Memory versus knowledge

Lately there has been an enormous amount of controversy over my characterization that memorizing hundreds of pataki from the various Odu's has very little to do with being a competent Babalawo or Iyalwo. I have received dozens of e-mails challenging my position. Some have been courteous, while others have been inflammatory. So, I would like to deal with this issue in a broader manner.

Let me begin by saying that "memorizing" 1200 plus pataki (historical interpretations) of the odu not only doesn't make a better Diviner, it may actually make them less able. The rationale is quite simple and logical.

The Odu are representations of energy.not stories! The stories were simply the observations of Diviner's of the past on how those energies seemed to impact the lives of the individuals they were cast for. To explain these occurrences, they constructed tales that could be taught to their apprentices. As a teaching tool, in the context of that moment, that culture, that society, it was undoubtedly valuable. As a Historical or Divine Truth, it is utter nonsense and destructive!

The power of Ifa lies in the living energy it has come to understand and work with. When you place that energy in a time capsule, when you preclude its meaningful application to current times, current cultures, current societies, you castrate it.

Ifa was always an oral tradition. As such, it would automatically adjust, evolve and mutate to the ever changing situations it was applied to. Anthropologists may take the position that it was an oral tradition only because there were no instruments for writing back then, that the Yoruba society didn't depend on Rosetta Stones to live successfully in this world. But, in truth, it doesn't matter. Whether by accident, planning or circumstance, the strength and power of these ancient Truths and observations lay in its very fluidity.

Then, along came the West. Missionaries with their self righteous pomposity; scholars with their academic arrogance; traders with their manipulation for profit. All sought to re-shape this indigenous culture and philosophy to their own world view. Without belaboring the results.pollution, corruption, and slavery et al. the most destructive result for Ifa was the codification of our Truths through writing and philosophy. The philosophy which stated: "The Bible contains absolute, unalterable, unchanging truths because they are written and unchanging."

This freeze frame mentality, which, in my view, had taken the vibrant, living religions of the west, and confined them to a prison of contextuality, worked its insidious way into Ifa.

As a result, the ever changing observations of Eternal Energies were no longer able to weave and paint their profound pictures for the lives of the devotee. The inherent Kaleidoscope of energy became a number painting for future generations.

So, those that feel that memorization is anything more than an exercise in discipline, who believe that these memorized passages contain the unalterable, unchanging truths of Ifa, have blinded themselves and their clients from the potent power the energy has to offer. They are, in essence, practicing Christian Ifa. The have been duped and co-opted into the western trap of the power of the written word as opposed to the basic Yoruba understanding of the power of pure energy.

At the Ifa Foundation, we teach initiates the energy of the odu, the disciplined thinking of how to apply and understand that energy in the context of that moment, that client, that reality.and, how each time an odu is cast, a new story is written.

It may offend some..but it will not offend Orunmila.

Blessings,

Oluwo Philip Neimark

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