Just the facts...
Years ago there was an enormously popular television show called Dragnet. Jack Webb, who played Sergeant Friday, made a national phrase from his character's repetitive phrase: "Just the facts", in much the same way that Regis Philbin, in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, has popularized: "Is that your final answer?"
Facts, as they pertain to Orisa worship, can be quite valuable.but, when they begin to assume a life of their own, they confuse and distort our ability to connect to these powerful energies. Don't confuse my wariness regarding facts with my insistence on logic. They are totally different issues. Facts are true.they are not Truth! Logic is the matrix into which meaningful facts take their appropriate place.
In our culture we are enamored with facts. Our Cartesian society would like to believe that, armed with enough facts, you can accomplish anything. That is nonsense." Facts", as my Father loved to say, "and 25 cents will make a phone call."
Day after day, week after week, I receive e-mails and phone calls from individuals looking for facts. They range from the sincere individual seeking to understand more about Orisa, to the academic, so enamored with facts, that not only do they fail to see the forest (logic) for the trees (facts), they don't even understand the forest exists!
I try to answer sincere individuals with the explanation that, in relationship to Orisa, for the most part, facts are secondary to energy/intent. Conversely, unlike many who are thrilled to be included in any way by the academic community, I tend to view the Academics with the same skepticism as was evinced by the great artist and priestess, Susanne Wenger who questioned both their motives and techniques. To paraphrase Wenger, " they came unbidden and unasked into sacred spaces, their hob nailed boots and arrogance allowing light into areas where light has no place." All in the search for facts.
Recently, I received an e-mail from a academic who was entranced with his research that provided him with the following facts: Africans had carried their philosophy into Egypt where he observed similarities between Sango and certain Egyptian deities. He wanted to know the facts concerning this. I replied that the importance, spiritually, lay not in the itinerary of the Sango energy, but in our ability to connect and benefit from it. The fixation on facts from academics seeking to publish rather than grow, seemed to me a kind of intellectual masturbation that had no real value in practicing the philosophy. He considered my reply arrogant. I considered it accurate.
There are other issues with giving facts a life of their own. In Santeria/Lucumi, as well as Christianity/Judaism, we are given a set of facts that are never to be questioned because they "are true." Then we are asked to unerringly adhere to, and obey, these facts because they are true. Yet, being true is far from Truth. Simple examples such as " thou shalt not kill," may well be considered true, yet if a madman was about to kill your wife or children, and you had the means of killing him first, what would be the Truth of the situation? Our philosophy is cluttered with thousands of trues.many of which, when placed in the matrix of logic, are not Truth. Simple example such as: you offer red palm oil to Esu, are true.but if you live in a climate, geographical location or area where red palm oil does not exists, what is the Truth? The Truth must always be greater than the facts. The Truth would be that olive oil, whale oil etc. would all be appropriate substitutes.
In looking back on over a quarter of a century of attempting to understand Orisa philosophy, it seems quite clear that our work (even though at times we did not recognize it as such) was to separate the meaningful facts from the out-of -date/out-of-context facts that no longer represented Truth. Further, it was to place these meaningful facts within the matrix/foundation of a logical and benevolent world construct. The result, in our Western Culture, is what we call American Ifa.
At the beginning of this new millennium we invite you to free yourself from the shackles of facts that no longer represent Truth, and to allow yourself to be empowered by the divine, but logical, energy of the Orisa.
Blessings,
Oluwo Philip Neimark
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