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| About site: http://www.fa.indiana.edu/~conner/yoruba/man.html |
Title: Religion and Spirituality/African/Traditional - Man and the Gods in Yoruba Art An exhibit of Yoruba religious art, with brief explantions of the iconography of the deities depicted.
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Yoruba Art in Wood and Metal
Man and the
Gods
Ifa is the oracle of divination who mediates between the gods and men.
The gods
are believed to communicate their motives through the process of
divination.
The priest is able to suggest actions that will avert misfortune.
Through Ifa
divination an individual, or whole town, can obtain solutions to
difficult problems
and restore good relations between themselves and the gods.
Eshu-Elegba is the messenger of the gods. He is the youngest, most
agile, and
quick witted. He causes trouble for those who neglect the other gods.
It is Eshu
who delivers the sacrifices that have been prescribed by the Ifa diviner
to Olorun,
the distant high god. Eshu and Ifa are therefore intimates in the
business of
manipulating the destinies of men. Eshu is the only deity acutally
portrayed in
Yoruba art. It is Eshu's face that is represented on many Ifa
divination boards
and occasionally on objects used by all the other cults. In
character
with his contradictory nature, Eshu dance staffs (ogo Elegba) are
frequently held
head downward.
Eshu's long, phallic hairstyle
is regarded as the "sign" of his bond of
friendship with Ifa,
the god of divination. In one story, Ifa pretended he was dead in order
to test the
devotion of those around him. He was disappointed by everyone except
Eshu.
Even though the trickster god was in the process of shaving his head, he
was so
overcome by grief with the news that he rushed to Ifa's bedside with his
hair half
shaved. Ifa recognized his friend's faithfulness and asked Eshu to
continue to let
his hair grow in this half-shaved style forever.
Eshu figures are usually decorated with beads and cowries, but the
god may also
be symbolized by a simple chunk of uncarved stone. The Meyer Collection
figurative stone sculpture depicted here may be an exceptionally rare shrine piece.
It depicts Eshu seated on a stool. Carved in a terse, compact style,
only half of its
length is discolored, suggesting that it had once been buried in the
ground.
The Ifa corpus is made up of several hundred figures, orodu, each
associated
with a large body of independent verses known as ese Ifa. The god, Ifa,
is called
to attention by the diviner (babalawo) with a conical tapper, sometimes
made of
ivory (iroke-Ifa). A
cup
(agere-Ifa) carved with a scene from one of these verses serves as a
"home" for
the sacred palm nuts. By throwing sixteen of these nuts
(ikin) on a
powdered divination board (opon Ifa) and studying the marks left in the
sawdust,
the diviner is able to determine which of the several hundred odu
should be
recited. He then begins to call out a series of verses from this
chapter, until the
client recognizes one as significant. After several throws a meaningful
text will
begin to coalesce. For example, the babalawo may piece together the
following
cluster of verses for a man whom he has divined will be honored:
Nobody despises fire
And wraps it up in a cloth.
Nobody despises the snake
And ties it round his waist as a belt.
Nobody despises the king
And hits him on the head.
Today people must honor me.
(Beier: 1959:57)
The Ifa divination accessories are stored in a large bowl (opon igere)
with the
board itself sitting under it. To entice the spirit forces they
represent, bowls and
boards are frequently emblazoned with the face of Eshu, the trickster
god, or
they can be more elaborately carved with a series of panels often
representing
other major deities and spirit forces. The subjects of the relief panels
are not
narratively linked. They are essentially recognizable emblems that
summarize
overlapping concepts that continually reverberate throughout Yoruba
culture
the hunter, the supplicant, the bird, the warrior, the snake, the
chameleon, the act
of procreation. The number of relief panels will vary according to the
importance of the commission. The four-sided projection at the top of
some
bowls recalls the form of the royal crown worn by kings descended from
Oduduwa. In fact, royal beaded crowns are themselves revered as
"shrines to the
head."
The head is an important concept in Yoruba art and
ritual. The verandah pole
depicting an Ifa priest with his head half shaven recalls the story of
the special bond of friendship between Eshu and Ifa. It also signifies
that the
priest is officiating at an initiation ceremony. The Yoruba customarily
shave the
head on ritual occasions, because the spirits are believed to enter and
leave a
person through his head. Every human being has been given a
"head," or
destiny, prior to birth that can only be foreseen and arbitrated through
divination. However, each person also has the ability to tap the power
of this
"inner head" (ori inu) to achieve their full potential in
life. One's character and
personality are said to emanate from this inner head. Its physical
manifestation
is a small conical "shrine of the head" (ibori) that is kept
in a larger, crown-like
container, or "house of the head" (ile-ori).
Both are non-figurative,
made of leather, and strung with cowries. The more successful an
individual is in
life, the more cowries he will be able to embroider on his container.
The "house
of the head" of a king is, therefore, always very large and
elaborate. At death,
the whole sculpture will be dismantled and dispersed.
The verandah pole in the Meyer Collection depicts an Ifa priest
carrying a
divining staff (opa osun, orere), in his right hand and a prestige cane
in his left.
His special half-shaved hairstyle indicates that he is officiating over an
initiation and may be a reference to the story of the origin of
the friendship between Ifa and Eshu. A priest
brings out this special iron staff at large, community-oriented
functions. The
staff symbolizes the diviner's power over death and other destructive
forces, for
it is believed that if a cock is sacrificed to the staff, death will be
tricked into
taking the crying sound of the fowl in place of the human being. The
head,
wings, and feet of the cock are tied to the shaft as spiritual
nourishment for the
power of the staff. A lone metal bird perches at the top. It is welded
to a flat
disc which rests on the inverted bottom part of hollow, metallic cones
or bells.
Other sets of bells decorate the length of the staff. This
bird is a
symbolic link between the earth and sky. The sixteen birds that
surround another
staff, that of the Osanyin, the god of herbal medicine, represent
various
aggressive and malevolent spiritual forces with which man must cope.
But the lone bird of the Ifa staff is believed to represent a much
higher
power--the swift and decisive "soul" of divination, which
protects both the
diviner and his clients as they seek to probe the hidden wishes and
motives of the
gods.
Proceed
through this exhibit, return to the
Doorway
, or compare with the Akan
section.
Last updated 29 March 1995.
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An | exhibit | of | Yoruba | religious | art, | with | brief | explantions | of | the | iconography | of | the | deities | depicted. |
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http://www.fa.indiana.edu/~conner/yoruba/man.html
Man and the Gods in Yoruba Art 2008 August
dvd rental
dvd
An exhibit of Yoruba religious art, with brief explantions of the iconography of the deities depicted.
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