Yoruba medicine

Yoruba medicine

The Yoruba are one of the largest tribes in Africa, with 30 million individuals throughout the region of West Africa. Yorubic medicine is Orisha-based medicine practiced by many other groups in Africa, the Caribbean and others, mostly due to the slave Diaspora. “African herbal medicine is commonly called Yorubic or Orisha medicine on the African continent. It started from a religious text, called Ifa Corpus. According to tradition, the Ifa Corpus was revealed by the mystic prophet, Orunmilla, around 4,000 years ago in the ancient city of Ile-Ife, now known as Yorubaland. The last 400 years saw individuals in the Caribbean and South America practice the Yorubic healing system as a token of their past when the first wave of African slaves arrived in the Americas.” [“Herbal Medicine From Africa.” Maintaining Health is Easy! 20 March 2008. ] . Orunmilla taught the people about the customs of divination, prayer, dance, symbolic gestures, personal, and communal elevation. He also advised them on spiritual baths, meditation, and herbal medicine in particular. The Ifa Corpus is considered to be the foundation of divine herbology.

Basic Philosophies

According to A D Buckley, Yoruba medicine is similar to European medicine in that its main thrust is to kill or expel from the body tiny, invisible "germs" or insects (kokoro) and also worms (aron) which inhabit small bags within the body. For the Yoruba, however, these germs and worms perform useful functions in the healthy body, aiding digestion, fertility etc. However, if they become too powerful in te body, they must be controlled, killed or driven out with bitter-tasting plants contained in medicines.Yoruba medicine is quite different from homeopathic medicine, which uses medicinal ingredients that imitates pathological symptoms. Rather, in a similar manner to mainstream European medicine, it strives to destroy the agencies that cause disease [Anthony D Buckley Yoruba Medicine, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1985 (Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology 1985) 2nd edition, Athelia Henrietta Press, New York 1997 Ch2] .

Buckley claims that traditional Yoruba ideas of the human body are derived from the image of a cooking pot, susceptible to overflowing. The female body overflows dangerously but necessarily once a month; germs and worms in the body can overflow their "bags" in the body if they are given too much “sweet” (tasty) food. The household is understood in a similar way. As germs overflow their bag, menstrual blood the female body, and palm oil the cooking pot, so women in the marital household tend to overflow and return to their natal homes [Buckley Ch6] .

As well as using bitter plants to kill germs and worms, Yoruba herbalists also use incantation (ofo) in medicines to bring good luck (awure), for example, to bring money or love and for other purposes too. Medicinal incantations are in some ways like the praise songs addressed to human beings or gods: their purpose is to awaken the power of the ingredients hidden in the medicine. Most medicinal incantations use a form of word-play, similar to punning, to evoke the properties of the plants implied by the name of the plant [Buckley Ch7] .

Some early writers believed that the Yoruba people are actually an East African tribe who moved from the Nile River to the Niger area. For example, Olumide J. Lucas claims that "the Yoruba, during antiquity, lived in ancient Egypt before migrating to the Atlantic coast."

“With Egypt at its roots, it is therefore inevitable that African herbal medicine became associated with magic. Amulets and charms were more common than pills as preventions or curatives of diseases. Priests, who were from the earliest days the forefathers of science and medicine, considered diseases as possession by evil demons and could be treated using incantations along with extracts from the roots of certain plants. The psychosomatic method of healing disorders used primarily by psychiatrists today is based loosely on this ancient custom.” [“Herbal Medicine From Africa.”]

This being said, to modern westerners the medicine practices of the Yoruba may seem to be too magical/mystical, in fact the word medicine and magic are the same. But it must be recognized that to the Yorubas it is a system; Yorubic medicine is not merely medicine, such as it is in modern times, it is a medicine, the magic of a religion and a science.

Orishas in Yoruba Medicine

The Yoruba religion has a multitude of gods and goddesses, the major of which are called Orisha. Osain is one of the most important Orisha’s. Osain rules over all wild herbs, and he is considered the greatest herbalist who knows the powers of all plants. In the Yoruba tribe a sort of staff is given to the herb gatherer of the community, to make clear their position. In Africa there are so many herbs and plants that are used in healing, that only someone trained for life can competently perform the function. The plants and herbs of Osain have their purely medicinal value as well as their magical value. The Osainista knows how to correctly gather the herbs and plants. Some plants have to be gathered at certain times of the day or night. Certain plants have to have certain prayers said to them and certain offerings made in order to correctly work. As said before there are a multitude of Orisha’s. In diagnosing illness each one of the orisha’s has physical qualities and herbal attributes, each affecting one another. See the diagrams below [Tariq Sawandi. “Yorubic Medicine: The Art of divine Herbology”. Planet Herbs Online. 20 March 2008] :

Titles and Processes

An Onisegun is an herbalist, Oloogun is one of several terms for a medical practitioner, and a Babalawo is a ceremony priest/priestess. An Oloogun practitioner in Yoruba, in addition to analyzing symptoms of the patient, look for the emotional and spiritual causes of the disease to placate the negative forces (ajogun) and only then will propose treatment that he/she deems appropriate. This may include herbs in the form of an infusion, enema, etc. In Yoruban medicine they also use dances, spiritual baths, symbolic sacrifice, song/prayer, and a change of diet to help cure the sick. They also believe that the only true and complete cure can be a change of “consciousness” where the individual can recognize the root of the problem themselves and seek to eliminate it. Disease to the Yoruba is seen as a disruption of our connection with the Earth. “Physicians are often priests, priestesses, or high priests, or belong to a guild-like society hidden within tribal boundaries, completely secret to the outside world. In their communities, even obtaining an education in medicine may require becoming an initiate of one of these societies. The world view of a priest involves training and discipline to interpret events that are indicative of the nature of the patient's alignment internally with their own conscious and unrecognized issues, as well as with a variety of external forces and beings which inhabit our realm and require the inner vision and wisdom of the priest to interpret.” [2. L.B. Crotte. “African Medicine”. Acupuncture Associates. 20 March 2008. ] The Yoruba tribe are large believers is preventative medicine. They are obvious criticizers of modern western medicine where we try to mask problems with drugs, rather than cure the whole of the person. According to the medicine men of Yoruba, if we listen to our bodies they will provide us with the preparation and appropriate knowledge we need to regain our balance with the Earth.

References


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