IFA LITERATURE

A PERSPECTIVE ON RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MODERNIZATION AND SPIRITUALITY

Toyin Adepoju

I have been criticized and otherwise challenged for insisting on the value and even the
necessity of viewing the the Africana system of knowledge and spirituality called Ifa as a
dynamic system,best approached as open to adaptation by users. An aspect of my focus has
been ese ifa, ifa literature,the poetic and imaginative verbal texts of Ifa. I argue that these
are gainfully understood as texts that need to be constantly expanded by new
creativity,creativity emerging from new social and imaginative contexts.

To that effect,I have been writing and posting ese ifa. In doing this,I have been creating new
forms by adapting the classical models.

There have been two major critiques of my perspective. One is that ese ifa enjoy a fixed
status like the canonical texts of the Abrahamic traditions,the Koran and the Bible. Adding to
them or modifying them would be sacrilegious in this perspective.

The second critique of my position is that,as Awo Dino put it, a literary text that is like ese ifa
is not identical to an ese ifa. Afis Odidere sums up this perspective in stating that the ese ifa
I have composed might read well,but I will not be able to use them for a spiritual purpose. By
that he alludes to the fact that ese ifa are used as magical instruments,serving as incantations
described as conveying a creative power known as ase, understand as relevant to changing
situations.

I am sensitive to these challenges,particularly since the traditional training for a babalawo-

master of esoteric knowledge of Ifa-is by a long process of apprenticeship conducted orally,in
the classical context,for a period of about 16 years, at least if I remember well the description
by my Ifa teacher, Joseph Ohomina.

I have not been able to state a comprehensive response to these challenges to my

initiative,even though I have developed the outlines of that response,but I made a step further
in my response through the stimulation of a critique from Valentine Ojo on what he
described as my unreasonable idea of modernising Ifa.

The response follows.

If you study Ifa and Yoruba society you will see that they change and are changing. Ese ifa,
for one, are not identical to the fixed canons of the Bible,Quran and Judaism. They are
closer to the open-ended canons of Hinduism and Buddhism where the sacred canon grows
rather than being fixed as in the monotheistic religions where doctrine and political power are
centralised, while in Ifa,Buddhism and Hinduism they are decentralised. Of course the
ancient texts remain the same but new ones are added. William Bascom in his Ifa and
Kolawole Ositola, the babalawo quoted in quoted in Margaret Drewal's article in The Yoruba
Artist, describe this process and I expect Noel Amherd's Reciting Ifa does so too.
Not only have scholars described this process,the owner of the Ifaocha online group,for
example, seems to have set it up primarily to present the new ese ifa he has created.

I am creating and posting my own ese ifa. People are showing appreciation of them and
some have requested to repost them elsewhere. That means I am gradually developing some
identification with my approach to Ifa. By the time I expand my creativity,gain more
publicity,I begin to garner attention to a new school of Ifa. If I am able to help people solve
their problems using my methods,using ese ifa composed by me,using ideas from areas
unknown to the older ifa artists,ideas from science,non-African world views etc,then the
argument is over. I would have developed a functional divinatory system and people would
necessarily consult me.

Whatever power is demonstrated by the ese ifa,I expect emerges less from their content and
more from their mode of appropriation by the babalawo or from a dialogue between their
content and their use by the babalawo. They can be described as embodiments of ase, the
Yoruba/Orisa understanding of a creative force that enables action and existence , ase being
described as a force which itself is available to everyone and simply needs to be cultivated.