A prophetic story details how Ifa has been hijacked by the western world view. The story is told of the scientific experiment where a rat is placed in a maze with three tunnels. A piece of cheese is placed at the back of the second tunnel. Initially the rat will enter the maze, go into tunnel number 1 and then down tunnel number two where it finds the cheese. After a number of months, the rat will enter the maze and go directly to tunnel number two to find the cheese. You then have a “smart” rat. If you continue this for a period of time and then suddenly place the cheese at the back of tunnel number three, the following will happen: The rate will enter the maze and go directly to tunnel number two to find his cheese. When he discovers the cheese is not there, he will come out, look around a bit, and then return down tunnel number two looking for the cheese. The rat may do this three or four times, but eventually the rat will go down tunnel number one, and finally tunnel number three until it finds the cheese. Unlike the rat, human beings tend to spend their entire lives going back down tunnel number 2 because they know it’s the right tunnel.

Ifa was founded by brilliant African men and women who observed the practical results of working with Natural energies. As an oral tradition, it continually evolved and incorporated the reality of changing times into its practice. Ifa, like the world its Practioners lived in, was a living entity, constantly changing and adapting to changing conditions. Even some of our currently accepted Orisa were incorporated from neighboring tribes and cultures as their relevance became clear.

All this changed with the incursion of the Western World and the Western world view into Africa.

It is simplistic to draw the philosophical battle lines between the officious and self righteous missionaries who viewed themselves as “soldiers of God” sent to “save the heathen.” It is also dangerous. It is dangerous because it implies that having selected Orisa over Christianity we are safe in our decision. Simply because we work with the energy of the Orisa rather than Jesus is not enough. It is not enough because the overwhelming majority of Practioners be they African, American or Latin; be they Ifa, Santeria or Lucumi, are practicing their craft with a Western World View!

They have allowed the Philosophy to become frozen in time in the same way Christianity has frozen its philosophy to “The Word.” They claim to be Traditionalists, but they are simply mimicking the methodology of those who ultimately unsuccessfully attempted to enslave their bodies, but have successfully enslaved their philosophy and their souls. They have allowed the living, ever changing, eternal energy of their Orisa to be embalmed in the time capsule of Western Religious world view. They do things by rote…”because that is the way it has always been done,” rather than by logical, analytical observations which created the African World View that made it work.

In essence, they have allowed Ifa to be hijacked by the mind/spirit dichotomy that is the foundation of Western Religion. This dichotomy states: “you can not use your logical mind to make spiritual judgments.” It is the lynchpin of how Western Religion forced people to ignore their minds and enslave their spirits…to accept Original Sin, Gender inequalities, a Devil, Supremacy and a host of other ideas that made us emotionally and spiritually dependant and crippled.

Yet, Ifa remains alive to those who would approach it in the way it was created. At the Ifa Foundation it is this logical, living, applicable energy that we access and use in context with the social, political and technological realities of the time and place we are using it. In this way we leave the hijacked sitting on the side of the road looking for the hand crank to start their engines, while we travel the highway of living energy.

Blessings

Philip Neimark