deeply irritating as a reminder that certain segments of Ikole’s population were not modern, that they were, to the elite, behaving in an irritatingly irrational fashion. Yet this view of the elite was also a perspective on tradition at odds with the unreflexive but clearly demonstrated horror and excitement of people in finding a witch.
[42] It is this double order that structures the attitudes of the audience for the comic books. The producers of these comics know their audiences, just as those who produce the popular video stories. A visual objectification is at work here, one that offers a double act of imagining (Mbembe 1997). One is the fetishization, an enchantment if you like, of the ciphers of the material wealth of modernity. The other is an imagining of the witches’ coven, another transnational landscape that never the less underpins the action of people within modernity. As Geschiere and Meyer (1999) suggest, this act of imagining runs right through the understanding of how national politics operates. Are they playing to, as well as providing, a genuinely held belief in the power of the occult concealed behind beautiful and successful appearance, are they just one more representation of occult modernity. Is this how it plays with the young men and women of Ikole?
[43] There were, of course, numerous different ways in which these comic books were read. Among the younger members of the compound that I lived in there was indeed a fascination with them—my collection was repeatedly depleted by friends borrowing them, and circulating them to other friends around the town. Reactions to the stories were, however, multiple. For some of the audience, there was an expressed belief that this really was the way things were. For the most part, however, the feeling toward these comics seemed to be a kind of knowing, amused skepticism. In their irreverence toward everything, the comic popular press was undoubtedly pointing up the fallacy of success, the inadequacy of the state, the subversion of authority. Yet this is all accomplished within a context of knowing parody, and the audience knows the knowing. Here then the figure of the witch is recognized as being a part of popular consciousness but is also a figure of fun—a fairytale.
[45] Do these popular perceptions actually feed on people’s notion of occult power or do they know that people are knowedgeable enough to understand the joke? that what is represented here is in part also a knowing wink one that is shared with their readers. These popular representations to the “hidden Occult” may be working with people’s knowing cynicism, but also with their knowledge that this is entertainment. The failure of commentators to see the joke tends to suggest a fixation on reducing all representation to the assumption of a general African mentality that really believes this stuff.
[46] In part, this range of reactions is borne out by the audience’s reaction to the witch in Ikole. The force of the actual witchcraft trial, the very shock that it produced in some people, suggests that once put into the land of rumour and popular representation, witchcraft is safely confined in a world of superstition, and that the reality of a witch may gradually slip out of lived consciousness. Eruptions such as that at Ikoyi bring the presence of the witch far too close to home for many of Ikole’s citizens.
Then again …
[47] The eruptions of fieldwork are not meant to follow one home. One of the quirks of fieldwork is that the point of the field is left behind to be engaged again only in the confines of the study as Euro-American knowledge is brought to bear in analysis. This is the double order that Strathern (1999) writes of, and it is perhaps why in earlier versions of this paper I had been able to suggest that the comic book witch had a representational status that was perhaps more of a metaphor than an illustration of known practices.
[48] Yet … some years ago a torso was taken out of the River Thames, decapitated and without any identifying features apart from a white singlet and orange shorts. The initial police response was to give the body a name—Adam. What then followed was an intensive police investigation—moving from Woolwich in London to South Africa and then finally to Nigeria.
[49] As Van Dijk (2000) has shown with the case of voodoo prostitution in the Netherlands, a case such as this points inextricably to the politics of identity in a context where European state policing of identity has become a major principle of government. It would also point to the culturally different constructions of late capitalism and incommensurable differences in that construction. Indeed, the rhetoric around the investigation seems at pains to demonstrate these differences. Reports of the case lay the greatest stress upon the scientific methodology by which the police traced the racial identity of the body; DNA tracing, gut analysis, particle analysis from the clothing and so on. Rather less stated although lurking within the discourse is the fear that this case has generated, fear that this has happened many times before within the Nigerian community in London and a fear that feeds directly into a current British obsession over child abuse and the proper order of family relations.[9]
[50] Here, however, I am more concerned with the eruption, for suddenly the river Thames becomes an enchanted place, as a Yoruba place (or perhaps Edo). Yet, as with the citizens of Ikoyi, it is the enchantment of horror. But we know this, for the pool of London, the place where they pulled the body out of the water, always was the horror—always was the true heart of darkness.
[51] Thus we have a coincidental coming together—the body of a small child probably sacrificed in order to make money, bumps up against the banks of the largest money market in the world—horror within horror. And yet this is of course where the relations of modernity between West Africa and Europe have their origin, for at the heart of the city lies the royal mint, and as Simon Shaffer points out, one of the objects of the mint was the establishment of equivalence of value in the coinage of the realm, which in seventeenth century Britain was perceived as an attack on idolatry. Of course as Pietz (1985) shows, that assay of value was entirely entangled with the perception of the fetish upon the guinea coast. The value of gold, particularly guinea gold dust, became the driver behind the development of a so called scientific rationalism propounded by Boyle, Locke and Newton.
[52] Shaffer points out that in the network of relations surrounding the assay of gold relations between Europe and Africa, the relations of measurement become confused, the gold weight fetish of the Akan trader often mirrored by the ascription of fetish like qualities to European measuring equipment, objects with the power of truth and falsehood. The mirroring extends to the reversal of attitudes toward gold—Akan knowing that it is from the earth, while Europeans reserved a literally sacred position for gold—to the point that Dutch trader states of the Akan gold traders, that they “know very well there is no gold in Holland, that it is for its sake that we come here and that so much diligence is applied to get it, and therefore say that gold is our god.”[10] What is observed, however, is that the measurement of exchange was geared toward sorting pure gold from adulterates, and this difference increasingly became the “difference between European reason and indigenous errors and crimes.” Yet the relationship could be easily turned on its head, and it was clear that in London there was an ambiguity of thought about the way in which the exchange of gold destabilised boundaries and led to the exchange of natures, commerce at the margins making the metropolis vulnerable. The savage antithesis of civilization lies in the metropolitan centre, just as Latour (1993) reflects that the critique of fetishism “gives access to a universe just as unstable as the world allegedly turned upside down by the illusory belief in fetishes.” Again as Latour indicates, perhaps we have never been modern.
[53] Why should this be significant? In numerous ways, but I would just like to point to the imaginings of the youth in Ikole—imagining that operates around a notion of “overs” represented in material such as Fantasy and Ikebe Super—they know that success in leaving the virtual community of the village means entering into another set of relationships that are also virtual, ambiguous and fraught, and that the witch might provide a metaphor for those sorts of relationship that on the one hand can be laughed at but on the other is acknowledged as having reality. Yet the forms of imagining that the youth of Ikole have would also seem to be mirrored, as with the mirror of the fetish, in the types of imagining that Europe still insists upon writing onto the lives of people in Africa.
References
Apter, Andrew. Black Critics and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1990.
Barber, Karen. I could speak until tomorrow. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998.
Bowman Glen. “Identifying Versus Identifying with the Other: Reflections On the Siting Of the Subject in Anthropological Discourse,” 34-50. In A. James et al. (eds.), After Writing Culture. London, Routledge 1997.
Comaroff J and J.L. Comaroff. Modernity and its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
______ “Occult Economies and The Violence of Abstraction: Notes from the South African Postcolony.” American Ethnologist 26 (1999): 279-303.
Drewal H.J. and M.T. Drewal. Gelede: Art and Female Power Among the Yoruba. Bloomington, Indiana University Press 1983.
Englund, Harri. “Witchcraft , Modernity and the Person: The Morality Of Accumulation in Central Malawi. Critique of Anthropology 16 (1996):257-79.
______ and J. Leach. “Ethnography and the Meta-Narratives of Modernity.” Current Anthropology 41 (2000): 225-48 .
Gupta A. Reply to Englund and Leach Current Anthropology 41 (2000): 240-41
Fardon, Richard, ed. Localizing Strategies: Regional Traditions of Ethnographic Writing. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985.
Geschiere, Peter. The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. London: University of Virginia Press, 1997.
Peter Geschiere and Birgit Meyer Globalization and Identity. Dialectics of Flow and Closure London: Blackwell 1999
Kapferer, B. “Introduction: Outside All Reason—Magic, Sorcery and Epistemology in Anthropology.” In B. Kapferer (ed.), Beyond Rationalism: Rethinking magic witchcraft and sorcery. Oxford: Berghan Books, 2003.
Harding, F. “‘Fabu’-lous Stories: From Tender Romance to Horrifying Sex.” Paper
presented at the workshop Modes of Seeing and the Video Film in Africa, University of Bayreuth, June 8-9, 2001.
Hallen, B. and J.O. Sodipo. Knowledge, Belief and Witchcraft. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986.
Horton, R. Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West: Essays on Magic, Religion and Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Latour, B. We Have Never Been Modern. Porter, C. (trans.) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1993.
Mbembe, A. “Provisional Notes on the Postcolony.” Africa 62 (1992): 3-37.
Menem, A. A Prevalence of Witches. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957
Meyer, B. “The Power of Money: Politics, Occult Forces and Pentecostalism in Ghana. “African Studies Review 41 (1998): 15-37.
Morton, Williams P. “The Atinga Cult among the South Western Yoruba: A Sociological Analysis of a Witch Finding Movement.” Bulletin de l’IFAN 18 (1954): 315-34 ..
Okwori, J.Z. “A dramatized society: representing rituals of human sacrifice as efficacious action in Nigerian home-video movies.” Journal of African Cultural Studies 16 (2003): 7-23.
Pietz, William. “The Problem of the Fetish I” Res 9 ( 1985): 5-17.
Renee, Elisha. “Condom Use and the Popular Press.” Health Transition Review 3 (1993): 41-56.
Rutherford, Blair. “To Find an African Witch: Anthropology, Modernity and Witch-finding in North-West Zimbabwe.” Critique of Anthropology 19 (1999): 89-109.
Schaffer, Simon “Forgers and Authors in the Baroque Economy.” Paper presented at the meeting What is an Author?, Harvard University, March 1997.
Schiltz, M. “Habitus and Peasantization in Nigeria: A Yoruba Case Study.” Man 17 (1982): 728-46.
Strathern, M. Property, Substance and Effect. Oxford: Athlone, 1999.
Van Binsbergen, W. “Witchcraft in Modern Africas: Virtualised Boundary Conditions of the Kinship Order,” 2000. http://shikanda.net/african_religion/witch.htm
Van Dijk, Rijk. “Magic Policing in the Netherlands and Explosions in Anthropology.” Paper presented at the Satterthwaite Colloquium on African Religion and Ritual, Satterthwaite, UK, 2000.
______ 'Witchcraft and Scepticism by Proxy: Pentecostalism and Laughter in Urban Malawi' In: Henrietta Moore and Todd Sanders (eds), Magical Interpretations, Material Realities. Modernity, Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa, 97-117. London: Routledge, 2001.
White L. Speaking with Vampires: Rumour and History in Postcolonial Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Notes
[1] Rutherford 1999 : 3
[2] No doubt this is not what these commentators mean to do. Clearly one of the stated aims of breaking the dualism of tradition and modernity is to provide an anthropological view of Africa where the witch “is not an advocate of tradition, of a life beyond the universe of commodities. Yet the fact remains that the systems of thought that are elucidated by this commentary on Africa’s modernity ultimately give the impression that the witch is entirely an advocate of African traditional thought. Despite its neo-modernist approach, the logic suggests an emphasis toward a mode of thought associated with what Horton (1993) described as “closed” thinking. I have no wish to open up Horton’s arguments again—even he now rejects the simple binarism that “open” and “closed” modes represented. However, I do think that it is worth pausing to question the bases upon which the occult is defined in the anthropological engagement with Africa and African modernity. Witchcraft may very well be rational thought in the terms that Horton insists upon, but it is not necessarily what modern African thought regards as rational.
[3] See Rea 1994.
[4] In other words, these stories did not have the full elaboration, “textual” structure or sanctioned authorised position that myth or legend might have had. They provided no charter for ritual action nor were they related to religious cosmology. The use of the term fairytale is, of course, allegorical.
[5] Ikebe super was produced by Adewale Adenuga, who finally abandoned the print version of Ikebe Super in the early 1990s citing the down turn in the Nigerian economy. There is no doubt that the economics of distribution probably meant that by 1994 Ikebe Super was not profitable, however it is also clear that the magazine began to run into quite serious political disfavour. It was also clear that increasingly militant Christian Pentecostals viewed the lewd subject matter of these comics with severe distaste. Some of the popular characters and storylines were however resuscitated as popular soap opera television programmes, such as Papa Ajasco and Super Story which generated very large audiences in Nigeria. Adenuga is now a successful producer of “Nollywood” films.
[6] Fantasy was published by Great Abey Nigeria Ltd and edited by Abiodun Ademoroti. Ademoroti was also the main writer. The cartoon in this instance was drawn by Deji Dania and Christian Mowarin.
[7] Okwori 2003, 9
[8] It is clear that in cases such as this the palace has far more control over the handling of trials and outcomes than the local government. This is, I suspect one of the key differences between the types of expression of witchcraft in southwestern Nigeria and the entanglement of the state in other places (e.g., Geschiere 1997). It is the representatives of “tradition” that deal with such matters. At the same time, however, Elekole, is by far the most important political player in the Ikole local government area.
[9] When I contacted the Metropolitan police about the incident, what really interested (and worried) the liaison officer was the fact that I had a collection of comic books that seemed to prefigure the case they were involved in. What was really worrying to him was the idea that this type of thing had happened many times before.
[10] de Marees quoted in Shaffer 1997.

Histories, of Errancy: Oral Yoruba Abiku Texts And Soyinka's "Abiku".(Critical Essay)

2009-04-15T20:56:00.000-07:00

Histories, of Errancy: Oral Yoruba Abiku Texts And Soyinka's "Abiku".(Critical Essay)

The corpus of written Nigerian literature contains at least thirty works in which abiku or ogbanje play some sort of pivotal role. (1) Most are in English, and among them are canonical texts by Tutuola, Achebe, Soyinka, Clark-Bekederemo, Emecheta, and Okri. These abiku writings constitute a major tradition within Nigerian literature, so it is surprising that no study has been done which reads them together and orders them historically as such. Indeed, existing studies of abiku literature lack any kind of historical perspective. They are limited to thematic and stylistic comparisons of canonical written texts, by-passing the relationship of these texts to oral abiku literature, to nonliterary abiku discourses, and to the concerns and anxieties surrounding their historical circumstances of composition. Symptomatic of these studies' lack of historical perspective is the reliance of their interpretations upon insufficiently considered accounts of abiku. Such accounts (sometimes they are just hasty definitions) often mix facts about abiku with facts about ogbanje, represent abiku as homogeneous across time and space; fail to distinguish between popular and expert, official and heretical, indigenous and exogenous discourses of abiku; assume that the belief in abiku has a psychological rather than ontological origin; and hastily appropriate abiku to serve as a symbol for present-day, metropolitan concepts and concerns. (2) The upshot of all this has been to establish and encourage a practice of literary exegesis that not only occludes the historicity of abiku--its embeddedness in specific times, localities, discourses, concerns, and circumstances that render it inalienably heterogeneous, politicized, and protean--but also occludes, in turn, the historicity of the literature that takes abiku as its subject.

The first aim of this essay is, therefore, to retrieve some sense of abiku's rich and varied history. To this end, I consider in detail one "traditional" Yoruba theory of abiku offered by a senior Ifa babalawo, demonstrating its politicized nature by situating it in the context of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Yoruba society. The second aim of this essay is to look at some oral Yoruba abiku literature--to look at it as literature, that is, rather than as part of the anthropological catalogue. I thus consider some of the formal and thematic features of abiku names, oriki, and narratives, while also relating these aesthetic features back to the orthodox Ifa discourse and its nexus of historically contingent concerns. The third contribution of this study to existing scholarship is to show that some detailed knowledge of oral abiku representations and their history is indispensable to understanding the dynamics and significance of twentieth-century abiku literature written in English. Taking Soyinka's well-known poem "Abiku" as my example, I show that the poem is profoundly shaped by what it inherits from the past (oral abiku texts and Yoruba politics), even as it is also shaped by its own historical circumstances of production (Soyinka's nostalgia for home in 1950s London). In the end, I want to show that the formal and thematic differences between Soyinka's poem and the oral literature are largely traceable (though not reducible) to their embeddedness in different "histories of errancy," histories of straying (geographically and ideologically) from hegemonic sociopolitical forms.

Abiku literally means "one who is born, dies"--though the compact "born to die," with its implication of a fated or deliberately planned death, has become the standard translation. (3) Ifa babalawo apply the term to children who have secret plans to die at a certain time in their upbringing, only to be born again soon afterwards, repeating this itinerary of death and birth until they are spiritually "fettered" (de) by their parents and forced to stay in the world. At present, the term abiku enjoys a hegemony in Yoruba cultural discourse over other extant and current terms used by the Yoruba for the same phenomenon, such as ere, emere, elere, egbe orun, elegbe, l'olowo-omo, abafeferin, elemiikemii, and ejinuwon. (4)

According to Babalola Ifatoogun, a senior Ifa diviner from the Oyo-Yoruba town of Ilobu, abiku are "thieves from heaven ... They come from heaven to steal on earth" (Awon si lole orun ... Awon yii lo wa jale laye latorun). (5) More precisely, abiku are an egbe ara orun, a "club" (egbe) of "heaven-people" (ara oun) whose founding purpose is to siphon off riches from ile araye, the "houses" (ile) of the "world-people" (ara-aye). Abiku further the aims of their robber-band by using children as a cover for their criminal operation. Each abiku is born into an ile and poses as a child that is either sweet-natured and beautiful (and therefore likely to be lavished with good things) or sickly and disturbed (and therefore likely to be the beneficiary of expensive sacrifices). In such a way, the abiku quickly accumulates money, cloth, food, and livestock. Then, at a certain time and by a certain method prearranged secretly with its egbe, the abiku dies and takes the spiritual portion of its loot back to heaven. After dividing the spoils with its egbe, it prepares to re-enter the world and fleece the same or another ile.

The only way for an ile to stop being robbed by an abiku is to "fetter" (de) it spiritually, just as one physically fetters a thief or similar low-life, such as a goat or a slave. (6) To fetter an abiku, the ile must first discover its "sealed words" (ade ohun), namely, the binding and top-secret (ade) oaths it swore to its egbe regarding the specific time, circumstance, and method of its return to heaven. Because these contractual statements are "secrets" (asiri), only an Ifa "father-of-secrets" (babalawo) can "hear" (gbigbo) them and "disseminate" (tu) them to the ile. Knowing the abiku's sealed words enables an ile to fetter the abiku in one of the following three ways: by "blocking" (di) the precise conditions necessary for its death, as one blocks a road or a womb; by "publicizing" (tu) that the abiku's secret aims have been discovered; and by disguising (amin) the abiku so that it will not be recognized when its egbe comes to abduct it from the ile. If an ile successfully fetters an abiku and "forces it to stay" (da duro) in the world, the abiku's egbe will try to "snatch" it (yo) from the house and bring it back to heaven. "`Snatching from the snake-pit' (yiyo lofin) is what the egbe calls picking up (wa mu) one of its members from the world. In their eyes, a house in the world (ile aye) is a prison (ewon); one of their members is doing time there, so they come and snatch it away (yo o kuro)" (Yiyo lofin ni awon n pe ki egbe won wa mu enikan kuro laye. Bi igba tenikan wa lewon ti won wa yo o kuro nibe nile aye ri loju won).

Ifatoogun's account of abiku matches, not only in its substance but in much of its detail, the accounts given by other Ifa babalawo. (7) In particular, Ifatoogun's key oppositions--geographical (orun vs. aye), sociopolitical (egbe vs. ile), informational (ade ohun vs. asiri tu), and kinetic (de vs. yo, forcible restraint vs. forcible dislocation)--are shared by other babalawo, just as they also share his keywords for defining these oppositions. Even Ifatoogun's organizing metaphor of banditry is not unprecedented. Other babalawo know abiki as agba ole or "master thieves" (Babalola 63-21), a term used in common parlance to denote bandit kings and other merciless and successful robbers. Moreover, all Ifa babalawo stress that the egbe ara brun profits unethically from the ile araye, primarily referring to abiku as elere (owner-of-profit) or emere (drinker-of-profit). (8)

If pressed to use one English word to characterize abiku, Ifa babalawo might well call them "errant," a word that combines the two interrelated senses of vagrancy and delinquent behavior. That is, abiku are geographically nomadic, wandering in egbe-groups between orun and aye, unclaimed by any one geographical place; and abiku are wayward, straying delinquently and willfully from the norms defining the ile, profiting unethically by exploiting the ile's constitutive attachment to definite geographical locations (houses, villages, ancestral cities) and practices (having children and perpetuating the patrilineage). When the ile attempts to fetter (de) abiku, it is attempting to normalize them both spatially (to halt their itinerancy) and sociopolitically (to shift their allegiance from egbe to ile). According to Ifa babalawo, errancy (the state of being itinerant/delinquent) is the essence of the egbe ara orun, just as normalization (the process of fettering to place/ lineage) is the essence of ile araye. Such, then, is the official discourse of abiku offered by Ifa babalawo.

This official representation of abiku as an errant egbe robbing the fixed ile is far from politically innocent, if only because egbe and ile are loaded terms in the context of Yoruba society and political history. Ile means not only one's current house and town of residence, but also one's entire patrilineage past and present, and the ancestral city to which the lineage traces its historical origins. The foundation of every ile or "house" in all of its senses is sexual reproduction; having children maintains the lineage's history and extends it both temporally (into the future) and geographically (into new houses and towns). Egbe, by contrast, denotes any elective club or association based not upon lineage, ancestral city, marriage, or procreation, but upon an activity or project shared in common by the members (such as hunting, selling wares in a market, or worshipping an orisa) and to the secrets associated with that activity or project (skills, sacred texts, rituals, records, or the activities themselves). Such clubs/associations often start as groups of friends, tend to be separated along gender lines, have an elected leader, often meet on a weekly basis, and are neither hierarchically organized nor constitutively tied to a particular geographical location. Traditionally, they included benign gangs of neighborhood children, professional/trade associations (e.g., hunters' guilds), orisa cults (e.g., awo Sango), and groups whose activities and membership were more covert and ultra-secret, such as witches and thieves. (9) Ile and egbe thus constitute two contrasting templates of sociopolitical organization among the Yoruba: the male-dominated ile is based on marriage, lineage, procreation, geography, and hierarchical structures of seniority and inheritance; the male-or female-only egbe is based on voluntary membership, mutual benefit, pursuit of a shared nonreproductive purpose, and group secrecy (the keeping of esoteric or specialized knowledge, practices, skills).

Potential rivals in theory, egbe and ile historically interpenetrate in local Yoruba politics, with people having loyalties to both. A single egbe is composed of people from many different ile (patrilineages, ancestral cities) and can cover a wide geographical area. One of the primary aims of some egbe, such as the Egungun cult or female worshippers of virtually any orisa, is to protect or restore women's fertility--the material basis for the ile's hegemony. Egbe (in the form of orisa cults, hunters' guilds, or the ogboni) have historically played a pivotal role in maintaining or shifting the balance of power between different ile, sometimes bolstering the authority of chiefs and kings belonging to one ile, but sometimes also undermining it and opening the way for political resistance and change. (10) Similarly, one's ile can often determine to which egbe one belongs; one becomes a warrior or a worshipper of Sango because one's parent or patrilineage belonged to the warrior profession or the Sango cult. Despite this practical interpenetration of egbe and ile, most Yoruba today would say that one's membership in an ile is more important than and takes precedence over one's membership in an egbe.

The ile as a political ideology has dominated much of Yoruba history. Historically, it is tied to the royal empire of Oyo, an empire that thought of itself and elaborated its structures of rule through ritual metaphors of marriage, procreation, and geographical origin (Laitin 171-77; Matory 8-13). At its apex in the mid-eighteenth century, the empire of Oyo covered all of what is now Yorubaland, enriching itself and extending its power by controlling the major north-south trading routes and by selling domestic slaves and captives of war to buyers on the coast through Dahomean middlemen (Law 341; Morton-Williams, "Slave Trade"). The capturing and selling of slaves thus constituted an important feature of Oyo's commercial activity, just as it would later be an important focus for the smaller, war-like polities of Ibadan and Abeokuta that helped precipitate the final fall of the Oyo empire around 1830. When, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the British colonial authorities sought to implement Indirect Rule in Yorubaland, they resurrected the Oyo monarchy and, with it, the ideology of ile upon which its political structures was based. In short, the ile has been hegemonic in Yorubaland for much of the past three hundred years.

But during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the ideology of ile was challenged by egbe structures of rule from two quarters. First, the new polities of Ibadan and Abeokuta which came to dominance in the early 1800s during the fall of Oyo were modeled on the egbe. Relatively small and mobile groups of mixed lineage were led by charismatic, skilled leaders and competed with each other for wealth, power, and followers through warfare (expanding territory and capturing slaves) and transatlantic trade (slaves again being the major export commodities, the major imports being cloth and iron). Second, the decline of Oyo was accompanied by a pernicious and ubiquitous rise in banditry and slave-raiding--activities carried out by geographically vagrant egbe. These egbe raided villages and ambushed itinerant traders to gain material wealth and sellable human captives. They posed a threat to the structures of procreation and geographical stability at the heart of Oyo's ideology of the ile, as the eye-witness accounts of Ibariba banditry offered by Captain Hugh Clapperton and Richard Lander make clear (Clapperton 60; Lander 284). The threat posed to the ile by these egbe is related to the rise of Ibadan and Abeokuta, for these political economies largely depended upon the success of their own itinerant egbe, mostly warriors and slave-raiders. In short, the ile's hegemony was, during the nineteenth century, undermined and superseded by a hegemony of the egbe.

By representing abiku as an errant egbe that threatens the stable ile, then, Ifa babalawo would have, during the nineteenth century, intervened in an on-going debate between two rival templates of sociopolitical organization, taking the side of the ile over the egbe. That Ifa's official account is historically embedded in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century conflict between egbe and ile seems clear enough: not only was this the most recent (and perhaps only) period of Yoruba history in which the ideology of egbe usurped the ideology of ile, but it is also the period in which errant egbe formed for the purpose of making wealth and children disappear from the ile (slave-raiding gangs) were ubiquitous and definitive of economic and social life. It is surely no accident that the terminology and imagery of slave-raiding ("fettering" [de] and "snatching" [yo], capture and abduction, strangers from the bush who lure children away from their homes) is central to Ifa's account of abiku as an errant egbe. (11) In short, re-situated within the context of nineteenth-century Yoruba history, Ifa babalawo's official theory of abiku strikes us as highly politicized. On the one hand, it implicitly disparages the rise of egbe-based polities and egbe-based banditry that accompanied the fall of Oyo and the height of the transatlantic slave trade. On the other hand, it propagates the ideology of ile, harking back to the stable rhythms of procreation, marriage, and lineage-perpetuation that undergirded Oyo's violent indigenous imperialism.

Having thus briefly considered Ifa's official representation of abiku, its main tropological coordinates, its relationship to one aspect of Yoruba history, and the politics of that relationship, it now remains in the first part of this essay to consider Yoruba oral literary texts pertaining to abiku. Since the Ifa divinatory system at one time "governed almost every aspect of Yoruba life" (Abimbola, "Ifa" 101), it should come as no surprise that oral abiku texts are strongly shaped by the official discourse of Ifa. (12) These texts include names (oruko), salutations (ikini), descriptive acclamations or "praise-names" (oriki), proverbs (owe), songs (orin), folktales (aalo), historical narratives (itan), and Ifa divination verses (ese Ifa). (13) Like Ifa's official account of abiku, this literature is governed by metaphors of spatial opposition (orun/aye, wandering/stasis) and represents abiku, either implicitly or explicitly, as a spatially and socially errant egbe that must be forcibly assimilated to, or rejected from, the ile. The human and the good are defined by geographical fixity and commitment to structures of lineage-perpetuation (especially child-bearing and honoring parents); the nonhuman and the bad are defined by geographical vagrancy and commitment to furthering the aims of one's egbe (especially when they conflict with procreative ideals). But the oral literature does not merely rehash the official discourse. Instead, the oral abiku literature takes up and elaborates the tropological coordinates of the discourse in a way that (wittingly or unwittingly) undermines Ifa's hierarchical valorization of the ile over the egbe, revealing the ile's internal contradictions, ideological fractures, and historical contingency. The larger and more complex the oral text, it seems, the greater this problematization of the ile. Below are four examples from the corpus of oral abiku literature that make this case: names, salutations, oriki, and Ifa itan.

Abiku names are perhaps the most well-known and widespread genre of oral abiku literature. Whether take they the shape of derogatory insults, veiled threats, or plangent supplications, these names, like the Ifa discourse itself, represent the abiku's social errancy--its repeated deaths and births--in spatial terms. (14) Exemplary in this regard is the much-used abiku name Aja, meaning "dog." Among the Yoruba, dogs are generally considered to be dirty, feces-eating animals whose unconstrained wandering is a source of trouble--spilt pots and stolen food. A child named Aja is thus a child whose delinquency is construed as spatial vagrancy. We find similar metaphors of itinerant space at work in other, less insulting abiku names, such as Ayorunbo ("One-who-goes-to-heaven-and-returns"), Malomo ("Don't-go-anymore"), or Durojaye ("Stay-and-relish-the-world"). Here, the spatial terminology of Ifa (e.g., orun, aye, lo, duro) is not only explicitly deployed, but the child's unsettling powers of vagrancy are implicitly acknowledged, even as they are also denied and dispelled through the imperative, incantatory grammar of the appellations.

That the spatial imagery of the names is tied to Ifa's theoretical opposition between egbe and ile is clear when we consider the purposes behind the appellations. Obviously, a name like Aja is designed to shame a child into giving up its dog-like errancy and staying in one place. But the name is also meant to disguise the abiku, the idea being that its egbe will mistake it for some worthless thing and give up their attempts to rescue it from the prison of the ile. In a similar fashion, imperative supplications like Durosomo ("Stay-to-bear-children"), Kokumo ("Don't-die-anymore"), and Matanmi ("Don't-deceive-me") are plainly meant to make the child feel guilty for dying too often. Such names are also incantations, attempts to bring about a new state of being in which the child no longer goes away. Most important, however, such names are asiri tu: by publicizing to heaven-people and world-people alike that the child's secret abiku identity and secret abiku plans have been discovered, the names work to separate the abiku from its egbe and fetter it to the ile. In short, the camouflaging and publicizing purposes behind abiku names imply, and serve to reproduce, the antagonism between errant egbe and fixed ile central to Ifa's official discourse of abiku. The popular politics of abiku naming conforms closely to the Ifa's ideology of ile.

Things become more complicated when the names are placed within the larger salutations to which they belong. For example, Aja o maa ja'kun, dakun ma lo Aja, ("Dog, don't break your leash; don't go, please, Dog" [Verger 1455]), deploys the same metaphors of spatial vagrancy and fixity that the simple name of Aja implies. But where the name was politically straightforward, the salutation is more ambiguous. On the one hand, it says that the child is a valued member of the ile, the elders calling out the salutation want the child to stay there and be a part of it--a positive attitude consolidated around the surprising address of dakun, "please," to something supposed to be dirty and subhuman. On the other hand, the greeting is also the kind of command we give to dogs and other inferior, unruly things that need to be put in their place. Dogs are irritating pieces of property because they do not always respect our control and confinement of them; they chew through their leashes or run away. In this sense, the salutation amplifies the derogative insult of the name Aja, warning the child to be docile and obedient like a piece of property, not unruly like a wild animal. This calculated ambiguity between affirming and rejecting the abiku child is underscored by the salutation's tonal play. For example, the second part of the salutation inversely mirrors the first part--dakun ma lo Aja is epanaleptically opposed to Aja o maa ja'kun--and this rhetorically powerful construction is surely meant to evoke and aggrandize the abiku. But the same rhetorical mirror also creates a verbal sense of confinement and precise control, like a trap lifting and snapping shut again; it is a way of capturing and subduing the abiku. Moreover, we find Aja gnomically encapsulated in o maa ja'kun (think: o ma-aja-kun), as if the dog (aja) has been penned in between "you-don't" (o maa) and "break-leash" (ja'kun) or else were redefined as "[one who] does not break the leash."

At once formally and thematically ambivalent, then, the salutation both affirms and rejects the identity of its abiku addressee; it welcomes the abiku inside the fold of the ile, but does so on the condition that the abiku becomes something different and less errant than it is. As an oriki, the salutation evokes and affirms the powers of the abiku; as an incantation, it tries to reverse the flow of those powers and bring a new reality into being. The salutation's central trope--the spatial confinement of a errant subhuman ("Dog, don't break your leash")--is thus a self-conscious instrument of normalization, an attempt to reform a hypermobile delinquent (the abiku) into a stable citizen embodying the values of the socially hegemonic ile. But this normalization is, as we have seen, inherently equivocal: it opens the boundary between the normal and the abnormal, the worthy and the worthless, the fixed ile and the errant egbe, even as it also reaffirms and fortifies that boundary. The Aja-salutation exemplifies a form of linguistic capture that draws attention to its own nature as a capturing device. It enforces those boundaries between acceptability (a spatially confined "person") and unacceptability (a spatially unconfined "dog") that constitute the ile, but does so in a way that advertises the contingency and vulnerability of those boundaries, the chance for them to be otherwise. This kind of ambiguous textuality works to deconstruct the politicized opposition between errant egbe and fixed ile upon which Ifa's orthodox account of abiku relies. (15)

We find a similar aesthetic elaboration of political concerns to do with errant egbe and stable ile in the following oriki, chanted extemporaneously in April 1970 by Akande, a member of the Egungun cult in Ipetumodu (16):

Ooto ni.
Aiyeronfe, Aiyeronke
Oruko merin l'abiku.
Jalugbo.
Polesu.
Alada-o-si-n'le.
Omo Oloko-re'nu-oko.
Omo Koto-akan-ni-ko-se-wo.
E pe a ko ni rahun gbehin.
E e ni si'ju wo orori omo yin l'aiye dandan.
Emi naa o ni si'ju wo orori omo mi.
E ri i bi?
Bi a a ba ni p'aro,
T'a a ni ooro abuku,
T'a a ni fi'gba kan bo kan,
Oju orun t'eiye ifo lalai f'apa kan ara won.
Ile mi to mi i pe lalai pe baba onibaba.
It is the truth.
The world [aye] has something to love, the world has something
to pet.
Abiku have four names.
Run to the bush.
Full of Esu.
Owner-of-the-cutlass-is-not-at-home [ile].
Child of the-owner-of-the-hoe-is-away-to-the-farm.
Child of the-crab-hole-is-impossible-to-enter.
You say that we shall not regret at the end.
You will not in your lives open your eyes to see the graves of your
children certainly.
I, too, shall not see the grave of my child.
Don't you see the point?
If we are not going to tell a lie,
If we are not going to utter words of contempt,
If we are not going to put one calabash into another,
The sky [orun] is wide enough for the birds to fly in without
their wings touching each other.
There is enough material about my lineage [ile] for me to chant
without my having to praise someone else's father.

This abiku oriki is, like the Aja-salutation, concerned about errancy: about vagrancy and normalcy, about maintaining boundaries between the ile and its alternatives. The non-ile spaces of "bush," "crab hole," and "farm" are counterpoised with the human ile and its activities: having something to love, putting one calabash into another, telling the truth. The abiku is seen to unsettle the boundary between these two opposed spaces. Its delinquent vagrancy ("Run to the bush ... Full of Esu") is in tension with norms of procreation and lineage-perpetuation that are policed and protected by the chanter's fellow Egungun-egbe members: "You [Egungun] say that we shall not regret in the end ... I, too, shall not see the grave of my child." It is no surprise, then, that Akande ends his chant by enjoining fellow Egungun members to maintain boundaries unsettled by the abiku, boundaries that work to propagate the ideology of ile: boundaries between "truth" and "lie," between the value-encoded spaces of "home" (ile) and "bush" (igbo), between the productive and unproductive use of a tool ("put one calabash into another"; the sexual, procreative symbolism is not to be missed here), and between "my own lineage [ile]" and "someone else's."

It should also be pointed out that Akande's chant is a tissue of quotations, a deliberate re-presenting of publicly circulating oral abiku texts, particularly abiku names. As Carmina Davis points out, the line "The world has something to pet" is an innovative variation upon the well-known name for a female abiku, Durooriike, "Stay and you'll be petted," just as "Child of owner-of-the-hoe-is-away-to-the-farm" freshly paraphrases the name Kosoko, "There-is-no-hoe [i.e., to dig your grave]" (Davis 228). The latter name is an apparently innocuous observation (i.e., we have no grave-digging tools), but it conceals a rather aggressive threat (i.e., we will not bury you if you die again). Akande's aesthetically delightful twisting and apposition of well-known abiku names culminates in his coining of a new name: "Child of the-crab-hole-is-impossible-to-enter." This coinage clearly warns the abiku that if it dies again its parents will cut off one of its fingers (a standard mutilation-treatment for abiku children), just as a crab will eventually cut off a child's finger if the child keeps poking it in a crab-hole. There is also the more arch and grotesque suggestion, here, that the mother's vagina ("crab-hole") is a place that bodies should exit but not enter--that the abiku should stop trying to reverse the normal direction of female fertility lest it be disciplined by the mighty Egungun, the protectors of procreation. In short, Akande is interested in reminding us that abiku should be contained because they upset spatial boundaries, boundaries between exit and entrance, between home and bush, between one lineage and another. His oriki thematizes the threat posed to the socially hegemonic ile by the errant outcasts--by those who, like abiku or thieves or dogs, have no regard for the spatial and evaluative distinctions that work to normalize people as maintainers of the ile.

Akande's text, then, conforms in one sense to the politics of Ifa's official discourse of abiku; it sides with the values and forms of life underpinning the ile's structures of rule. But it does so by affirming the importance of the Egungun cult--an egbe--within those structures. What Akande's representation of abiku masterfully discloses is a contradiction fundamental to the ile: its structures of procreation and lineage-perpetuation depend for the smooth functioning upon a nonprocreative, nonkinship, rival template of sociopolitical organization (the egbe). Indeed, the oriki--by the very fact of being an oriki--affirms the essence and existence of abiku, thereby also affirming the vagrant egbe as a sociopolitical form. In such a way, the abiku chant of Akande is both determined by and subversively engaged in a particular history of errancy: the history of contention between egbe and ile in precolonial Yoruba society.

As a final example, consider Ifa divination verses (ese Ifa) pertaining to abiku. Forty-six of these have been collected, but there may be as many as 256. (17) The central part of each Ifa divination verse (ese Ifa) is its historical narrative (itan), a story putatively about real-life events from the past that serve as a precedent for the problems facing the babalawo's client. The itan is also the only part of an ese Ifa where babalawo afford themselves imaginative freedom to improvise, elaborate, and play upon what has been remembered by rote. If there is any heterodox side to babalawo's accounts of abiku, it will therefore be found in the itan of abiku divination verses.

The abiku histories (itan) of Ifa are preoccupied with geographical dislocation, espionage, delinquency, capture, and abduction. Like the names and the oriki, they deploy the spatial metaphors and tropological coordinates characteristic of Ifa's orthodox account of abiku to dramatize the problems posed to the ile by errant egbe of "thieves from heaven." For example, a great many of the Ifa itan conform to the following pattern. (In what follows, the abiku is gendered female for the sake of narrative simplicity.) While in heaven or the bush, an abiku conspires with her fellow egbe members to be born as a child into the house (ile) of an important personage (usually a king or the god/founder of Ifa divination, Orunmila), then to die and return to her egbe at a precise time. She journeys to the world and executes her plan successfully several times, much to the consternation of her human parents, whose pocket books and patience are quickly sapped by the many sacrifices, medical consultations, and initiation fees incurred each time she appears. The parents are puzzled because none of the sacrifices and medicines prevent the child from dying. After dying for the nth (usually third or seventh) time, the abiku readies herself to enter the world again. On this occasion, however, someone (usually either a father, a hunter, or Orunmila himself, and usually after consulting an Ifa babalawo) takes up a hiding place in heaven or in the bush. He overhears her confiding secretly to her egbe about the precise time, place, and method of her death and return to heaven, then bragging loudly that her parents can do nothing to weaken her resolve to die. Her egbe promises to come and rescue her if she is captured by the ile. The intrepid spy then returns home (ile), reveals the intelligence gathered in his espionage mission, and prevents the abiku from returning to heaven by preventing the precise conditions necessary for her death from ever coming about. For instance, if the abiku had planned to die as soon as the wood lit after her birth was consumed, the parents would use a banana-tree trunk instead of normal firewood, because the banana trunk burns so poorly that it would never be consumed, thus preventing the abiku's death. By thus using her secrets against her, the parents and the babalawo are able to fetter (de) the unwilling abiku and confine her to a house of the world, a place she does not want to be.

Not surprisingly, this narrative pattern reflects and reinforces the orthodox account of abiku offered by Ifa babalawo. It deploys Ifa's key tropological oppositions to tell a comedy of intelligence: an intrepid hero discovers hidden facts about the world and devises an ingenious plan to foil the egbe that threatens the ile. The ile is implicitly associated with domestic, familiar, human spaces and activities: village and shrine, ritual and sacrifice. The egbe, by contrast, is associated with what is alien and demonic: the perilous geography of the bush, the evil activities of conspiracy and deceit. In one sense, then, the Ifa itan encode the history of conflict between egbe and ile in a way that propagates the ile's ideology of parentage and procreation.

But the abiku itan also break down Ifa's official opposition between egbe and ile. As with the abiku salutations and oriki, the itan blur the value-laden spatial boundary between world and heaven, domicile and bush. Inverting the abiku's journey from heaven to the world and back again, the babalawo or hunter journeys intrepidly from ile to bush/heaven and back; and whereas the abiku's journey is a keeping of secrets, the hero's journey is an unlocking and dissemination of them. The most important factor in the success of the hero's journey is not his own resourcefulness and dedication to the ile, but the geography of heaven or the bush itself. The mysterious, occluding geography that harbors secrets that threaten the ile is the very thing that enables the hero's concealment, espionage, and eventual dissemination of those secrets. This common military tactic--using the enemy's strengths against it--is, of course, also a common literary convention, but its international ubiquity does not negate its particular effects in the abiku itan, which are, on the one hand, to confuse the official distinction between orun and aye and, on the other hand, to reveal the complicity between errant egbe and static ile, occult geographies and publicized locations.

To insinuate the ile's contradictory reliance upon those errant structures that it officially condemns is the heart of the abiku itan's politics. Not only does the hero rely upon the abiku's own shrouded landscape, but the hero himself is an errant egbe member (a hunter or babalawo that journeys afar) upon whom the procreative center of the ile depends. Moreover, the ile is portrayed as a cunning captor of children, forcibly dislocating them from the community to which they belong; the ile snatches abiku from their egbe and fetters them by means of deception and subterfuge (e.g., using banana trunk to fuel the tire). Such snatching, dislocation, and deception are the very practices for which the official, pro-ile discourse of Ifa demonizes the errant egbe. In such a way, the itan plays upon and dislocates itself from the orthodox discourse, representing the egbe and its errancy as a necessary condition for the ile's official stasis. There is a further irony, here, in that the moral of abiku itan as told by Ifa babalawo is, invariably, that Ifa babalawo (who constitute a geographically dispersed egbe that accumulates wealth from the tragedies of the ile) are the only ones who can stop abiku (another geographically dispersed egbe that accumulates wealth from the tragedies of the ile). Here, again, the ile is seen to be perilously reliant upon the egbe structures of organization it wishes to subordinate and control.

Finally, the abiku itan present the errant egbe as a vibrant alternative to the ile. This is especially evident in those set of itan which focus upon the leader of abiku (Iya Janjasa or Oloiko) and her preparations to enter the world, but is also evident in the set of abiku itan we have been discussing that focus on a hero's subterfuge of abiku. For even here we glimpse a kind of community claimed by the appealing values of mutual benefit, nonprocreative friendship, shared specialized activity, and geographical freedom--a community that exists outside of and in contradiction to the fixed ile that seeks to marginalize and subordinate it. Though this appealing side of the abiku's errancy is tucked into the background of the itan and scarcely acknowledged, its presence is enough both to denaturalize the ile, disclosing it as only one political form among others, not something eternal and necessary; and to demystify it, showing that its hegemonic position in the foreground depends upon its constant suppression and control of those alternative forms.

In short, the abiku narratives of Ifa, like the salutation and oriki discussed above, engage with a history of errancy through an aesthetic form that is itself errant, straying from a univocal affirmation of the ile to reveal its ideological fractures and contradictory reliance upon the errant egbe structures. Unlike Ifa's official descriptions of abiku as "thieves from heaven," oral abiku literature among the Yoruba is not merely propoganda for the ile, nor can it be simply construed as an uncomplicated depository of anthropological information. It is a politicized literature, at once determined by and intervening in the historical contest between egbe and ile that governed nineteenth-century Yoruba society. Its intervention in this contest is surprising, for it dissents from the very theory of abiku, the orthodox Ifa theory, whose tropes and terminology feed it.

What is even more surprising, perhaps, is that we find a similar combination of historical and aesthetic errancy embodied in a work of twentieth-century written abiku literature, Soyinka's "Abiku." Soyinka is an Egba-Yoruba who grew up in Abeokuta and Ibadan, the polities that during the nineteenth-century modeled themselves on the egbe. Given this fact, one might well expect Soyinka's "Abiku" to be in tension with the ile-centered discourse of Ifa, drawing upon the oral literature in a way that reproduces an ideology of egbe rather than an ideology of ile. But this is not what we find. For although Soyinka's poem owes much to its oral precursors--formally, it models itself on an abiku oriki, quoting Ifa narrative conventions and coining new abiku names; thematically, it explores the politics of errancy, engaging in matters of wandering and delinquency--we discover in the end that the poem has little to do with the sociopolitical tensions that so preoccupy the oral abiku literature. Instead, Soyinka's text is concerned with conflicts between family loyalty and individual self-creation, Yoruba structures of family rule dominating Soyinka's childhood and Western structures of political individualism that defined his first sojourn in London--a literary fact that only comes to light if we take into account where and when the poem was written. (18)

Soyinka's poem "Abiku" was first published in the tenth number of Black Orpheus, which appeared sometime in the last quarter of 1961 or the first quarter of 1962 (19):

ABIKU

In vain your bangles cast
Charmed circles at my feet;
I am Abiku, calling for the first
And the repeated time.

Must I weep for goats and cowries
For palm oil and the sprinkled ash?
Yams do not sprout in amulets
To earth Abiku's limbs.

So when the snail is burnt in his shell
Whet the heated fragment, brand me
Deeply on the breast. You must know him
When Abiku calls again.

I am the squirrel teeth, cracked
The riddle of the palm. Remember
This, and dig me deeper still into
The god's swollen foot.

Once and the repeated time, ageless
Though I puke. And when you pour
Libations, each finger points me near
The way I came, where

The ground is wet with mourning
White dew suckles flesh-birds
Evening befriends the spider, trapping
Flies in wine-froth;

Night, and Abiku sucks the oil
From lamps. Mothers! I'll be the
Suppliant snake coiled on the doorstep
Yours the killing cry.

The ripest fruit was saddest;
Where I crept, the warmth was cloying.
In the silence of webs, Abiku moans, shaping
Mounds from the yolk.

If we flip back a page from Soyinka's poem, we see John Pepper Clark's poem of the same title, also making its first appearance in print. The deliberate apposition of the poems was an important event in Nigerian literary history, not only because it precipitated the West African pedagogic and academic tradition of comparing and contrasting the two poems, but because nothing like "Abiku" and "Abiku" had appeared in the pages of Black Orpheus before. (20) Their compressed language, dense imagery, self-conscious craftsmanship, and use of personae or "masks" must have surprised the journal's readers, accustomed as they were to the Whitmanesque effusions of Senghor, the crystalline structures of Okara, and the cool rhymes of Langston Hughes, all of whom shared with their imitators the Romantic convention of speaking about one's own experience in one's own voice. Soyinka's "Abiku" marks a radical break from this convention--a break toward the cryptic, compact, intricately allusive, and anti-Romantic language that would mark much of his subsequent verse and drama. Given these publication circumstances, it is easy to see why critics from the late 1960s until today have invariably read the poem as a kind of hymn to nonconformity, with its recalcitrant abiku clearly mirroring the cocksure iconoclasm of Soyinka himself--that maverick and upstart crow who, by 1961, was already something of an enfant terrible on the Nigerian literary scene. (21)

But if seeing the poem in the context of its publication yields one reading, seeing it in the context of its composition yields another. In a 1985 lecture, Soyinka tells us that he wrote "Abiku" in London when he had been suffering from "nostalgia":

Colin Garland was--still is of course--an Australian. He shared a flat in
Notting Hill with a West Indian actor, Lloyd Record, in the sixties, which
was how I met him. I came into his studio one day and--there it was--a
painting of "Abiku"! I entered the studio, stared and shouted: Abiku! He
stared back at me, not knowing what the hell I was talking about.

Of course there was nostalgia. After all, I had been away from home--for
the first time ever, and for over three years at that time. Any object,
voice, smell, sky-line, was available for conversion to my catalogue of
missed or repressed images [...] a few weeks later, I consoled myself by
writing the poem "Abiku." (Art 195)

Soyinka went to England for "the first time ever" in the fall of 1954 to study at the University of Leeds, and returned to Nigeria on the first day of 1960. Of course, the text says he met Colin "in the sixties"--but this must be a mistake, because we know from Soyinka's Ibadan that he was on good terms with Colin and Lloyd well before his debut on the London stage in November 1959 (Brien; Parekh and Jagne 438; Soyinka, Ibadan 28). Thus, if the poem was written just "over three years" from Soyinka's initial entry into England, then it was written sometime in late 1957 or early 1958, when he had finished his degree and was working in London for the Royal Court Theatre. Contrary to what is often assumed, then, the poem was not composed by a cocksure maverick strutting his stuff, the enfant terrible of the Nigerian literary scene. It was composed by an unknown, homesick, twenty-three-year-old, fledgling writer living in London, routinely encountering racism and alienation, as his London poems (e.g., "Telephone Conversation") and his memoirs of the period (e.g., Ibadan 27) make clear. Knowing this makes it barder to read the poem as a hymn to nonconformity that mirrors Soyinka's own maverick character and cultural praxis, and easier to read it as a traditional Yoruba oriki, a nostalgic evocation of the familiar past (abiku) in an alien present (London).

In an interview with Jane Wilkinson, Soyinka give us some idea of what this Yoruba past pertaining to abiku, revivified by the poem, might be:

[Y]ou have to understand that I grew up with abiku [...] Abiku was real,
not just a figment of literary analysis. [...] I keep emphasizing the
cruelty of abiku once they realize their own power with their parents, with
their elders, how they use and abuse their power, and at the same time the
kind of intelligence of the abiku and their loyalty to their own group,
almost like children versus the adult world. (Wilkinson 107-08)

One of Soyinka's playmates as a young boy was also an abiku, and he tells us in his autobiography Ake: The Years of Childhood that she was characterized by her strange rebellion against parental authority:

[Mrs B.'s] only daughter, Bukola, was not of our world. [...] Amulets,
bangles, tiny rattles and dark copper-twist rings earthed her through
ankles, fingers, wrists and waist. [...] Like all abiku she was privileged,
apart. (16)

It made me uneasy. Mrs B. was too kind a woman to be plagued with such
an awkward child [a child who threatened to die if she was not given
anything she wanted]. [...] I thought of all the things Bukola could ask
for, things which would be beyond the power of her parents to grant. (18)

Soyinka's memories of abiku bear traces of the Ifa discourse. He represents abiku in terms of an oppositional tension between egbe and ile, "loyalty to [one's] group" versus loyalty to one's "parents." He also tells us that "amulets, bangles, tiny rattles, and dark copper-twist rings earthed [the abiku]"--the word "earthed" recalling de, Ifa's term for fettering abiku to the houses of the world. What is most striking about these passages, however, is that these traces of Ifa are subsumed within an overall focus upon the abiku as a individualistic child ("privileged, apart") antagonistic to the rule of parents and elders over children ("like children versus the adult world"). Not only is such a focus unanticipated by the Ifa discourse, but it also locates Soyinka's memories of abiku within a sociopolitical problematic different from that animating Ifa theory and oral abiku literature alike--a problematic having to do not with the rule of ile over egbe, but with the rule of adults over children, elders overjuniors, families over individuals.

Given the circumstances precipitating the poem's composition and given the memories upon which Soyinka drew, it should come as no surprise to us "Abiku" is preoccupied with the relationship between Soyinka's Western present and his Yoruba past, between Western-style political individualism and Yoruba-style familial rule. Soyinka's poem everywhere represents the abiku as an "I am," a self-defining individual that contests and resists being ruled by its parents and community. As critics point out, the presence of parents is implied by the constant mention of religious ritual. The putting of "bangles" on ankles, the sacrifice of "goats and cowries," the use of hot shell-fragments to "brand" the abiku, and the pouring of "Libations" all refer to community-defined rituals that parents would perform to "earth" an abiku. In this sense, the poem's ritual images are metonyms for the claims made on the individual by family and community, as well as synechdoches for the (sometimes violent and "brand"-like) mechanisms of normalization by which those claims are internalized and enforced. The abiku's "I" is represented as being detached from those claims, vagrantly slipping free from their emotive grasp ("Must I weep [...]?") and their physical imprint upon its body ("brand me"). Instead of submitting itself to the interests of its parents, the abiku is persistently self-defining ("I am Abiku," "I am the squirrel teeth") and self-determining ("I'll be the/ Suppliant snake"). What critics interpret as a generalized kind of "nonconformity" (dissent from any norm whatsoever) is therefore better interpreted as a particular kind of non-conformity (individualistic dissent from the norm of Yoruba family rule).

This self-ruling detachment of the "I" from structures of family rule is mirrored by the abiku's temporal vagrancy, its detached wandering between times. In the first stanza, "I am Abiku" protrudes as such a startling and memorable line in part because it asserts the abiku's presence not only as an "I" but as an "am" in the temporality of the present. This assertion of present time is immediately complicated, however, by the temporal indicators following it. The gerund "calling" inherits the present tense of "am," but it also brings with it the past and the future, "the first / And the repeated time." In such a way, the "I" of the abiku is presented to us in the first stanza as above all a creature of disjointed time--a time neither linear (Western) nor cyclical (African) but instead unpredictable, scrambled, haywire, a time that deconstructs any stable relationship (linear or cyclical) between past, present, and future. (22) Abiku break down, complicate, and wander insolently back and forth across temporal distinctions, Soyinka seems to say, and this is reinforced for us as the poem goes on. The last line of the third stanza pulls us toward the future ("When Abiku calls again"), for example, but the first line of the fourth stanza yanks us back assertively to the present ("I am the squirrel teeth") before inviting us to the past time of memory ("Remember this"). This disjointure of temporality continues with the paradoxical assertion in stanza rive that an original event and its subsequent recurrence, "once and the repeated time," exist simultaneously, just as infancy ("I puke") and extreme age ("ageless") are coterminous. "Ageless" also means, of course, "timeless," suggesting that the abiku exists not only inside of time, persisting in spite of it like a timeless masterpiece, but also exists outside of time like an eternal god. In stanzas six and seven, the abiku's path into the world ("The way I came") is described not in spatial or geographical terms, but through a temporal metaphor, the day's progression from "mourning" (a clear pun on "morning") to "Evening," and from evening to "Night!" But since we are following the abiku's path back to its beginning, we are meant to understand that "Night!" is the abiku's temporal starting point, "Evening" its mid-point, and "mourning" its end-point. The abiku inverts the normal direction of time, in other words, a fact that the poem strikes home by re-inverting again what the abiku has already inverted, showing us "mourning" before "Night!" In short, the time of abiku is the time of vagrancy, a time that inverts or simply disobeys the normal rules of temporality, insolently jaywalking across temporal distinctions between past and present, history and eternity, even as it seems unequivocally to assert the present presence of an "I am." In such a way, the abiku's temporal vagrancy mirrors and underscores its individualism, its delinquent straying from the political structures of family rule.

But this disjointed time also complicates the abiku's contest against parental rituals. Since the abiku's "I" is fractured temporally from within, its self-assertive "I am" and self-determining "I'll be"--reliant as they are upon a definite present and definite future--are destabilized. The abiku's self-ruling individualism is thus seen to be contradictory, needing the very temporal distinctions (the "time" of parental rituals) that it truantly repudiates. The political value of individual self-determination is complexly intertwined, the poem seem to say, with the rule of individual selves by family and community.

The poem's insistence upon the time and the "I"--upon seeing the abiku's vagrancy as temporal and its delinquency as self-creating individualism--are clear departures from oral literature pertaining to abiku, which represents the abiku's vagrancy as spatial and its delinquency as egbe-like conspiracy. But the poem is also deeply indebted to oral literature. In particular, it belongs to the Yoruba oral genre of oriki, a genre germane to the poem's insistence upon the temporal. (23) For as Karin Barber points out, oriki are all about time: they invoke the past to affirm the present, aesthetically transcending the gap between past time and present time by textually demonstrating their continuity (Barber, I Could Speak 15). Fragmentary quotations from past texts--histories, songs, proverbs, local gossip, and so on--are cobbled together in surprising ways to capture whatever is most noteworthy and distinctive about a subject at the present moment. When performed by a virtuoso, an oriki becomes a dense labyrinth of quotations (Barber, "Quotation") that are tantalizingly disjointed and polyvocal: cryptic, name-like formulations are juxtaposed without any attempt at prioritizing one over the other or concealing contradictions between them, and "[t]he `I' of the utterance moves continually, speaking with different voices" that have no definite relationship with one another (I Could Speak 288). Thus, while oriki are politically conservative in that they affirm the present state of things by revealing its continuity with the past, oriki can also have a politically destabilizing effect: by holding open past contradictions and withholding a single authorial point of view, oriki show "the possibility of things being otherwise" (I Could Speak 288).

Soyinka tells us that he "grew up with" oriki (Wilkinson 100), and his poem has all the hallmarks of the oral poetic form: it is a cryptic and polyvocal tissue of quotations, evoking the Yoruba home of Soyinka's past in the alien present of his London sojourn. Let me take a few examples. To begin with, the poem is, like the oriki of Akande discussed above, a bricolage of innovative abiku names. To see this, one need only join the words together with dashes, or place the standard Yoruba name-making prefixes of "Omo" ("Child of ...")" or "O ni" ("One who is/says/has ...") before every second line. In the first stanza, "[Child of] In-vain-your-bangles-cast-charmed-circles-at-my-feet" is both an apt and delightfully surprising appellation for an abiku, capturing as it does the quality of boastful arrogance characteristic of Ifa's heavenly thieves. Similarly, "[One who says] I-am-Abiku-calling-for-the-first-and-the-repeated-time" is a suitable name, invoking as it does the abiku's propensity to be born repeatedly and, when it is born, not to stay too long--"calling" understood here as "briefly visiting." The entire poem could be read in a similar fashion; each couplet, and sometimes each line, constitutes a name or name-like formula intended to capture something distinctive and noteworthy about abiku. In such a way, the individualistic abiku's self-definitions turn out to be community-derived appellations--identity-defining names or name-like formulas authorized by structures of family rule antagonistic to the abiku's individualism.

True to the poem's nature as an oriki, many of the name-like formulas cobbled together in the poem are cryptic and polyvocal. "The god's swollen foot" of stanza four is a prime example. The phrase might refer to "the foot of a tree" (Roscoe 55)--presumably the sort of numinous tree often associated with abiku. But other critics tells us "[t]he earth is said to be the footstool of God," so perhaps "the god's swollen foot" refers not to a tree but to a deep grave in the earth (Senanu and Vincent 191)--making the directive, "Dig me deeper still/Into the god's swollen foot," a sardonic piece of advice to parents, since everybody knows that burying an abiku will only encourage it--that tossing it disrespectfully into the bush is the best way to prevent its return.

In addition to such allusions to the Yoruba past, "god's swollen foot" unquestionably cites the classical Greek story of Oedipus, whose name literally means "Swollen Foot." This invocation to Oedipus--hardly surprising given Soyinka's perennial interest and use of Greek mythology (see Bacchae; Myth; Zabus)--is multi-faceted. First, it condenses one of the central stories of Western literature into a cryptic verbal clipping that makes present another noteworthy quality of the abiku--its being, like Oedipus, an ill-fated infant who, thought dead, returns again to harm its parents. Second, it playfully alludes to early twentieth-century debates among Yorubanists about which of three ancient civilizations (Egyptian, Greek, or Ife-Yoruba) was the origin of the other two (see Frobenius; Olumide; Parker)--a debate which persists to this day (see Bernal). Third, Soyinka's oblique allusion to Oedipus cross-references Freud's view (hegemonic in the West at the poem's time of composition) that a so-called "Oedipal stage" during early childhood (hatred of paternal omnipotence) leads a child to see itself as an individual "I" separate from its caregivers. Here, again, is the conflict between children and parents, between Western structures of individualism and Yoruba structures of family rule that governs Soyinka's representation of abiku. In short, "the god's swollen foot" is an exemplar of the poem's cryptic polyvocality, its incessant multiplication of not-entirely-compatible perspectives and voices, Yoruba and Western, past and present. Truly, "Soyinka's sources are not only heterogeneous, they also interact with each other in one and the same text" (Ralf 45).

This sort of polyvocality reaches a kind of cadenza in the last few stanzas of the poem. The abiku is referred to in the first person ("I'll be," "I crept") as well as the third person ("Abiku sucks," "Abiku moans"), for example, and theories about witches ("flesh-birds"), agricultural discourses ("the ripest fruit"), and Yoruba tales and proverbs about the spider ("the spider, trapping") are cited in rapid sequence. (24) "Suppliant snake" appears to quote Ifa's story about the snake killed by parents on their abiku-child's wedding day, but this authoritative source is soon buried in a heap of cryptic allusions that yoke different voices and different discourses together into a single utterance. The metaphor "warmth was cloying," for instance, yokes together descriptive categories as separate as temperature and taste, while "Mounds from the yolk" compares a human grave-site to the first stage in a chicken's life-cycle--a re-translation of abiku, "born to die," that is at once serious and arch. In short, the poem is relentlessly polyvocal, shifting in a labile fashion between different sources, voices, perspectives, and descriptive categories. This verbal vagrancy reflects the abiku's temporal vagrancy, which we have said is an integral part of its assertion of individualism, its straying from the stable time of tradition and ritual embodied by parental structures of control. In such a way, the confining conservatism of the names and name-like formulations is counterbalanced by a decentered multiplicity of quotations that make room for the abiku's will to individual self-determination.

Soyinka's oriki might be a tissue of many name-like formulations quoting multiple source texts, but there is also a sense in which the poem is a single quotation from a single source: a quotation of the boasts made by abiku characters in Ifa's abiku narratives. As mentioned earlier, almost every abiku narrative told by Ifa deploys the standard plot device of an abiku who brags about its secret plans, boasting that its parents can do nothing to stop it from carrying them out. This boast turns out to be a lot of hot air, however, because a hero, spying on it from a good hiding place, overhears the abiku's secret plans and uses this intelligence to capture it. Like the stereotypical abiku in Ifa's narratives, Soyinka's abiku is a loud-mouthed braggart who lists each thing its parents might do to keep it alive and rejects every one: "bangles" are cast "in vain"; sacrificed "goats" will not make it weep; a "brand" will not prevent it from carrying out its plans; "libations" only point it back to heaven. Handed this comprehensive, confidently uttered rejection list, critics have assumed the parents' efforts to be futile. But this rejection list is entirely conventional: it is the hot air of a braggart, and braggarts, as the Ifa convention says, get caught. Seen in this light, the governing irony of Soyinka's poem is not a tragic irony (we and the abiku knowing that the parents' efforts are futile) but a comic irony (we and the parents knowing that the abiku's oath is hot air). Some critics (e.g., Ogunsanwo 47) have suggested that the poem "parodies" oral abiku narratives and "mocks" their associated religious practices. But the opposite seems true: the poem belongs to and relies upon our understanding of Ifa's narrative conventions, conventions that undermine the abiku's boasting individualism.

If we are considering the poem as a single quotation from a single source, however, then it also unquestionably cites the well-known saying abiku s'oloogun d'eke, "Abiku turn herbalists into liars." According to Ifa babalawo, herbal medicines (oogun)--or whatever else a herbalist (oloogun or onisegun) might concoct--are pointless against genuine cases of abiku. (25) This is because the problem they pose is not medical but epistemological: their power is based upon humans' ignorance of their secret plans to die at a certain time and by a certain method. Only an Ifa babalawo, through divinatory communication with Orunmila, can discover those secret plans and leak them to human beings. For this reason, Ifa is praised as Odudu tii du ori emere, "The savior who saves the head of emere [i.e., abiku]" (Akinyemi 184). Read as an elaborate improvisation on abiku s'oloogun d'eke, the poem does indeed mock and conceptually undermine parental efforts guided by herbalist rituals, thereby suggesting the triumph of self-ruling individualism over structures of family rule. But this triumph is vulnerably fragile, for the old saying (at least on Ifa's authoritative interpretation of it) also implies that the individual's private secrets are knowable and that, once they are known, parents and community authorities will again be able to regain control.

There is no question, then, that Soyinka's poem is an oriki, a tissue of quotations from past texts intended to encapsulate and affirm some of the abiku's more noteworthy qualities and capacities. But this oral Yoruba form is couched within a conspicuously Western lyric form of quatrains where the flow of ideas is--quite contrary to oral oriki practice--broken by unnatural enjambments ("Remember / This," "ageless / Though I puke," "I'll be the / Suppliant snake") or slowed down by the occurrence of periods and semi-colons within each stanza. (In Soyinka's final version of "Abiku," published in Idanre, however, these intrastanzaic periods and semicolons that punctuate the original Black Orpheus version are replaced with commas, dashes, or nothing at all in an effort to re-create that cascading effect of linguistic proliferation to which oral oriki artists aspire.) Also unlike oriki and typical of the lyric, Soyinka's poem is internally tied together and organized by patterns of imagery (e.g., images of time, of body parts, and of the animal world). We have said that the poem's "I" is fractured from within by its temporal vagrancy, but this "I" also creates a certain sense of univocality, of one voice speaking from a single perspective about itself a univocality typical of the Western lyric that exists in tension with poem's oral Yoruba polyvocality. In such a way, Soyinka complicates his deployment of the oral genre, staging at the level of genre the embroilment between Western individualism (symbolized by the lyric) and Yoruba family rule (symbolized by the oriki) explored throughout the poem.

All that we have been saying about "Abiku" is further complicated when we turn back to its circumstances of composition. In London, Soyinka was an abiku in the sense, handed down to him by the oral literature, of being someone forcibly separated from his origin (Yorubaland) and exiled in a place he did not want to be (England). As we have seen, Soyinka pushes against London and all that it represents in the poem: the spirit of Western-style individualism is subverted by its own temporal vagrancy and by quotations from Yoruba oral texts that embody the political value of family rule; and a conspicuously Western form of short-lined quatrains (England) strains to house his oral oriki (Yorubaland). In this sense, the poem strives to transcend time and geographical separation, strives to make Soyinka's Yoruba past present again and thereby affirm the hegemonic structures of expression (oriki) and political organization (family rule) that centrally constituted his Yoruba home--structures for which the abiku is both a metonym and a symbol. But the abiku is also London and the West, embodying a self-determining individualism ("I am") that pushes against the determination of one's life by parents and community elders ("Mothers!"). As an oriki to abiku the poem affirms this individualism, celebrating Soyinka's individualistic detachment from parents and family in his London present--but, problematically and paradoxically, it does so through a series of quotations from past Yoruba texts that together symbolize a nonindividualistic attachment to them, thus qualifying and undermining the very celebration they make possible. In short, Western and Yoruba forms, both political and aesthetic, are seen to be mutually entangled in uneasy alliances, even as they also conflict and undermine each other in a poetic peroration that is at once controlled and dizzying.

Soyinka's poem, then, is pervasively indebted to oral abiku literature. But it belongs to a very different historical moment and a very different political problematic than its precursors. Oral abiku literature is constituted by concerns about protecting the ile against rival egbe-like structures, embodying the contest in a way that affirms the ile while revealing it to be fragile, contingent, and beset with internal contradictions. By contrast, Soyinka's literate oriki is inseparable from the tensions between Western individualism and Yoruba familialism that it so perplexingly stages, affirming and denying both political values. The different histories of errancy engaged in by the oral texts and the poem are reflected in their different representations of errancy. In the oral abiku texts, the abiku's errancy is spatial and subversive: loyal only to its egbe, the abiku upsets the spatial boundaries between ile and igbo, between aye and orun, between one ile and another; and this spatial errancy undermines the ile's constitutive activities of procreation, lineage perpetuation, and the honoring of one's ancestral city. For Soyinka, by contrast, the abiku's errancy is temporal and indeterminate: the abiku is an "I am," no longer part of an egbe but an atomistic individual belonging to a disjointed time, attempting to determine itself rather than submit to the rule of parents.

If this essay has shown nothing else, it has demonstrated the need to historicize abiku literature, to situate it within the field of official discourses and political anxieties peculiar to the time and place of its production. Whether they belong to discourses of truth or to the category of literature, representations of abiku are heterogeneous, politicized, and historically embedded. They work to reproduce the ideological mirages that accompany and underwrite hegemonic social and political forms, but can, as we have seen, also work to dissent from and resist them. Future studies of abiku literature would do well to keep this fact of historicity in mind, if only for the following two reasons. First, it would remind us that any "strategic choices exercised in filiation with indigenous resources" (Quayson 6) observable in abiku literature are not as deliberate and consciously planned as the phrase "strategic choices exercised" might imply, even though it is also true that authorial agency is in the end not reducible to the dialectic of base and superstructure or some other crude determinism. Second, critical attention to the historicity of abiku would help dispel the powerful temptation to interpret abiku in a way that reflects critics' own theoretical or political commitments rather than the commitments embodied by the literature. As postcolonial critics, for example, we might be tempted to appropriate abiku as a trope for postcolonial hybridity and liminality, for the migrant experience, for the defiant nationalism of decolonization, for "magical realism," or for the globally unjust distributions of wealth and power which importantly contribute to high child mortality rates in "developing" countries. Such interpretations, however conscientiously elaborated, are not only ahistorical, but also run the risk of quieting the multiple and varied indigenous histories of abiku with which the literature is intermeshed. At worst, such ahistorical, academic representations of abiku might come to stand for the indigenous varieties--a problem similar in kind and in urgency to the perennial problem of "metropolitan hybridity" standing for "subalternity" (Spivak 308-11, 358-62).

NOTE ON ORTHOGRAPHY

I use diacritical marks throughout on Yoruba words that carry culture-specific meanings relevant to this study, except for proper nouns. Thus, the word abiku receives tone-marks and is italicized throughout, but "Oyo" (as the name of a town or kingdom) and "Soyinka" receive no tone-marks or subscripts.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Much of this essay is based upon fieldwork (interviews and literature collection) carried out in Igboland and Yorubaland in 1999. This fieldwork would not have been possible without the kind and generous assistance of many persons and institutions. I am therefore very grateful to Mr. Tim Cribb and Dr. Ato Quayson of the University of Cambridge; Prof. Ossie Enekwe, Rev. Dr. Anthony Ekwunife, Dr. Chibiko Okebalama, and Dr. Benjamin Okpukpara of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; Prof. Oyin Ogunba, Chief Bayo Ogundijo, and Dr. Sola Ajibade of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife; and to all those who generously shared their time and knowledge with me during the course of many interviews. For financial support, my gratitude goes to Mr. Evan Schulman; the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust; the Smuts Memorial Fund; and the UAC of Nigeria Travel Fund. For immense help with Yoruba orthography and for protracted etymological and hermeneutic discussions on key Yoruba terms, I am greatly indebted to Eniola Akinjobin-. My gratitu de also goes to Dr. Sola Ajibade of the Department of African Languages and Linguistics, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife, Nigeria, for transcribing and providing rough English translations of my recorded interviews with Yoruba babalawo. Finally, I have benefited greatly from correspondence with Christey Lynn Carwile of the Unive rsity of Southern Illinois at Carbondale, who is cited in my bibliography under the surname "Routon.

NOTES

(1.) To the best of my knowledge, these works are: C. Achebe; Ajiboye; Akoma; Amadi; Chekwas; Chukwuezi; Clark-Bekederemo; Emecheta (Joys; Kehinde, Slave Girl); Euba; Fatoki; Ike; Kotun; Lakoju; Maduekwe; Monebi; Nguty; Nkala; Nnabuife; Nzekwu; Okeke; Okigbo; Okri (Famished; Infinite, Songs); Owolabi; Schutze; Soyinka ("Abiku"; Ake Dance); and Tutuola ("Antare"; My Life; Witch-Herbalist).

(2.) Among the more extended or notable of these commentaries are: Aizenberg; Aji and Ellsworth; Cezair-Thompson; Cooper; Garnier; Hawley;Jones; Maduka; Ogunyemi; Ogunsanwo; Okonkwo 56-57; Osundare; Quayson; Taiwo; Zeleza. Ogunsanwo contemplates the "intertextuality" of Ben Okri's The Famished Road, but does not consider its relationship with oral abiku literature as such. Verger ("La societe") and C. C. Achebe ("Literary Insights") are exceptions to the general rule in that they construe the literature as a source of anthropological information about abiku and ogbanje.

(3.) The currently standard translation "born to die" appears to have been coined by Samuel Johnson (83). My gratitude goes to Eniola Akinjogbin-McCabe and to Dr. Akin Oyetade and Anya "Bola" Oed of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, for debating the linguistics of abiku with me.

(4.) See Abraham 135; Adeoye 38; Aworeni; Beier, "Spirit Children" 330; Fatoki vi; Ifatoogun; Ifayinka; Olanipekun; Renne 25; Verger, "La societe" 1455. Ere, emere, elere, egbe orun, elegbe are discussed elsewhere in this essay.

(5.) Everything in this and the next paragraph is derived from Ifatoogun. Other Ifa babalawo from whom extensive accounts of abiku have been collected are Aworeni, Ifayinka, Olanipekun, and Verger. Further important information on the Yoruba abiku can be found in: Abraham 7-8, 159, 162; Adebajo; Adeoye; Babalola; Bascom, Yoruba 74; Beier, "Spirit Children," "Geist-Kinder"; Crowther 2; Davis 85-90, 132, 228-31; Doherty; Ellis 111-14; Johnson 83-84; Houlberg "Social Hair" 380-82; King; Leighton 32-33, 79-80, 146-8; Maupoil 391-92; Merlo; Mobalade; Morgan; Morton-Williams, "Yoruba Responses"; Nathan, ch. 1; Parrinder 95-100, 161; Popoola; Prince 106-07; Renne, ch. 2; Talbot, Peoples 2:358-9, 3:719-31; Verger, "La societe," Notes 163-70; Williams.

(6.) "To tie" (ide) an object for the purpose of making it "something/someone in bondage" (onde) seems connected only to a handful of currently or historically typical practices among the Yoruba: (a) the tying of goats or other domestic animals to stop them from roaming or causing trouble; (b) the penning in of a wild animal by a circle of hunters; (c) the capture and manacling of thieves, madmen, and slaves. The metaphorical usage of de by Ifa associates abiku with all of these spheres of Yoruba life. De is also used a ritual metaphor in the worship of some orisa. As Matory observes, Sango is praised as the hunter with chains who "catches children ... like a royal slave hunter" (Matory 190).

(7.) Verger's article is the only other published account of abiku by an Ifa babalawo--the unnamed babalawo in question probably being the one from Dahomey who initiated Verger into the Ifa cult. Adeoye's information also seems largely derived from Ifa. I have collected further accounts from Aworeni, Ifatoogun, Ifayinka, Olanipekun--all senior Ifa babalawo in different areas of Yorubaland.

(8.) See Abraham 159. Abraham cites emere as a synonym of elere, and elere as a synonym of abiku, but offers no etymological breakdown of emere. I have followed Eniola Akinjogbin-McCabe's tentative conjecture that: emere = e-mu-ere = "one:who-drinks-profit" (pers. interview). But it is also possible that emere is a loan word from the Arabic, Nupe, or even Igbo, for we know that borrowing of this kind has occurred (Gbadamosi 207; Matory 267; Renne 25).

(9.) On the egbe, see Eades 61; Frobenius 158-63; Matory 95-96.

(10.) Several anthropological works on the Yoruba published in the 1990s have demonstrated the influence of such egbe on political life. It is the central argument of Apter's book on "critical" ritual groups and of Matory's reading of Sango worship.

(11.) This centrality of slave-raiding tropes to Ifa's theory of abiku--and to some Ifa-prescribed abiku rituals (such as the donning of iron manacles or saworo)-suggests that the slave trade may have been the material cause of abiku (as a separate phenomenon from, say, ibeji). There is not (yet) enough evidence to decide this issue finally, but the evidence--e.g., the fact that belief in abiku (children who die young and come back repeatedly) seems confined to West Africa and is at its most concentrated on the "Slave Coast"--is substantial and interesting enough to deserve treatment in a separate essay. A notable and germane account of children being lured away from their homes by egbe and sold into slavery is to be found in Ajisafe's History of Abeokuta (105). For more on the cultural and economic impact of the slave trade in Yorubaland, see Dowd; Law; Morton-Williams, "Slave Trade"; Oroge.

(12.) On the "textuality" of Yoruba oral literature, see Barber, "Quotation."

(13.) For published examples of oral abiku literature, see: Adeoye; Bascom, Ifa verses 1:4, 17:3, 19:3, 33:1, 101:1; Beier, Yoruba Poetry; Davis; Delano; Johnson; Olayemi; and Verger, "La societe." I have collected additional names, oriki, songs, proverbs, incantations, and ese Ifa pertaining to abiku from Aworeni, Ifatoogun, Ifayinka, and Olanipekun.

(14.) For more on abiku names, see especially Adeoye; Johnson; Verger.

(15.) But see Barber ("Deconstructive Criticism") for a caution about using deconstruction in relation to Yoruba oral literary texts.

(16.) Akande's text was transcribed and translated by Davis (Davis 226-27). I have added diacritical marks to her transcription, but have not changed her translation.

(17.) According to Ifayinka, "Every odu of Ifa speaks of abiku." Since there are 256 odu, there might be as many as 256 ese Ifa pertaining to abiku. Verger gives us eight of these; Bascom four; Adeoye one. I have collected thirty-four from four different Ifa babalawo; three of these ese Ifa are different versions of those already collected by Adeoye and Verger.

(18.) The term "individualism" is often used to characterize Soyinka's self-sufficiency or nonconformity (e.g., Quayson 73). But I use the term in its more particular sense of the political philosophy that privileges the individual above the group and enshrines the individual's right to self-rule rather than subordinating it to the needs and wishes of a community. The spirit of self-sufficiency and non-conformity can be found in nearly every society worldwide--but individualism as such is still only peculiar to and definitive of Western liberal democracies.

(19.) Date inferred. For a chronology of early editions of Black Orpheus, see Benson 289-90. Since the Black Orpheus version of "Abiku" is closer to the poem's historical moment of composition than subsequent versions, I base my analysis on it rather than on the Idanre version. The former differs from the latter in having no epigraph defining abiku and in being punctuated by periods and semicolons rather than by commas anti em-dashes.

(20.) Comparison of the poems "has been a frequent attraction for the West African Examinations Council's literature examiners, year in-year out, right from the `60s" (Ogunsanwo 46). For examples of this pedagogic tradition, see Maduakor 71-75; Nwoga 61-62; and Senanu and Vincent 192-93. Benson points out that the journal was an educational tool for teachers and a formative influence on the development of Nigerian literary culture (27).

(21.) Variants of this reading are offered by, e.g., Jones 1; Larsen 107; Maduakor 71; Maduka 25-27; Nwoga 187; Ogunsanwo 47; Okonkwo 64; Quayson 124; and Taiwo 221.

(22.) In this sense, the poem is in tension with negritude and Soyinkan valorizations of cyclical/African time, just as much as it is in tension with linear/colonial time. On the subject of cyclical African time (which includes the liminal time of transition), see Soyinka (Myth 144). For a reading of "Abiku" that argues, contrary to me, that the poem's time is cyclical, see Osundare 98. On temporal disjointure as a deconstruction of linear and cyclical time alike, see Derrida 3-30.

(23.) Other critics have hinted that they understand the poem as a kind of oriki. Taiwo, for instance, tells us that the poem "praises" the abiku "as a hero" (221); Nwoga remarks that Soyinka calls us. "to admire" his subject (187). But no critic has explicitly read the poem as an oriki or spelled out the implications of this fact.

(24.) On the subject of spiders, Ellis catalogues this Yoruba proverb: "When the spider intends to attack you it encircles you with its web" (231). Abimbola tells us that in the Ifa literary corpus the spider "is always referred to as master craftsman who weaves his threads with great expertise" (Ifa 218). These two, somewhat contradictory traditional representations of the spider are simultaneously cited by Soyinka to encapsulate different distinctive qualities of abiku-its predatory aspect (negative) and its crafty intelligence (somewhat positive).

(25.) Aworeni, Ifatoogun, Ifayinka, and Olanipekun are all in agreement about what follows. For an account which differs from theirs, but which appears to conflate Ifa babalawo with onisegun and other persons claiming to heal abiku, see Mobolade 62-63.

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Douglas McCabe is a Tidmarsh Scholar and doctoral candidate in English at the University of Cambridge, England.