LECTURE BY

GBAWONIYI ADEBOLU FATUNMISE AND

AWO FA’LOKUN FATUNMBI – PART I
April 21, 2001 at the African Culture Center,
Atlanta, Georgia

Falokun: I’m going to start by asking a question, I believe it’s

an important question. Somebody tell me what we’re up to
with Ifa, what’s the point? What is it we’re really doing? Does
anyone have an opinion on that?

Audience: To make a connection with nature.

Falokun: Okay, that’s good and it’s not wrong, and what I
want to do is talk about what Ifa says it’s up to. Here’s what I
want to do, this is my agenda, this is the point of the day, I
want to give you a cultural and spiritual context about how to
study Ifa, how to learn, how to proceed, and how to get better
at it. In some ways it’s really ridiculous having me teach in
Baba’s presence, because in my lifetime I will never know as
much as he does. Hopefully what I can do for him and you
and all of us is share some of my experience on how you
bridge the cultural gap so we can all end up on the same page
and move forward. I have been trying to bridge that gap for
the last twenty years. Hopefully you can learn from my
mistakes and not have to go through the trial and error
process that I went through.
So here’s the first thing I want to say. In Africa if you ask
any elder a question they won’t give you an opinion. They’ll
recite Odu (sacred scripture), they’ll recite proverbs, they
share the wisdom of the ancestors, then they might comment
on that as it relates to your specific concern. In America
everyone has an opinion about everything and that’s kind of
what we’re brought up to learn and believe. But Ifa has very
specific things to say about what it’s up to.
The first thing it says is you come to earth to develop
good character. The word for good character is iwa-pele. Are
you with me? What the heck does iwa-pele really mean? Most
Yoruba religious words are elisions of sentences shortened to
form a word embracing a concept. Iwa-pele is an elision of I
wa ope ile, I come to greet the earth. There is a whole
worldview implied by the notion that this is our job as human
beings to come and greet the earth. You greet something
when you are in relationship with it. So greeting the earth
means we have a relationship with the earth and there is
something mutually beneficial in that relationship.
The first thing Ifa is about is greeting the earth with good
character. Ifa is also about making the earth a better place
when we pass on, than it was when we arrived. Creating aye
rere, creating a good place to live or literally good earth. Aye
meaning; earth, re, meaning; good, rere meaning; good-good
implying absolutely good. Are you with me? We come to earth
to develop good character and to make the earth a better
place.
Now a key to making the earth a better place is a
fundamental belief called atunwa. In Ifa atunwa is the Ifa
concept of reincarnation. Wa means; come, atun, means;
again, I come back to earth again.
In terms of the popular notion of reincarnation Ifa is
significantly different from Middle Eastern religions. We
believe that coming to earth is a good thing and we do not try
and free ourselves from the cycle. Coming to earth is a good
thing and we do it repeatedly.
We also believe that you reincarnate within your family
lineage. We reincarnate in either the family lineage of your
father or mother. Reincarnation through your family lineage
means that to make the earth a good place is to make the
earth a good place for you and your offspring to return to.
There is a Yoruba proverb that says essentially that if you
continuously piss in your drinking water it becomes unfit to
drink. Ifa knows this because Africans live close to their
natural environment and they’re smart enough to figure that
out. Here in American we piss in our drinking water more
than any other culture in the history of life on the planet.
We’re not smart enough to figure out that doesn’t work and
now we can’t understand why we have to buy water from a
bottle. I could get on a rant about this so don’t let me get
sidetracked. It doesn’t take a lot to figure out this doesn’t
work.
The other thing is we believe as we come back through
reincarnation we have a specific destiny. Destiny in Yoruba is
ayanmo. That would translate as my ancestral tree, I think.
Ayan is a tree, mo is my. People always want to know what is
my destiny. It’s real simple. Ifa says ayanmo ni iwa-pele, iwa-
pele ni ayanmo; destiny is good character, good character is
destiny. If you are ever not sure what to do, do the right thing,
do the moral thing, do the honest thing, do the elevated thing
and you will do the right thing, absolutely. You do not come
to earth to make it a better place to beat up your loved ones.
You do not come to earth to make it a better place to deal
drugs. I am belaboring an obvious point.
I’m going to tell a story about myself. When I went to
Africa for the first time in 1989 there was very little Ifa practice
in the United States. There was Orisa, but not Ifa. I was told
they were going to test me before they initiated me, so I read
everything written in English on Ifa at the time and had the
silly mistaken notion that I knew something. I was in Africa
for less than an hour when I realized the little kids knew more
than I could every hope? Who did I think I was, and please
God don’t let them test me. Do you understand?
The thing that was most profoundly revealing to me, and
the thing that I did not understand from any of the books that
I read, and still haven’t seen written about is the fact that Ifa
is taught through the sanctification of the extended family.
What does that mean? Sanctification means deification, or
making sacred the extended family. It means everybody in the
village has a job, everybody receives spiritual training in
relationship to that job, everybody gets training to advance to
the next job and next job is incumbent on age and maturity.
Ifa is a mystery school and the school is the family. The
school is not some monastery up on the hill, it isn’t some
secret place under a cave, it’s not someplace where you read a
book and get a certificate. Ile awo ni ile; the mystery school is
the family. It is the structure of the family that is important
and eternal, not the people who fill each position at any given
moment. There is a position in the extended family in baba’s
hometown of Ile Ife called the Araba of Ile Ife. That is a
position within the extended family. That title has existed for
thousands and thousands of years. The faces who fill that
position change every thirty forty years, maybe. The body who
sits in that seat is different every few decades, but the chair,
the seat, the position, the job remains the same as does the
qualifications for holding that job, as does the expectation for
what you do in that job as does the responsibilities that come
with that job.
Let me give you one small example. Three years ago I
became a grandfather. I told people in America I became a
grandfather and people said; yeah, okay, whatever. For those
of you who have child you know the moment your child is
born your life changed forever. You can think of things that
happened to you before you had a child but you can’t feel what
it felt like not being responsible for a child. That changes your
life forever.
It changes again when you become a grandparent. You
start thinking about legacy, the future and leaving your good
name to future generations. That perspective clicks into your
brain and you are forever changed. That’s called; a rite of
passage, you become an older person. In American it was no
big deal. I hadn’t told anyone in Africa I was grandfather. The
minute I arrived in Ode Remo they treated me like babagba
not baba, grandfather not father. Baba Fatunmise will tell
you, there is a difference from the way you treat baba and the
way you treat babagba. When you are a grandparent you eat
first, you sit first, people give you a chair, and you have
certain responsibilities and privileges.

Fatunmise: Just to confirm what baba is saying, when you

get to Nigeria when you meet my dad or something like that
you call me baba you will call my dad babagba, by that we
mean an older one.

Falokun: Thank you baba, there is a reason for that I will get
to later. I want you to get the big picture. One of the easiest
things to understand in terms of the sanctification of the
extended family is that the family comes together to help
everyone go through rites of passage. When everybody is born
in the Fatunmise compound in Ile Ife they have a naming
ceremony for the baby called esentaye, meaning the foot
touches the earth. Every baby is given a ritual in which they
are introduced to the basic foods of the Yoruba diet; palm oil,
water, cola nut, pepper, honey, salt. They invoke Eji-Ogbe the
first Odu of Odu Ifa (Sacred Scripture). Eji-Ogbe speaks of
perfect alignment with the head and the heart, perfect
alignment with destiny. The baby starts life with an
invocation of its highest destiny, that’s as good as it gets. The
entire family comes together to invoke that. Divination is done
to see what that child’s destiny looks like, then that baby is
tracked in that direction.
Esu Yemi where did you grow up?

Esu Yemi: Memphis, Tennessee.

Falokun: Can you imagine what it would be like if everyone in

Memphis, Tennessee knew that you had a destiny to be an Ifa
priest? Every time you did something inconsistent with that
you get your little butt smacked. Every time anybody could do
anything helpful for that they would bring it to you to
encourage that. It’s called nurturing children. We do that in
Western culture really poorly. It’s no mystery.
Think about it. If the essence of African spirituality is
the sanctification of the extended family, what did slavery do?
It destroyed the family. It not only destroyed the family, it tore
apart the heart and soul of the African worldview. That’s a
wound that is as deep as it gets. It isn’t near about getting
fixed. Ifa says; if your life gets better, my life gets better, if you
suffer, I suffer. If it isn’t fixed for African American families, it
isn’t fixed for white folks either. Until we come together for
that and collectively atone for that it’s going to be wound that
festers and gets worse. Just get, with no negative judgment,
families are broken in America. Its called dysfunction in the
world of psychology. Families are broken. Unfortunately
baba, bless his heart, when he first came to American he
couldn’t understand broken families because they are so fixed
in Africa he thought he’d arrived in lala land. He thought
what is this? Am I right?

Fatumise: Yes.

Falokun: Unless you’ve seen a fully functional extended

family, it’s really difficult for an American to understand what
it looks like. I have to say and this is a judgment, it is my
perception that southern African American families have
retained some of the elements of the African extended family
better than in other areas of the country. It’s not like we don’t
know, but really seeing it in a religious context fully is
something that is worth the trip to Africa. I hope that I am not
offending anyone. We are talking about stuff that is not often
discussed cross-culturally, I’m going to make mistakes, work
with me.
You have a naming ceremony, you figure out where the
baby is tracked. If the baby tracked for Ifa and is born in the
family of Ogun worshippers, he goes and lives with an Ifa
family. No big deal, the Ifa family lives across the street from
the Ogun family. Its not like they’re sending him to another
part of the world. All the kids play together all day anyway.
Its just a difference of where he hangs out during the day. The
family is the school. The family is the training center. Are you
with me? Osuntokun you looked puzzled.

Osuntokun: No, I’m just amazed.

Falokun: So at puberty you figure out what it means to be a

man, you figure out what it means to be a woman. There is a
ritual around your first menstrual cycle. If you think about
what a trauma that was, imagine what it would be like to have
that happen in a ritual context where you are taught the
secrets of womanhood by older women. Perhaps you can
imagine that may have been a better way to deal with the
transition.
In terms of the man’s rite of passage, the biggest thing I
deal with as an awo (diviner) is the issue of adult men acting
as children; in other words children in adult male bodies. Men
who never figured out what it meant to grow up, men who
never had the guidance of elder fathers. Africans have fixed
that, they don’t have that problem. The next biggest wound in
America among men is the fatherless son and it’s the hardest
thing to fix. There is no such thing as an orphan in African
because everybody your parent’s age is baba or iya (father or
mother). The major problem we deal with, as a culture in
terms of psychic wounding is a non-existent problem in Africa.
They have figure something out. We need to pay attention.
The next rite of passage is marriage; the whole family
comes together to sanction a relationship. Here’s the African
courtship ritual, young women prove they are fertile. Once
they have done that the father of the baby has an obligation to
marry the mother. Do you catch my drift? If two people make
a baby they get married.

Fatunmise: You don’t have to get pregnant, maybe you have

a friend and you want to get married, but once you get
married you must take care of the children.

Falokun: Once you make a woman pregnant you are the

father and the husband and the entire community insists on
it. There are no single mothers.
One of the responsibilities of Ifa in Africa is to make sure
single women have the option of having children and are
connected with a family that provides food. Ifa priests will
have primary relationships like marriages in this country.
They may also have arranged marriages with single women
who want to have children. They never enter an arranged
marriage unless they have the resources to feed the children.
You go to the Ifa priest because it is assumed the Ifa priest will
arrange this in a way that is morally appropriate. That gets all
confused in this culture and the concept of polygamy in
America is fooling around as much as you can without your
wife finding out. That isn’t it.

Fatunmise: In this country people come to me who don’t

know what their work is to do, because they don’t have
esentaye. If you are born in African you have esentaye.
Esentaye means your future, what is your astrology, what you
bring from heaven. For example one of our family members
had an esentaye for ibeji (twins). So they are told what they
will do and even though they are twins you’d be surprised,
they are told different things. So you support them that way.
While we are doing it their behavior confirms it; one is crying
one is quiet, one is rebellious. There is one particular odu,
when a child is born, if Eji-Ogbe comes to them, that person is
going to make it in life no matter what. But if the odu says he
is going to be a robber, we do things to make sure they do the
right thing in life. If it says they are going to become a chief
they become a chief. The odu of Ofundagbe, means that child
is going to be a thief, we start the ebo immediately for that
child to reverse that tendency to be a thief. I just wanted to
support what baba said.

Falokun: You can see the consequence of this. If you have

people who are born and raised and die with no spiritual
guidance and you’ve got kids now killing each other and being
reborn with that karma from a previous life. We have a
serious problem on our hands spiritually that can’t even begin
to be addressed without taking into consideration some of
these issues related to rites of passage. The ancestors are
coming back and they are not happy. The problem is going to
get progressively worse unless the issue of creating healthy
extended family is addressed. That’s true for all cultures in
American.
Then you go from puberty rite to marriage, then
somewhere along the line, there’s no set time for this, and you
get initiated into orisa. In this country everyone wants to
know whose on your head, what’s your personality who is your
orisa. That doesn’t matter so much in Africa. You get
initiated into the family orisa, because the family orisa is the
corner stone of the family trade. No matter who guides your
ori (consciousness) if your family are blacksmiths you receive
Ogun. No matter who guides your ori if your family are wood
carvers you receive Sango. If you are a cloth maker you get
initiated into Osun. If you are an herbalist you receive
Osanyin. If you’re a farmer you receive oko. If you’re a market
woman you receive Oya. You’re orisa is not so much your
consciousness as it is your job.
In Africa you would not buy a knife from someone who
was not an Ogun priest because an Ogun priest knows the
prayers to make the knife work right. Even the Christians and
Muslims in Nigeria will not buy a knife from someone who is
not a priest of Ogun. It’s a trade skill. Get this; in the human
context people get this confused, I’m off on a rant, I want to
straighten this out. There is a relationship between orisa and
Ifa. Here’s what it is; Ifa is a generalist we have the big view
we have a little piece of everything, not because we’re better
people but because we have good memories. The Orisas are
the specialists. They become experts in different fields. Here
is the important thing to understand Ile ate, meaning; the
village is a mat, there is no such things as the big chief who is
in charge of everything all the time. The chief at any given
moment is the person in charge of what you’re doing in that
moment. Is that correct baba?

Fatunmise: Oh yes.

Falokun: I may walk through the village and look like a big
Ifa priest and people will greet me and treat me like a chief,
but when I go into Ogboni the Obatala’s are the chiefs and I
prostrate to them because we are doing Obatala business. If I
need a need a knife the Ogun priest is the chief. The Araba of
Ode Remo is the senior priest in the village, when his older
sister comes into the house we all bow. It is about age and
maturity. It has nothing to do with Ifa titles it has to do with
respect for age. Right?

Fatunmise: Right.

Falokun: This is all based on the notion that age brings

wisdom, right. Based on the notion that people older than you
have been trained longer so they know more. After you have
been initiated into a trade skill, in baba’s example he has been
initiated into six or seven trade skills so he is a generalist and
a specialist, that makes him a big chief and a wise man and
we are blessed to have him here.
Then you become an elder, meaning a grandparent, then
you sit on the elders council which is called different things in
different places, Iya mi, Ogboni, awoni, emese, and so on. If
you are a grandparent you are able to make communal
decisions and solve communal disputes.
The last rite of passage is your crossing over. You need
to know that all Ifa funerals involve levitating the dead three
days after they die so they can communicate and give their
last will and testament. In Western culture there is a popular
religion built around the notion that this only happened once
in human history, but in Africa this happens every day. You
need to get that it is a major cultural denigration and
suppression of the real truth of the matter to believe this only
happened once in human history.
I see you didn’t understand me, so I will repeat it. I am
about to say something extremely controversial. Baba, correct
me if I am wrong. In all Ifa funerals, the last rite of passage
crossing over, three days after the awo (priest) dies his body
his re-animated so he can talk to the family and give his last
will and testimony. This is true for every awo who dies.
Christianity created a religion based on the belief that this
only happened once in the history of life on earth. I am telling
you were baba lives it happens every time an awo dies. Are
you with me?

Fatunmise: We use obesilo (herbal medicine) and in three

days they will get up and tell you everything they see in
heaven.

Falokun: Here’s my point. We have been lied to about

African spirituality and this is one of the more flagrant lies.
Part of the denigration of African spirituality is to make sure
no one figures out what happened to our lord and savior
wasn’t so special in the context of African culture. If you look
at the fertile crescent (middle east) you will see that it is clearly
a part of Africa.
 So you see what I mean about the family being a mystery
school, do you get the concept? Okay, so now what we need to
talk about is the brass tacks of how you put it together on a
daily basis. Here is why we need to look at that. Can we all
agree without going into detail that families in American are in
deep doodoo? We can agree to that. Dysfunction is rampant.
Can we agree this might be the result of a tactic of divide and
conquer by the ruling class. Can we go that far? Okay good.
Here’s the only question you need to ask yourself as Ifa
worshipers or potential Ifa worshippers; what are you willing
to do to fix the family? Everything else is irrelevant. If you
aren’t willing to do much to fix the family, you’re not doing Ifa,
your wasting my time, go somewhere else.
I am here to tell you that what it takes is more than any
of you can imagine. It isn’t a picnic, it isn’t a free ride, it isn’t
easy. But we’re going to get a concept of what it is so we can
all agree about what we’re up to and so we can all agree about
what it is we’re trying to create.
Here is the first and foremost rule, if you get this you will
be well on your way. I have known Baba for ten or twelve
years. I have never asked him; how are you doing? Never.
The reason I’ve never asked him is because it’s not my
business. He’s the teacher, I’m the student. Have I asked you
how you are doing even in causal conversation, have I?

Fatunmise: No.

Falokun: It is rude to ask an elder how they are doing. Are

you from the south?

Student: Yes

Falokun: Does your family have the rule that kids don’t
speak to an adult unless they are spoken to first?

Student: Indirectly.

Falokun: You are aware of the concept.

Student: Yes.

Falokun: It is a fundamental concept, down south the old

folks say this is a racehorse conversation no jackass allowed.
Why do they do that? Most Americans say; I don’t get it.
Here’s why Ifa says s’otito, s’ododo.

Fatunmise: Osa tura.

Falokun: Thank you baba. If I say baba how are you doing,
because he is an Ifa priest he has to tell me the truth. So then
he tells me his problem, what in the heck am I going to do to
fix it? I don’t want to know. If you can fix it, don’t ask. This
is true even if they are in pain and suffering. The family is a
school with different jobs; it isn’t my job to fix the problem of
an elder. That’s his baba’s job. If his baba didn’t do his job it
isn’t my problem. Do you understand?
Now if he asks me for help, I’m there. But it has to be on
his terms. That is very alien for our cultural orientation. The
whole culture is orientated towards trying to get teenagers to
buy tennis shoes, the concept that teenagers can have
opinions that adults kunle (bow) to is the norm here. But look
at it from the other way around okay. What would you think if
someone from Ile Ife who had never been to a Western school
came to America and decided they wanted to be a brain
surgeon and walked into the hospital and interrupted the
brain surgeon while they were doing an operation and said;
show me how to do this. We would think the person was
whacked. Yet as Americans we go to Africa, we go to the
Araba of Ile Ife and we say; show me about this Ifa deal, show
me some of this stuff, this looks good. No.
I’m going to tell you a big secret, a big secret that is
worth a lot of money. I’ve made four trips to Africa and I’ve
written three books. That’s a lot of information based on four
trips. People to this day accuse me of making the stuff up,
they believe I couldn’t have possible learned all that. Baba did
I get some of it right?

Fatunmise: Oh yes.
Falokun: Here’s how I did it. The first day I was there I
figured out the family was the school and that the eight year
olds teach the six year olds and the ten year olds teach the
eight year olds, the twelve olds teach the ten year olds and I
figured out that I was in diapers. I was thirty-eight years old
and in diapers. I spent my first drip in African talking to the
nine year olds. I spent my second trip to Africa talking to the
twelve year olds. I spent my third trip to Africa talking to the
teenagers. After I did that at the end of my last trip the old
folks in Ode Remo said next time you come you can talk to us.
It took more than twelve years to get to that point.

Osuntokun: I thought I was going to go to Africa and take my

notebook and sit down with the elders.

Falokun: It will never happen on your first trip. I’m giving

you an important secret; go with a bag of balloons and talk
with the kids. Baba, am I lying?

Fatunmise: No.

Falokun: If the old folks do talk to you, you’re not going to

understand what they’re talking about.

Student: I want to take a tape recorder.

Falokun: I did the same thing. I went to baba’s family with

my tape recorder. I talked with baba’s elders, every question I
asked they recited Odu and I didn’t understand the Odu. I
was thinking I could read this in Bascom, come on guys talk
to me. Here’s my point, I’ve known Baba for ten or twelve
years and he started answering my questions maybe three or
four years ago. Is that right?

Fatunmise: Thank you, that is right. Each time he would

ask me I would say you are not old enough to know that.
Falokun: Do you get my point on that? Before that I would
ask a question and Baba would say; oh that’s a secret Ifa
something. I thought if I hear the secret Ifa something answer
one more time I’m going to scream. But I realized . . .

Osuntokun: You don’t climb the tree from the top down.

Falokun: Exactly, you have to climb the tree from the bottom
up. Let’s review, Esu Yemi, repeat everything I’ve said for the
brother who just came in. Give him the short version.

Esu Yemi: Talk to the kids first.

Falokun: Let me review, the family is the school, awo ile, the
mystery school of Ifa is the extended family and the
sanctification of everybody in the family. Everybody in the
family has a job that is more or less related to some form of
initiation, as you get older your job changes, you get a new
initiation, you learn more, and you have more responsibilities.
As adults we go to Africa, we want to be treated as adults, but
in the context of the mystery school we are children. Are you
with me on that?
Here is the problem you are having I believe, you have to
help me because it’s the first time I’ve been here. That’s the
model baba is working from. That is not the model that
anyone here fully understands so you are missing each other
in terms of communication. I am going to give you some
guidelines on how to communicate with Baba.
Here is the first and most important thing, don’t ask
Baba how he’s doing, don’t do that ever. If he looks sad, angry
or annoyed, how he is doing is none of your business. It never
ever will be. He has elders back home, that’s the way it works.
So even though he’s not going to be offended if you say how
are you doing as a greeting, but if you really ask the question
how are doing expecting an answer he is not going to be a
happy camper. He is a proper Yoruba man; he is not going to
tell you he’s not a happy camper. He is just going to avoid
your question. Let’s stop wasting time over that one. If he is
doing poorly and needs your help he will tell you. You need to
really, really get it.
In baba’s uncles house, there are ninety eight children
living in the house. Six wives, all his uncles, it would be total
chaos if it were not for that rule. What happens is the oldest
mother and the oldest father get up in the morning and walk
the square courtyard and ask everyone in the house, did you
sleep well, do you have food, do you have something to do
today? Every time you meet an older person in Africa they are
going to ask you those same questions. The expectation is
that you will answer them honestly. Because of the way the
system works, if you say; I didn’t get anything to eat, they will
make sure you get food on the table. You won’t know how it
got there, it isn’t any of your business. Grandma and
Grandpa are respected as the voices of authority, they find out
who has extra food and make sure it gets to you. You can’t
ask grandma if she needs food because you have no authority
to fix the problem.
One day I was walking through Ode Remo like a complete
knuckle headed idiot when I realized no one else was outside
because it was too hot. I started to get sick. By the time I got
home a box of medicine was sitting on the front porch waiting
for me. No one even asked me how I was doing. Someone saw
me and the word got home before I did.
We don’t stand up in school tell the teacher well the test
was too hard ask some easy questions. We know you can’t do
that. But because Ifa is teaching you how to live life everybody
in American thinks they are an authority and an expert. Get
it?
How old are you?

Student: Thirty one.

Falokun: I know what it’s like to be thirty-one, I’m fifty-four

you’ve got no clue. That’s why I can have an opinion about
what’s going on in your life, but you can’t have an opinion
about what’s going on in my life. Until you get that, nothing
here is going to work, we’re all going to be playing at doing Ifa.
Those of you who read Iwa-pele might remember I interviewed
my elder in the back of the book. I said; okay chief this is
your chance to talk to a lot of people in America, bring it on.
He started shaking his finger meaning; this is important so
listen. You tell them in America when they see something
back to call it black and when they see something red to call it
red. I’m thinking what the heck does that mean? Then he
said for you, when you treat me like your real father things
will go well for you. That was it.
What was he saying? Call black, black and red, red, a
fundamental principal of Ifa, here’s what it means if your
muffler is broken on your car, you can change the carburetor
fifty times and the muffler’s still broken. You can’t fix a
problem until you accurately identify it. If you can properly
identify your problems you don’t need elders. We’ll welcome
you as the second coming. If I know what it means to be
thirty-one you have two choices; you ask me for my guidance
about being thirty-one, or you can reinvent the wheel. Your
choice, I don’t care either way. Until we get on the same page,
we are not going to be moving forward.
I’m a grandfather, baba isn’t, one day he might ask me
what that’s like. There is little else I can tell him. I can share
what it feels like, beyond that he is the teacher I am the
student. He gets to decide when I am ready to know
something based on his perception of how I have progressed
with what I do know and whether or not my iwa pele is good
enough to use the information in a responsible way. Is that
right?

Fatunmise: You are right.

Falokun: If I am a knuckle headed idiot, he’s not going to

teach me anything. It would be irresponsible. Get this;
because of Hollywood and movies like Angel’s heart, the Devil’s
Advocate and all those voodoo pins in the dolls movies, many
people believe that Ifa is about getting the power to hurt
people, getting the power to get what you want, doing juju,
doing magic. We were woken up this morning before we got
out of bed by somebody who had a problem and believed baba
could fix it because he knows juju. The problem was a day
late.
We don’t do magic. We access the maximum potential of
human consciousness. Which looks magical to people who
have never done it. That power and that magic are only
effective in a communal context. The new age movement has
created a syndrome I call guru of the week. People go from
one thing to another looking for power, hoping it will fix their
lives, never understanding that power is a function of
community, it always has been it always will be. Any power
you can gain on your own without it being a part of a
communal context will be one degree off when you start and
fifty miles out in left field at the end of the day. Do you
understand what I am saying? You will think you understand
something, you will be just a little bit off and unless and elder
is around to whack you in the head with a stick when you
mess up, you’ll end up out in lala land thinking you’re some
kind of evolved spiritual being doing nothing but creating
spiritual mess. Have you ever cleaned up somebody’s spiritual
mess who thought they were doing good?

Fatunmise: Oh, oh yes.

Falokun: All right. It happens in a communal context. Any

prayer I can say by myself will have a certain amount of juice.
But any prayer he and I say together will not be twice as
strong it will be four times as strong. If you come into the mix
its not three times as strong it’s twelve times as strong. But it
is only strong if we are all on the same page. With twelve
people in a room even the bible says you can move mountains.
Why is that? Because the world is created by sound, the
power of the word affects reality. That’s the truth of the
matter, that’s the universe we live in. But if you have twelve
people in a room praying and eight of them are trying to heal
somebody and two of them are thinking why is Falokun in
charge and one of them is thinking I’m late for my dentist
appointment, you aren’t doing anything. Those three people
will completely disrupt the work of the other nine. The only
way you can get on the same page is if you trust each other. If
you don’t trust, you’re still a good person, just go somewhere
else. You will never make progress, this won’t work, and
you’re wasting your time. That doesn’t mean baba is always
right. That doesn’t mean he won’t piss you off. But if we can’t
get on the same page with regard to what we’re up to nothing
will ever work. If you have an issue with Baba ask his
permission to discuss it. He might not want to talk to you
about it at that moment. That’s his prerogative. He’s the
professor you’re the student. He and I have disagreed. I said I
want to discuss this with you in the presence of an elder. It
took me six months to arrange the meeting, once we had the
meeting we resolved the problem in a couple of minutes. Why
did I go through all that effort? To preserve the structure of
the family.
My choice was to fix the problem, not say I disagree, I’m
out of here. That’s the syndrome we have here in America.
People in America are constantly arguing over who knows the
most about Ifa. Nobody here in America, including me, knows
enough to have that argument. We are all too ignorant to have
that conversation. It is a nonsensical argument. So why do
people go there? People disagree with Baba and they run off
and start their own church. There are at least a dozen
congregations in America founded on the principal that
Falokun is a doody head. Why do people do that? They do
that to do what I call; deify their problems. Ifa says the ori
(consciousness) that leaves in the morning is not the same ori
that returns home at night.
The circle in Ifa is a picture of consciousness. The old
folks in Africa when they say think, they don’t point to their
head they point to their heart, the unity of consciousness is
the unity of the head and the heart. Your heart is your ori inu
your head is your ori, when those two are in alignment you
have a chance of calling black, black and red, red. Have you
ever seen a person in fight walking backwards saying I’m going
to kick your butt? Not convincing. Standing still saying I’m
going to kick your butt starts to be believable.
The same thing is true of life.

(Part II coming soon…)