A Message From Dr. Wande Abimbola: The Awise of Ifa

With great honor and pride, I welcome Dr. Wande Abimbola, one of the worlds foremost authorities on Yoruba culture and spirituality, as the Sacred Journey Worldwide podcast series continues.

Professor Wande Abimbola is the Awise Awo Agbaye (world's spokesperson for Ifa and Yoruba religion. He is also an author as well as babalawo, or Ifa diviner and priest.


In this podcast, Dr. Abimbola, speaks of Ifa as an emerging global philosophy. And in addition to discussing his childhood and training as a diviner, we also discuss colonialism, which unfortunately, is very much alive and well in the Motherland.

Throughout Africa, he points out, there's not a single holiday for those who practice indigenous religions......but there are holidays for Christians and Muslims. African belief systems are still ridiculed, he says.

I admire Wande's response when I inquire about the misconceptions people have of Ifa. "I'm not concerned about misconceptions," he says. In other words, that's their problem. This comforts me because those of us who practice indigenous spirituality are often made to feel apologetic. We have nothing to apologize for.

As Bob Marley sang..."from the very first day we left the shores of the Motherland, we've been trampled on......and taken for granted."

I love the Ifa verse that he chants and later translates. The cadence and richness his voice is so "ripe" with the authority and wisdom that comes from being an elder, that just listening is somewhat of a spiritual experience for me.

"Those who make a pact with the ancestors become immortal," he says. I like the implications of this proverb. When asked what he values, he says friendship, respect for the elderly, humility, hard-work and dedication.

I find it intriguing that friendship is the first value he mentions, and I'll explain why in a later posting. Friendship in Ifa, he says, is considered to be the pinnacle of all human relationships -- it is considered to be higher than the relationship between husband and wife, or mother and child.

I welcome you to this invigorating discussion.




James

(email: james@sacredjourneyworldwide.com

Photo credit: Reginald Jackson