FIRE

In terms of sacred kingship at KETU, on the death of the king every fire in this town was put out.

In terms reminiscent of Zoroastrian practice, there fires have to be renewed from a single, pure source, that is the IYA PANKU, who gave the new settlers at KETU fire in the first place.

So a successor of the original IYA PANKU give them fire and all the fires are rekindled from it.

Similarly, on the day of the festival of OKE BADAN, the tutelary deity of Ibadan, according to Daniel OLUBI, EGBA catechist at KUDETI in 1875, “no fire is suffered to be seen in anyone’s house excepting certain houses of the Chiefs and that is only the warm their meals after which it immediately is extinguished. “

OLUBI gives no reason for this act of extinguishing all fires, whether the taboo was an active purification or preparation for the sacrificial right to follow, or whether there was an element of renewal of fires that had become worn out and polluted over the course of time.”

MnKenzie