Stop confusing yourselves or allow yourself to be confused! Don't be deceived into self-hating.
1. IFÁ - A Divine, Coded, Scriptural knowledge with Chapters and Verses known as Odùs. It is a guidance for mankind to take him through life and it talks about every single subject under the sun; the things that have happened thousands of years ago and those things which will happen tomorrow.
EVERYTHING is mentioned in the IFÁ corpus including Medicine, Religion, Philosophy, Art, Mysticism, Mathematics etc.
The Odùs of IFÁ come in multiples of 16 and enquiries to its revelations obtain by an arithmetic combination of binary outputs.
It is the voice of Olódùmarè, the SUPREME and PROFOUNDLY UNSEARCHABLE GOD ALMIGHTY
It has NEVER been known to fail.
It is ALWAYS CORRECT.
2. AWO - It is a body of knowledge which is kept secret to those to whom the knowledge is revealed.
It is also a CULT because it is opened to only a few people who are initiated into it and who keep a measure of secrecy about it.
It is kept secret because our ancestors in their wisdom thought it best to keep this knowledge within a small loop as the best way to preserve it.
Thinking about it todsy , they were right as on all counts.
The people within this loop, those who are privileged to share in this knowledge are called "AWO".
AWO thus describes a BODY of knowledge, a CULT of people and the PEOPLE with such knowledge who belong to that cult.
3. ALÁWO/ONÍFÁ - They are DEVOTEES who WORSHIP in accordance with the traditional ways of our ancestors.
They are not necessarily or automatically members of AWO or have such knowledge of it.
They are a congregation, the ones you now call adherents of African Traditional Religions [ ATR ]
They sit in worship and listen to the Priests.
In the course of that worship and also with age, the congregation grow in knowledge, wisdom and spirit, and gradually they can move up to assume responsibilities of Elders, or Priesthood if they so desired or were chosen.
3. BABALAWO - It is from the word BABA and ALÁWO.
Bàbá is FATHER/ELDER
Aláwo is a DEVOTEE.
It simply means a member of the congregation who has grown in knowledge, wisdom and spirituality of IFÁ.
He is not necessarily an old man but the wisdom grows with age.
A young man of 21years old can be gifted with such knowledge through quick learning and therefore become an Elder even over men who are older than his father.
BABALÁWO is a PRIEST OF IFÁ.
He is NORMALLY supposed or expected to have learnt all the matters of IFÁ corpus.
He knows all the ODÙS [ Chapters and Verses] of IFÁ and he has committed everything to memory.
It takes a very long time to achieve this and he is constantly learning.
He is DEDICATED to IFÁ and normally isn't expected to be engaged in any other job but strictly IFÁ worship.
He is always there to consult IFÁ for people who needs guidance and he assists them with understanding the messages from IFÁ.
The Babaláwos are not interested in earthly vanities, always contented and are very often poor in material things.
But they were never hungry.
They just couldn't be bothered about MONEY.
They live on the little FREE- WILL gifts from people of the community.
4. That is the way things were in the time of sanity.
It was so in the time of our ancestors.
It was so even in our time, not too long ago.
It is a very orderly system.
Babaláwos are not the evil men who go about to destroy people as so often depicted in your attrocious Nollywood home videos.
Babaláwo is the one depicted in Tunde Kelani's Thunderbolt, acted by Chief Adebayo Faleti.
They are a people who simply belief and have faith in and dedicated to a different order of knowledge.
Babaláwos DON'T evangelize.
They DON'T come to invite you to learn wisdom or know about their system of beliefs.
It is infact a TABOO for a Babaláwo to call a man who had visited for consultations the day before and asking him "How far?".
5. But the world has turned upside down now.
We have learnt new things.
Babaláwos have been watching Televangelists on TV preaching PROSPERITY.
The people have been glued to Mount Zion films of Mike Bamiloye and their minds twisted, they are brainwashed to see Babaláwos as great evil men, his films are designed for you see where the Babaláwos are depicted as dirty, lousy and wicked souls who will rot in hell.
We now have men who managed to steal a few Odùs from somewhere and he will go about acting as Babaláwos, mesmerizing ignorant and desperate people with oratory of Yoruba poetry.
We now have quacks in the system.
Babaláwos now do SIGNBOARDS TO ADVERTISE!!!!
Babaláwos now want to be rich. Many of them concentrate on the sections of IFÁ which deal with mysticism and voodooism and they use the knowledge to do magical things.
They use it to do rituals for MONEY.
Babaláwos now live in Mansions and spend their lives thinking of making more money.
Their business with IFÁ is just for them to make money.
Many Babaláwos have now become like Pastorpreneurs and Uztaz confusing and deceiving people, using the ancient wisdom and knowledge of our ancestors under cover of Christian bible and Muslim Qur'an.
The same Bible and Qu'ran were themselves plagiarized from the IFÁ corpus.
IT IS A FACT:
You can argue that with your Pastors and Imams.
It is now you will understand why our ancestors were so reluctant to share THAT KNOWLEDGE in the first place.
They knew that it may become difficult to regulate people and the negative use that they could deploy the knowledge.
It is the reason our Elders had A CULT TO PROTECT THAT BODY OF KNOWLEDGE.
Now, the few Elders we have left are very scared to share more knowledge with our generation; one by one they are departing with so much of that knowledge without leaving it behind or transferring it to the next generation.
We don't know yet that we have been ATTACKED in Yoruba land.
There is a serious problem!!!!
© Adedamola Adetayo (15 Jun 2023)
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