Primal Religions: Yoruba Tribe

Yoruba

Location & Geography 

The Yoruba people are the second largest ethnic groups found in Nigeria. Although most of the Yoruba people are located in western area of Nigeria, there are other communities in several other regions of Africa. It has been said that the Yoruba people have occupied that region of West Africa for almost 10050 years.

Location of Yoruba tribe.

Cosmological View

In Yoruba cosmology, Olodumare or Olorun is the Supreme Being whose supremacy is absolute. Olodumare is known by all divinities as unique and pre-eminent.  The Yoruba tribe believed in achieving one’s own true destiny, which was known as Ayanmo. They also believed in reincarnation and that the world began with water with a chicken that laid its eggs and created the earth. 

       

                                                                    Sacred Symbols

Most of the Yoruba’s sacred symbols have to do with nature, such as plants, animal life, etc. Other symbols of the Yoruba include water, hand crafted pottery, and most importantly beads. These beads served as tools for history review as well as protection charms and a sign of their belief. The way the beads were threaded together represented the tribe’s unity. 

 

Yoruba beads.

Sacred Locations

One of the Yoruba’s most sacred locations is the dense forest of the Osun Sacred Gove, in the city of Osogbo. The forest is southern Nigeria and is one of the last remaining historical locations in that forest. This Grove has become a symbol of identity for the Yoruba Diaspora and is of great importance to the Yoruba people. 

   

Osun Sacred Gove

Important gods

The Yoruba worship hundreds of gods that each represents a natural element of human emotion. The most important gods are:

·      Eshu: the messenger god

·      Ife: the creater of Orisha Obatala; Yoruba word for “earth”

·      Obatala: the creator of earth and mankind

·      Olorun: the ruler of the sky and the father of other Yoruba gods

·      Oloddumare: the main creator; seen as the modern day God

·      Olokun: the god of the sea

·      Oshun: the goddess of love, pleasure, beauty and diplomacy

·      Orunmila: god of prophecy  

·      Oya: female warrior goddess

·      Shango: god of storm and thunder

·      Yemalla: the mother goddess of the sea and the moon

  

Eshu.

Totems, Fetishes & Taboos 

Yoruba Totems are fabrics that designate a person’s social position. They are used in ritual births, puberty, marriage, and death. Several of these textile fabrics are seen in three ways: as art, social symbols, and displays of creative technique. 

Textile fabric.

The Yoruba Love Lock Fetish was crafted for spiritual purposes. It is used for one specific reason; to ensure the love from another forever. This fetish is well known and considered strongly desired by those of the Yoruba faith. 

Love Lock Fetish.

Yoruba taboos suggested that white kola-nuts should not be peeled before they are eaten. This was said to be believed by the people because once members of the Lelu clan shared the kola-nuts with other families and then died shortly after. Locust beans were another example. Eating these locust beans will result in peeling of the lips and mouth of whoever eats it. They will also die through mysterious bees attacks if they attend the Obalooran festival after eating the beans. 

Shaman 

The role of the Shaman is to doctor the people of the tribe. They are responsible for curing people of any infections or disease that are harming the Yoruba people. The shaman viewed magic to be very commonly used throughout the tribe. They used charms and other herbal medicines as magic and were more commonly used to treat the sick in the tribe. 

Rituals

Yoruba rituals were generally performed at festivals, funerals, etc.  Three traditional rituals are:

1.     Itaoku: Itaoku is a ritual for feasting. After a funeral, close relatives provide food and drink for the community to join them in a feast. Later that night, a ram is sacrificed to the ancestors. They then start the next ritual, which is opening the voice of a new ancestor that is heard for the first time.

2.     Irenku: Irenku is when family and friends parade through the town and celebrate their success of a proper burial. There’s a display of music and dancing throughout the day. The parade then stops at certain spots of the relatives where the spirit is expected to stay.

3.     Ejeoku: Ejeoku is the final day of the funeral, where the children of the deceased offer yams and fish soup to the ancestors. Music is played on the asipelu drums, where the ancestor’s voice corresponds to the drums. 

References: 

http://people.stthomasu.ca/~belyea/2009/InterriteI/Yoruba.html

http://web.ccsu.edu/afstudy/supdt99.htm

http://www.forafricanart.com/Yoruba_ep_35-1.html

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1118

http://mythicjourneys.org/bigmyth/myths/english/eng_yoruba_pantheon.htm

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-10-09/news/8802060144_1_fabrics-cloth-textiles

http://www.authenticafrica.com/yorlovlocfet.html

http://www.yorubareligion.org/_con/_rubric/detail.php?nr=1393&rubric=News

http://academics.smcvt.edu/africanart/kristen/yoruba2.htm

http://shamanportal.org/shamanism_african.php 

Primal Religions Questions

1. Some forms of religions are called primal because some of these religions came before the other more basic religions and are more important than other religions.

2. The elements of the natural and human world that the Ancestors created or established during the period of the Dreaming was the formation of life and the creation of human beings. They were given certain rights and languages.

3. Spirits survive in the symbols left behind by the Ancestors.

4. The term taboo is forbidden to profane use because of the things that are considered to be dangerous supernatural powers. The term totem is an object that remind families of their ancestors.

5. Ritual is essential if Aboriginal life has meaning because it is only in certain rituals that dreaming can be seen.

6. Aboriginal rituals originated by those people who create the world through dreaming where each ritual is an reenactment of a myth of certain actions of an Ancestor during the dreaming.

7. Initiation rituals awaken the adolescence that redefine their social identity in a tribe.

8. Two acts of Dieri initiation rituals that symbolize death are two lower middle teeth that were knocked out and then buried in the ground and circumcision.

9. The Yoruba live in the western areas of Africa.

10. The city of life has always been the center of Yoruba religion because the Yoruba believe that the god Orish-nla created the world of life.

11. The Yoruba's understanding of the cosmos was that there were two separate worlds, heaven and earth. The other forms of human beings were called witches and sorcerers who caused chaos. Humans tried hard to maintain the balance between the gods so that the witches and sorcerers would not do evil deeds.

12. Olorun is the superior god of the Yoruba religion, which originally came from the power source of the universe.

13. Orishas are lower than the Olorun. Their role is to act as a mediator between the gods and the Olorun.

14. Two of the Orishas are the Orish-nla and Ogun. The Yoruba believed that the Orish-nla created the earth. The Ogun was the god of war and iron.

15. A trickster figure is a deceptive person who appears in several forms in many cultures.

16. The two types of Yoruba ancestors are family ancestors and diefied ancestors. Family ancestors gained their status by earning a good reputation, whereas the diefied ancestors were important human figures in Yoruba society who were worshiped in large numbers.

17. The role of Yoruba ritual practitioners is to meditate between the god and heaven, and humans and earth.

18. Divination is the act that seeks to foresee future events or discover hidden knowledge by interpreting omens. The Yoruba consider it to be essential because it is important to proceed one's future.

19. Scholars believe human beings first came to North America by migrating from Asia to the Bering Strait.

20. The religion of the Plain Indians is of vital interest among native peoples throughout North America because their religion represents Native American religion.

21. Wakan Tanka is the Lakota name for supreme reality.

22. Inktomi means spider. The Lakota trickster figure taught the first humans their ways and customs.

23. Lakota believes that once a person dies, one of their four spirits travels the Milky Way. The soul can either become an ancestor or a ghost on earth.

24. Individuals try to gain access to spiritual power to guarantee better success in hunting and warfare.

25. The structure and function of the sweat lodge is to represent the universe. They believe that it leads to purification.

26. A typical vision experienced by a person who undertakes a vision quest arrives in the form of an animal, object, or force. The medicine man is the one who tells the vision to the others.

27. A woman tribe presides over the Sun Dance in the Blackfeet tribe.

28. The axis mundi is an entity that connects heaven and earth. It is the cottonwood tree in the Sun Dance.

29. Some participants in the Sun Dance skewer their chests and dance until their flesh rears because they believe that their bodies is the only true they own and is the only suitable sacrifice to offer to the supreme being.

30. The Aztec traditions show the description of primal religions because in a developed sense. The Aztecs have emphasis on the relationships between myths and rituals.

31. The geographical area of Mesoamerica included most of Mexico, extending to Honduras, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

32. According to Aztec cosmetology, Quetzalcoatl was the god that created and order the world. The ancient city of Teotihuacan is the origin of the cosmos.

33. Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl was the god's earthly devotee that ruled as a priest king. He was significant to the Aztecs because they believed that he presided over the golden age of Aztec cultural brilliance and proved that they were a perfect role model for their own authoritative figures.

34. The Aztecs called their present age The Age of the Fifth Sun because they thought that their sun would be destroyed like the other four suns.

35. The Aztecs understood the spatial world as having four quadrants that extended out the center of the universe and connected the earthly realm to heaven and the underworld.

36. The Aztecs regarded each human being as a sort of axis mundi because the head and heart are considered to be as potent for the nourishment for the sun and the cosmos.

37. The special religious capabilities of the Aztec knowers of things were the communication with gods and the offerings through language.

38. The historical coincidence that contributed in the fall of Tenochtitlan to the Spaniards was that the Tenochtitlan believed Cortez was the return of Quetzalcoatl, but Cortez ended up conquering them.

39. The popular Day of the Dead shows the survival of Aztec religious cultures by celebrating modern day Aztecs that performed similar rituals as the ones they used to practice.

40. The three these that are shared by the primal religions studied in this chapter are the boundaries between the supernatural and human worlds, that religion is encompassing, and primal religions are constantly changing.