Reworking Ifa

Self-Initiation and Self-Development in an Ancient African Tradition

Democratizing the Practice of African Esoteric Systems

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Compcros
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
 Abstract

An argument for developing systems of self-initiation and self-development

in the Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge, spiritual development and
divination in order to make Ifa more accessible to enthusiasts beyond the
current limitations, controversial practices and abuses emerging within the
growing globalization of the traditional model of Ifa initiation and learning.
The main text is complemented by pictures and accompanying text
projecting Ifa as a spirituality centred in the intersection between the
transcendent and the terrestrial, dramatized by the power of the beauty
and mystery of nature.
The Yoruba origin Ifa system of knowledge, spiritual development and
divination is one of the world's great powerhouses of knowledge,
integrating mathematics, literature, the visual and verbal arts, spirituality
and philosophy in a matrix of primary disciplines, with ancillary disciplines
including an extensive and complex herbal corpus. This cognitive scope is
both highlighted and expanded in a growing range of scholarly and more
general writings on Ifa, in the context of a growing globalization of the
Orisa cosmological and spiritual tradition to which Ifa belongs.

Ifa is also a bastion in the little studied field of African esotericism.

Esotericism may be understood as the exploration of the structures of
meaning and the direction of existence through the use of techniques either
concealed from the public or inaccessible to the public on account of most
people not having cultivated the perceptual faculties vital to accessing such
knowledge. This description of what I describe as social and epistemic
esotericism represents my own understanding within the controversial
characterizations of esotericism as this has emerged in the academic study
of Western and Jewish esotericism, perhaps the most developed areas in
the scholarly study of this field of knowledge.
The expansion of the geographical and social reach of Ifa beyond Nigeria
has inspired a reconfiguration of the system in terms of its monetary value,
with a particularly blatant case being an online provider offering to train
clients to become qualified babalawo, adepts in the esoteric knowledge of
Ifa, in 78 hours, a level of development, which, if I can recall correctly, my
Ifa teacher Joseph Ohomina described as taking 16 years to reach in the
traditional system. Even if the traditional requirement of memorizing large
parts of the Ifa literary corpus, the central information storehouse of the
system, were modified on account of the modern focus on high levels of
written literacy , is it realistic to expect adepthood in any spiritual system
within a short time frame?
Furthermore, the increasing complaints from people in the Americas about
the high cost of initiation into Ifa necessitates inquiry as to whether or not
one can initiate oneself into the tradition.
Purists insist it is not possible for a number of reasons. Centrists state its
possible in rare cases. I insist it is possible for anyone who so chooses.

My theoretical and practical experience of various spiritual and other

cognitive cultures from Africa, the West and Asia convinces me of the
supreme truth of the assertion by Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity,
that "The Spirit bloweth where it listeth and none knows whence it cometh
Tree trunk and roots photo by myself representing the Tree of Odu from Wande
Abimbola’s An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus. The tree is so named by me
because it prefigures, in structure and cosmological associations, the 16 Odu Ifa,
the primary information network and active agents of Ifa. The disciples of the
deity of wisdom Orunmila, the masculine pole of the masculine/feminine dialectic
underlying Ifa, the feminine being his wife Odu, after Orunmila’s unanticipated
departure from the earth, sought and found him in orun, the zone of ultimate
origins, where they encountered him seated under a tree of sixteen branches, as
big as houses, branching dynamically in various directions, at which meeting he
passed on to them the Ifa system, organised in terms of the 16 Odu Ifa.
The tree's form, along with Orunmila's presence under it, like the Norse god Odin,
who, in order to gain wisdom, hangs on Yggdrasil, each of whose branches
constitutes one of the worlds that collectively compose the cosmos, evoke such
images of the structure and dynamism of the cosmos as the Jewish Kabbalistic
Tree of Life with its roots in the unknowable source of existence and its branches
the network of all that is, as well as the cosmic tree in the Hindu Bhagavad Gita,
which contains in its seed the cosmos that the entire tree will become.
Photograph taken in the Jhalobia Recreation Park and Gardens Lagos.
and whither it goeth", a summation fully in consonance with the Yoruba
concept of ase, which I understand as a cosmic force that enables being and
becoming, existence and change, a description in line with John Mbiti's
presentation in African Religions and Philosophy of a similar idea as
unifying classical African thought, a concept actually globally widespread,
as I demonstrate in my essay "A Salute to the Elephant : Abiola Irele at the
Intersection of Disciplines", an essay that subsumes Irele’s work in terms of
his oscillation between individual studies of imaginative works and the
exploration of imagination in general, particularly the African imagination,
as a cognitive style in the arts and in the correlation of the arts and the
sciences, advancing his projection of the possibility of conjuncting Orisa
cosmology and modern scientific cosmology in a synthesis contributing
significantly to restructuring dominant conceptions of the cosmos.

Democratizing Ifa beyond its current state would facilitate ease of access to
its wealth of knowledge and its spiritual core, in the understanding of Ifa as
one means of relating to the concept of ase as an enablement of creativity
permeating existence like water does air, approaches such as Ifa enhancing
the creative powers inherent to the human being.

I am particularly challenged by the contrast between the paucity of

information on Ifa initiation and the descriptions of its cost and the
absolute ease with which one can undergo one of the most powerful
Christian initiation rituals available, the Pentecostal ritual of being Born
Again. This observation is reinforced by ready access to two of the greatest
of human creations, the Hindu Sri Devi Khadgamala Stotram ritual and the
rituals of the Western esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,
particularly the edition of the Golden dawn ritual text by Israel Regardie.
The Sri Devi Khadgamala Stotram, of which the Shakti Saddhana version is
the richest English translation I know, is an imaginative navigation of the
cosmos mobilizing all the senses as portals to ultimate reality. The Golden
Dawn rituals are a majestic synthesis of ideas from various cultures
directed at shaping the mind within a cosmic matrix through meditations
and rituals of superb architectonic splendour and sublime poetry. This
system rivals the world’s greatest scriptures and yet surpasses them in
providing practical techniques for achieving the goal of aligning
consciousness with a metaphysically primal zone that is the goal of all
religion, but which a good number of religions do not describe how to
achieve in their most influential scriptures, Hinduism being, to some
degree, an exception with such works as the Sri Devi Khadgamala and other
Tantric texts, such as the Vijnana Bhairava tantra, another magnificent
example of the combination of inspirational philosophy and praxis, my
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Photographic self-portrait in the grounds of the university guest house, University of Ibadan,
Nigeria. The network of tree branches above a face in reflection within contemplative semi-
darkness softly illuminated by overhanging spaces of light, evokes the cognitive framework
enabling intersections of mind and cosmos.
"The spiritual world of the Yoruba is a powerful, metaphysical forest-wilderness,
vegetatively ferocious and of a scarcely conceivable vitality. A turbulent order prevails, in
which all life is closely intertwined with itself, maintains itself mutually, while with great
intensity each part holds its ground. If this jungle-arcarnum is metaphorically compared to a
mighty, mansion like giant tree, with all its innumerable forms of animal and plant tenantry,
Ifa would be neither root, trunk, branch, twig, leaf, flower nor fruit of this tree, but the
unimaginably complex network of veins and channels that permeates it throughout."
Susanne Wenger in A Life with the Gods in their Yoruba Homeland, with Gert Chesi. Wörgl,
Austria : Perlinger, 1983.74.
“Ifá is about the power of wisdom to approach the mysterious and, through this, to offer an
understanding of the visible and invisible worlds [ that constitute the forested mystery of
existence] through which our lives, collective and unique, are made accessible- Nicholaj De
Mattos Frisvold, Ifá: a Forest of Mystery. Scarlet Imprint / Bibliothèque Rouge, 2016. 7.
"The most obvious characteristics of [the Yoruba novelist D.O Fagunwa’s ] world is its fusion
into a comprehensive theatre of human drama...the natural and supernatural realms.His
characters exist and move within an imaginative framework...created ...directly out of the
African, and specifically Yoruba, conception which sees the supernatural not merely as a
prolongation of the natural world, but as co-existing actively with it...transposing the real
world in his work in such a way as to reveal its essential connection with the unseen...giving
to the everyday and the finite the quality of the numinous and the infinite. ...in the symbolic
framework and connotations of his novels...his forest stands for the universe,inhabited by
obscure forces to which man stands in a dynamic moral and spiritual relationship and with
which his destiny is involved.
...The tremendous adventure of existence in which man is engaged is dramatised by the
adventures of Fagunwa's hunters who go through trials and dangers in which they must
justify and affirm their human essence....the unique combination of physical and spiritual
energy that is the the privilege of man in the universal order, and which the traditional
image of the hunter represents in the highest degree [ in]the dynamic correlation of
individual responsibility and the pressure of external events and forces [ reflecting] the
understanding that human life is as much a matter of chance as of conscious moral choice
[the oral literature, as in the deployment of literature as a vehicle of philosophical and
philosophical insight in Ifa, dramatises] the moral and spiritual attributes needed by the
individual to wrest a human meaning out of his life".
From Abiola Irele,"Tradition and the Yoruba Writer:D.O.Fagunwa,Amos Totuola and Wole
Soyinka".The African Experience in Literature and Ideology.London: Heinemann,1981. 174-
196.179-181. Discussed by me in “Forest as Cosmos: Abiola Irele on Classical Yoruba
Philosophy of Nature”
favorite being the translation in Paul Rep’s Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, the
Christian, Khadgamala and Golden Dawn being systems I have practiced to
varying degrees.
Other readily available fantastic ritual compendia include Evans Wentz'
edited Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines : Seven Books of Wisdom of the
Great Path, According to the Late Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup's English
Rendering and the Western esotericist Aleister Crowley's Magick, Liber
ABA, Book 4. Another is The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage
, beautifully described by Aaron Leitch at that link.
The Abramelin ritual shares with Ifa a focus on a spiritual identity
understood as intimate to the self, known as ori in Ifa and the Holy
Guardian Angel in the Abramelin operation, ideas that demonstrate
significant similarity. The Abramelin system also shares with Ifa an
unconventional relationship with forces often seen as dangerous, such as
the Abramelin operation being concluded by invoking what the ritual texts
describe as evil spirits in order to serve the interests of the magician while
ese ifa, Ifa literature, often present Orunmila, the mythic founder of Ifa
negotiating with the ajogun, the forces of destruction, as I describe in
“Orunmila and the Sixteen Evils: Yoruba Divination Poetry in Comparative
Context by Aníbal Mejía. Commentary by Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju.”
In a world in which various ideologies are in competition, a competition
made more acute by the consistent challenge, directly and indirectly, to
Africans to demonstrate their contribution to the global cultural patrimony,
particularly as these contributions come from their ancestral cultures, in a
world where a good number of other spiritualities command significant
space in the global imagination, demonstrating qualities and motifs even
non-adherents of these religions recognize and in a significant number of
cases, identify with, within the increasing globalization of classical African
spiritualities in which the Yoruba Orisa tradition and Ifa are at the
forefront, it becomes imperative to make these African spiritualities fully
accessible to all, and ideally, the steps of progression in the systems they
demonstrate clarified and the modes of development represented by those
systems made readily accessible.
I am not formally initiated into Ifa nor have I been trained as an Ifa
practitioner beyond my own efforts but I believe I have sufficient
theoretical knowledge of the system and have reached a depth of exposure
to its practical possibilities, an exposure which, though still embryonic,
empowers me to justify the logic of a self administered Ifa initiation, to
develop such an initiatory system, as well as, to some degree, map stages of
growth, various possibilities of development in theoretical and practical
study, one may aspire to in Ifa and guide people in climbing these rungs of
the ladder or suggest how these steps may be attained.
Even though I am still trying to work out how to penetrate the more
esoteric aspects of Ifa, I can at least share the actions I am taking in
pursuing this goal and the outcomes of those actions in what is best
understood as a shared journey rather than in terms of the picture of a fully
informed person educating others from a commanding height. In the face of
the exploration of the mysteries of the ultimate meaning and direction of
existence in their intersection with the daily cycle of human life, which I
understand as the mission of Ifa, everyone is an explorer, no one is or can
be fully informed.
The complete picture I am developing is not identical with traditional Ifa
though based on the older formation. I am inspired in this initiative by the
proliferation of forms of Buddhism between the traditional Theravada and
the developments away from the traditional forms but inspired by them
known as Mahayana, by the large range of methods and philosophies in
Hinduism as well as by the variety of Rosicrucian esoteric systems of which
the Golden Dawn and AMORC, the Ancient Mystical Order of the Rosy Cross,
are perhaps the most prominent.
We live in a world flooded by readily accessible and relatively free
information. Only those ideological systems that can position themselves
adequately within this information flow will retain significance or grow in
relevance as time passes.
I shall follow this statement of purpose with an Ifa self initiation ritual I
have composed, clarifying the sources of the ideas used in the ritual and the
logic of their use. This is a ritual the core of which I developed when I
committed myself definitively to studying Ifa and which I have performed a
number of times and refined from time to time over the years.
After that I shall provide suggestions of inspirational Ifa texts and of the
Orisa cosmology to which Ifa belongs, works that give information as well
as project an imaginative dynamism capable of uplifting the mind, inspiring
a sense of mental expansion, facilitating the centring of consciousness in an
exalted ideational matrix unifying terrestrial existence and its metaphysical
coordinates, conducing to moving from idea to experience, from thought to
encounter.
After publishing online my introduction to the inspirational Ifa and Orisa
texts, I am likely to continue by presenting a do-it-yourself course of study
in Ifa, drawing on my various writings on Ifa, most of them freely accessible
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“I am here in the trees, in the river, in my creative phase not only when I am
here physically, but forever, even when I happen to be travelling-hidden
beyond time and suffering, in the Spiritual Entities which, beceause they are
Real in many ways, present ever new features. I feel sheltered with them -in
them- beceause I am so very fond of trees and running water - and all the gods
of the world are trees and animals long, long before they entrust their
sancrosanct magnificence to a human figure".
Susanne Wenger from Adunni: A Portrait of Susanne Wenger by Rolf
Brockmann and Gerd Hotter. Machart:Hamburg, 1994. Back cover.
Photograph taken by me in the Jhalobia Recreation Park and Gardens Lagos.
Wenger’s work is central in the exploration of the naturistic matrix of Orisa
cosmology, as described in various works by her and others, including my
explicit working out of the relationship she developed between landscape and
cosmology in “Cosmogeographic Explorations : Metaphysical Mapping of
Landscape at the Oshun Forest and Glastonbury”.
online through the “Cognitive Platforms” section of my central website,
expanding this foundation through engagement with the explosion in Ifa
and Orisa writings online and offline, conjunctions amplified through
dialogue with other bodies of knowledge, a program representing my own
contributions to the growing body of Ifa study programs referenced online.

Along with the traditional training methods, it is helpful to have the option
of self training, for people, who, like myself, either prefer to work alone or
who want to alternate solitary work with working with others, such as a
teacher. I gained a lot from my Ifa teacher Joseph Ohomina, in terms of the
inspiration of his quality of character and ideas about Ifa that are central to
my aspirations and work in Ifa, ideas the core of which I discuss in
"Cosmological Permutations : Joseph Ohomina’s Ifa Philosophy and the
Quest for the Unity of Being". My experience with Ohomina represented
having access to the option of formal training with a babalawo and even the
offer of initiation, even without cost being an issue, his teaching being
magnanimously free and movement to and from our places of learning
being entirely at his own expense, options for formal training and initiation
I chose not to take, preferring informal and general discussions with him.

I invite you to follow a debate on self-initiation in Ifa at this link initiated by

a question I asked on the subject in the Facebook platform the Ifa Studies
Group.
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“The unique function of Obatala within the realm of Orisha Awo

(Mysteries of Nature) is to provide the spark of light that animates
consciousness. To call an Orisha the Chief of the White Cloth is to make
a symbolic reference to that substance which makes consciousness
possible. The reference to White Cloth is not a reference to the material
used to make the cloth, it is a reference to the fabric which binds the
universe together. The threads of this fabric are the multi-leveled layers
of consciousness which Ifa teaches exist in all things on all levels of
being. Ifa teaches that it is the ability of forces of nature to
communicate with each other, and the ability of humans to
communicate with forces in nature that gives the world a sense of
spiritual unity”- from Obatala: Ifa and the Chief of the Spirit of the
White Cloth by Awo Fa’lokun Fatunmbi .
“Nature is a temple in which living pillars murmur in a soft language,
half strange, half understood; man wanders there as through a
cabalistic wood, forest-groves of symbols, strange and solemn, aware of
eyes that watch him in the leaves above. Like prolonged echoes
mingling in the distance, echoes long that from afar rebound, merged
till one deep low shadowy note is born, in a deep and tenebrous unity,
vast as the dark of night and as the light of day, vast as the turning
planet clothed in darkness and light, vast as the night or as the fires of
morn, sound calls to fragrance, colour calls to sound, perfumes, sounds,
and colors correspond, expanding as infinity expands, possessing the
diffusion of infinite things”-from Charles Baudelaire’s
“Correspondences”, a collage of different translations from the poem's
page at fleursdumal.org.
Photograph taken by me in the Jhalobia Recreation Park and Gardens
Lagos.