How Did We End Up Here? I'll Go First.
How did we end up here? A practitioner's inquiry in progress. DÁFÁ is a living journal of Ifá practice and scholarship, rooted in Ibadan and the Ọ̀yọ́-Yoruba lineage. This is how we got here.
Abọrú Abọyè.
My journey to Ifá was a long winding staircase. Immediately preceded by Freemasonry, but Christianity, Islam, Taoism, and Buddhism had come before. All filtered through the lens of Pan-Africanism — what checked out stayed.
I moved through all these intellectual, spiritual and religious traditions with full conviction on each occasion. Each of them gave me something. None of them gave me everything.
Ifá is where all of my threads converged and where I unearthed my Ìkin. Fresh from Mother Earth. That journey is what has given birth to this publication.
DÁFÁ is a living journal of Ifá practice and scholarship, rooted in Ibadan and in the Ọ̀yọ́-Yoruba lineage. The conviction behind it is simple: serious inquiry and practitioner knowledge are not opposites. They are obligations that belong together. There is already enough unstructured content about Ifá on the internet that is unverified, decontextualised, or outright invented. DÁFÁ is a direct response to that. It intends to contribute sufficient perspectives from living and ancestral sources so that the reader can make up their mind about what makes sense to them.
DÁFÁ is building an archive of a practitioner's inquiry over time. To share the journey. To dance without knowing what part of the floor Òrìṣà Àyàn will direct us.
What you will find here is sourced, considered, and accountable to the tradition it speaks from — in the order that I encounter it or it sparks my curiosity. Odù analysis. Interviews with senior practitioners. Photography and field research through Yoruba land and the practicing diaspora I am connected to.
The subject of my current photographic enquiry: what is the relationship between technology and divination? Are they complementary? Are they at odds? A photo series titled Online Divination will explore this directly.
Ẹ káàbọ̀. See you on the way.
Thoughts are welcome at awo@orimoloyefasina.com
— Orímọlóyè Fáṣínà
Ifá practitioner, Ibadan, Nigeria.
