List of Appendices
3.6 Spheres of Purity among the Yoruba
3.6.5 Purity as Abstaining from Taboos and Unethical Behaviours
From the foregoing another dimension of purity can be expanded to include abstaining from those things that are regarded as taboos or profane to one’s religious obligations.
The term taboo (tapu): “sacred” both powerful and dangerous. From a Polynesian word tapu or tafoo. Usually associated with the avoidance of certain places, objects, or people. The term has been extended to refer to the avoidance of totemic animals or plants, or prohibitions on marrying of certain classes of kin (Bowie 2000:136).
Many things are regarded as taboos to different people, ethnic groups and the specific divinities. Taboos are prohibited actions, the breaking of which is followed by a supernatural penalty. In order to grasp the significance of the supernatural penalty, we must have a clear understanding of what is meant by covenant relationship.
A covenant relationship with a divinity puts one under the obligation to obey all the regulations of the cult and observe its taboos (Awolalu & Dopamu, 1979: 212). The Yoruba word for taboo is eewộ, which means, things forbidden, things not done. In the Ifa text, Odu Irosun Obere, eewộ, is conceived as sin or something that contravenes societal norms. The message is that in a breach of any of them, one has personally desecrated the sanctity of the land and has offended someone. The text reads:
Ikun awo mộgan, asa awo mokili,
Okere f’itakun sona nii s’awo egbeegun.
Eyele awo koto.Ega sese nii s’awo alegbede.
Awon mararun nii s’omo ikofa ile Orunmila.
Ifa ko won ni dida owo, won moo da,
O ko won ni o okooro ebo ni hiha won mo ha.
Orunmila wa sawo lo Egbe to jina gbungbun bi ojo, Awon meta d’ale, awon meji nikan lo sooto.
Orunmila ni a kii se ko moo ba ikun awo mogan lo, Eewo ko moo ba asa awo mokiti.
Bi n ban bi ni, ko moo ba okere fitakun sona tii s’awo egbeegun lo.
82 Eni eleni ni ko moo ko feyele.
Ile rere l’egaa wo. Owo wa ese ngbon Ati wole Barapetu a ba won lerin.
Ko wo momo wa kese momo gbon Ile Barapetu ko leru
Translation
Ikun the Ifa priest of mogan Asa the Ifa priest of mokiti
Okere who often makes a creeping stem plant its pathway is the priest of egeegun.
Eyele the Ifa priest of koto,
Ega sese the Ifa priest of agbalede.
These five Ifa priests were once apprentices under Orunmila.
They were taught the art of divination to a perfection stage.
They were taught how to imprint Odu symbols.
They were also taught the preparation of sacrifices to a triumphant level.
Orunmila later traveled to far distant Egbe.
Three of them betrayed him and only two were loyal.
Orunmila declared (in a curse): things forbidden will always follow ikun, The Ifa priest of mogan,
Taboos will always follow asa, the Ifa priest of Mokiti,
Vengeance will always follow okere, the Ifa priest of Egbeegun, who always makes a creeping stem his pathway.
(Contrarily he pronounced blessings on eyele and ega) May people provide for places of abode for eyele, May ega always have good places to rest (perch), The hands are shivering, the legs are shaking, To enter Barapetu’s house is fearful.
Hands to stop shivering and Legs to cease shaking,
No trepidation in Barapetu’s house (Obembe, 2008)
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The Yoruba from the above believes that a ‘ewo’ (forbidden) can bring uncommon diseases and illness to the society. In the same vein, Afe Adogame sees ewo as ritual prohibitions and taboos as he writes:
…ewo are prohibitions which must be strictly observed. They may be general or particular, moral or ceremonial, secret or public, or merely imposed by custom. Thus, some ewo of a general sense are meant to apply to the entire community irrespective of clan, gender and social status. In some cases it may apply only to males or females as the case may be. Great festival occasions such as the annual festival in respect of an orisa, require a great deal of preparations by the officiating priests. They have to prepare themselves in order to be worthy and acceptable before the orisa. They have to observe certain ewo or codes of conduct, avoiding inter alia, coition, cursing and fighting, and they abstain from taking certain types of food, fruits and drinks depending on the divinity in question (Adoagame 1998: 127)
Taboos may not be morally wrong in themselves but are sacrilegious to the cult concerned. For example the Yoruba worshippers of Orisa nla divinity are forbidden to drink palm wine. This we are told is because he is the divinity of holiness and although it is not morally wrong for one to drink alcohol in moderation, it is forbidden for the worshippers to do so in order to attain a higher level of perfection. It is noteworthy that worshippers of a particular divinity may not observe the taboos of other divinities. For example while the worshippers of orisa-nla may not drink palm wine, it is mandatory for the worshippers of Ogun to do so.
Furthermore, the breaking of taboos among the Yoruba signifies the desecration of the sanctity of such things, places or people that have rendered them profane. To bring back purity therefore, there would be need for sacrifices and rituals performances. There are offences that are gender specific. These are generally taboos that discriminate against women. These feature prominently concerning the activities of masquerades whereby it is considered abominable for their secrets to be divulged to women. It is considered a bad omen for women to be seen going out at night during the oro festival that celebrates the essence of masquerades.
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Another dimension of purity is that of doing away with unethical behaviours. This opens the Pandora’s Box of moral conduct and rests on general consensus in societies and cultures. Marcel Onyeocha has noted in traditional Nigerian society because of lack of literacy there was no written moral code of conduct. Nevertheless moral laws were very much in existence. He commented:
Moral laws were generally conventional and regulated the individual members of the community and the entire community as a whole (Onyeocha 1994:54).
Nevertheless it is significant to note that such laws cannot be called societal laws in the sense of regulation as no-one can claim authorship of these rules of conduct. Their validity is seen to lie in the tradition that was handed down by the forebears of one generation to another. Some features of Yoruba traditional moral codes include prohibitions of theft, rape, falsehood, cruelty and murder. Sanctions concerning these violations of traditional morals are not discriminatory according to the gender of the offenders. Furthermore a person that lives a life of purity according to the Yoruba would not commit any act of betrayal. The Yoruba Ifa literary corpus contains series of information on this issue. For example, an Ifa text, Odu Eji Ogbe says:
Ofofo nii p’eru, epe a si p’ole Alajobi nii p’ayekan to ba s’ebi A gb’ori ile ajeku, agbori ile a j’eja,
A gb’ori ilea se baje, ase d’owo ile ti a jo mu.
Tale bearing kills a slave, cursing kills a thief, Family curse kills an erring member,
We stay on the earth and ate rat (meat) together, We stay on the earth and ate fish together,
We stayed on the earth and you betrayed the other
Vengeance belongs to the earth on which we took a (solemn) covenant (Bateye 2006: 6-9)
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To reiterate, falsehood and covenant breaking are condemned by the Yoruba. They say:
Odale a ba’le lo that is, “A betrayer will perish with the earth”. It is significant that truthfulness and rectitude are highly rated among the essential virtues with the Yoruba ệlệfệ expecting to be an agent of evil they say: Otito kii s’ina ironii f’ori iro gbe, which means, “Truthfulness does not miss but dishonesty goes astray”.
Basic Yoruba belief involves ritual practices such as singing, dancing, drumming, Spirit possession, ritual healing, respect for ancestors, divination, moral values and societal norms. There are rituals associated with the naming of a new born baby, burial, marriage, food health, kingship, and so on.
Yoruba life is a life of rituals. Rituals are performed on all occasions; in times of happiness and in time of sorrow: in happiness to prevent anything that could mar the favourable atmosphere and in time of calamity to rid the society of evil (Adewale 1988:106). These rituals have their personal and communal significance, they have symbolic and communicate connotations. Rituals are the major functional and elaborate aspect of healing both in Yoruba tradition and in Christianity (Orita 1988; Awolalu 1979, 1976; Sawyer 1969). Sources of ritual impurity are either natural phenomena (such as childbirth, scale diseases, menstrual and seminal emissions) or certain cultic procedures (Leviticus 16:28, Numbers 19:8). Moral impurity results from heinous acts especially the ones that concerns social life such as sexual sins, bloodshed, idolatry and deceit (Klawans 2001). Ritual impurity may be unintentional (e.g., children that got infected with HIV virus from their mothers and those infected by blood transfusion). While on the other hand, moral pollution is the result of a deliberate at and thus may show case the transgressor own character. The character of such moral impurity may vary from metaphorical blemishing to a substantive impurity that is quite similar to ritual impurity hence, Robert Withnow (1987:97-144) opined in a social cultural perspective that moral impurity is a disruption of the perfect social or cosmic order.
In the Yoruba context, diseases are viewed ritually and morally. Some diseases are seen as ritual impurity when the gods or the ancestors are offended or better still when they are said to be angry; and inflict offenders with diseases such as “Sanponna” – Smallpox, ‘Jejere’ – Goiter, “Kuruna”, Ifoju – blindness etc. According to Ogunbile (1997) this is in consonance with very many Yoruba sayings, proverbs and adages. One of which is Ilera l’oro, “Health is wealth”. On the other hand, some diseases are looked
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at as caused by moral impurity, e.g. atosi – gonorrhea, siphillis – “ako – atosi”, “daho” – women’s discharge etc. Diseases in the Yourba context are seen, not necessarily as of a physical, but of a deep spiritual and metaphysical nature and causation. Hence the state of wholeness to a Yoruba man involves spiritual physical and psychological health. This is the fact believed that such diseases could only be cured or subverted by certain ritual preparations to hence good health and to word off misfortunes and sufferings (Omoyajowo 1982:169-183).
Diseases and sicknesses are seen as direct influences of spiritual beings who may have been offended especially if certain taboos are broken. There are vicarious taboos, eewo, which if broken will result in certain moral evils. Taboos in Yoruba context are not to be seen as an attempt to socialize the society but as sacred duties to divinities (Thorpe 1972). Certain ritual taboos like eating of port, wearing of shoes inside the Church, eating of okete (a kind of large rat), preventing menstruating women from entering the church are imposed in some traditional churches (Awolalu and Dopamu 2005:282). Some of these clearly show the attitude of the Yoruba christian to people infected with HIV and AIDS at the outset.