ILÉ-IFÈ CHRONICLES: IN DEFENCE OF YORUBA VALUES AND THE ORIGIN OF BEADS IN YORUBALAND
By Adedamola Adetayo
I have been seeing people wearing beads around their necks, wrists and ankles and I have been seeing different combinations of the beads.
Infact I see my mother wearing different types of these beads.
I never exactly knew what each of the beads conote or what messages their combinations send.
I never really bothered about it or ever tried to know because I have always assumed that anyone who wore a bead was either a CHIEFTAINCY TITLE HOLDER or otherwise a member of the OGBONIS or both.
It wasn’t until saturday, 3rd June 2023 that I got to know these things in Ilé-Ifè and it was because I ASKED!!!
I wouldn’t have been told IF I DIDNT ASK.
YOU DONT GET TO KNOW UNLESS YOU ASKED!!!
At nearly 53years old I DIDNT KNOW BECAUSE I NEVER ASKED.
I began to get worried for my junior siblings and children. If I didn’t know at my age, when or how will they ever know these very simple things of our CULTURE????
Our ancestors were VERY ORGANIZED AND ORDERLY PEOPLE.
Do you know that in the Yoruba traditions [ I have always known this one ] the man who is a bachelor has a way of wearing his cap differently from the man who is married?
One wears his cap to the right and the other to the left side.
The same thing for the women folk. A maiden will tie her wrapper to the opposite side of the married woman.
It is then not possible for you to meet a married woman ANYWHERE, even without a single word spoken, and you begin to sexually harass her and claim that you didn’t know she was married.
An unmarried lady couldn’t also pretend not to know that man who was toasting her is married and that she was going to send or third wife.
Such was the social order.
In those days EVERYONE KNEW because each parents and society would have taught their own children all these things right from infancy.
The beads for example, everyone knew that each represented different things, affiliations, beliefs and positions
There is a bead, white I think, which represents the OSUN WORKSHIPPERS.
There is bead that had a special ONE RED bead in-between and you know it is for SÀNGÓ adherents.
There is a multi-colour bead for those who are followers of the IFÁ worship.
There is a bead for Èsù adherents. The picture at bottom left is of an Èsù adherent. Infact that very day I saw the Èsù Priest. He came to the IFÁ temple.
Then there is the bead worn by Chiefs, people who have been conferred with Chieftaincy titles, honourary or ancestral.
Some people wore many of the different beads to indicate they belonged to all those places.
There were so many.
But things have changed. We don’t know these things.
I was told that in IBADAN OYO STATE OF YORUBA LAND, a child was sent out of school because he wore the bead representing the IFÁ belief !!!!
I newly ran mad in rage!!!!
How could that have been???????
In the schools I see in Abeokuta, girls wear HIJAB and boys carry ROSERY about in their hands to schools where CHRISTIAN IDENTITIES are fully stamped everywhere. Some children and staff members wear Rosery of Catholic to same school and you tell me that a YORUBA CHILD OF IFÁ PRIEST/ADHERENTS cant wear a simple band of beads around his/her wrist!!!
Is that not MADNESS AND PROVOCATION?????
But YORUBA people won’t say anything.
That is who we are.
Do we even have time to teach our children our CULTURES AND CUSTOMS any more?
No way, we don’t have that much time!!!
There are two MOSQUES around my house. Nearly every evening and all day on Saturdays and Sundays, little children, children as young as four (4) years are herded by force of Tulaasi to Ilé kéwú.
They go there to learn the ARAB CULTURE of Hijab-wearing, how to sew and wear “bonfo” trousers, how to cover yourself up like an imbecile, the way your grandmother never did, how to SPEAK, READ AND WRITE ARABIC and most importantly learn about the HISTORY AND STORIES OF ARAB DESERT ANCESTORS, how they were superior to your ancestors and why you need to HONOUR THEM ABOVE YOUR ANCESTORS.
The Muslim Children of YORUBA PARENTS are made to learn these irrelevant stories of the QUR’AN by force by Tulaasi RIGHT IN YORUBA LAND.
At the Sunday school, the children are well-pampered, nurtured, even well indulged in places like the Pentecostals, given the colourful “My Book of Bible Stories” to read, beautiful visuals, told of the wondrous stories of the Red Sea, Joshua, Moses, Jesus and all the DESERT ANCESTORS OF THE JEWS.
I remember my Daddy bought me that book, he wanted to draw my interest into Islam through the bible stories. It was his costliest error of all time. He regretted that action and quickly SEIZED the book from me but not before I got entranced into Christian fantasies.
The Christian child of the YORUBA PARENTS is gripped right from infancy and taken through piles and piles of irrelevant stories from the bibles which bear no connection whatsoever with his identity.
It is happening in this same YORUBA LAND.
The Muslims and Christians are getting funded by agents based in Europe, America and Arabia to continue doing the things they do so my people can be permanently DIVIDED AND DISTRACTED AND WELL PREPARED FOR EMASCULATION,CONQUER, EXPLOITATION AND VERY SOON – AS I CAN SEE IT COMING – A GENOCIDAL ERADICATION.
YOU ONLY NEED TO CORRUPT THE CULTURE AND VALUES OF A PEOPLE TO DESTROY THEM.
You don’t need to do more than that.
In Ilé-Ifè, a bunch of youths – YORUBA SONS ANS DAUGHTERS, CHILDREN BORN, GIVEN NAMES IN YORUBA AND DRANK WATER FROM THE SOIL OF YORUNA LAND ACTUALLY FACED THE ANCESTRAL ILÉ O’DUA TO STONE THE PLACE!!!!!
Olódùmarè!!!!
That is what I am talking about.
One day they will face ILÉ ÒRÚNMÌLÀ in Oke Ìgétì and pull it down.
One day, they will rise up from Jumat and send for Ooni to vacate the stool of O’DUA for their Imam.
Their CENTRAL MOSQUE is sitting right on the nose of the Ooni in ILÉ ODUA, they can’t allow or tolerate for too long people carrying EBO pass the front of their own Mosque-shrine.
IN YORUBA LAND O.
It is a matter of TIME.
While the people who are bent on CORRUPTING OUR CULTURE ARE WORKING TIRELESSLY TO DO US IN, BRAINWASH US, BY EVANGELIZING AND TEACHING THINGS WE DIDNT EVEN NEED TO KNOW IN THE FIRST PLACE our own people, the few people who have mercifully remained committed and faithful to our ancestors never bother.
They simply left everything to free flow.
Our people are overwhelmed, confused, disoriented and totally disorganized.
While the Hausa-Fulanis would have quickly STONED YOU TO DEATH if such a thing that those Oloriburuku children did in ILÉ ODUA was tried on a MOSQUE in Kano, my people were just looking.
While JEWS will BURN YOU TO ASHES if you tried such nonsense on any of their sacred sites in Jerusalem, my people were just looking.
While even the Igbos will ask for your HEAD if you tried that thing in a CATHOLIC CHURCH in Enugu, my people don’t understand the weight of happened to them.
We just allow things run freely as we are a very recklessly complacent people.
And these things are RUNNING and we are RUINING very slowly and systematically we still don’t understand.
The same people who are the Elders of Ogboni are the same ones in the front rows of many Churches and Mosques FUNDING THE CHURCHES AND MOSQUES TO FORMAT THE BRAINS, HEARTS AND MINDS OF OUR CHILDREN, THE FUTURE GENERATION.
The same person who is OONIRISA ERÙJÈJÈ ILÉ-IFÈ, the man who is charged with the task to PROTECT, PRESERVE AND DEFEND OUR HERITAGE, CULTURE, TRADITIONS, CUSTOMS AND SPIRITUALITY IS THE ONE YOU WILL MEET ON HIS KNEES BEFORE A PASTOR.
He won’t give such REVERENCE to Àràbà Àgbáyé Awo, descendant of Òrúnmìlà Baba Agbonmiregun, the father of all wisdom, but he will nearly crawl on the ground for Pastor Adeboye, a mere mortal whose ancestors may have been slaves in OONI’S Palace.
There is a problem!!!!?
