Osun

Osun
Author: Fakayode Fayemi Fatunde
Publisher: Athelia Henrietta Press
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Osun (Yoruba deity)
ISBN: 9781890157364

Osun across the Waters

Osun across the Waters
Author: Joseph M. Murphy
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2001-10-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780253108630

Ã’sun is a brilliant deity whose imagery and worldwide devotion demand broad and deep scholarly reflection. Contributors to the ground-breaking Africa's Ogun, edited by Sandra Barnes (Indiana University Press, 1997), explored the complex nature of Ogun, the orisa who transforms life through iron and technology. Ã’sun across the Waters continues this exploration of Yoruba religion by documenting Ã’sun religion. Ã’sun presents a dynamic example of the resilience and renewed importance of traditional Yoruba images in negotiating spiritual experience, social identity, and political power in contemporary Africa and the African diaspora. The 17 contributors to Ã’sun across the Waters delineate the special dimensions of Ã’sun religion as it appears through multiple disciplines in multiple cultural contexts. Tracing the extent of Ã’sun traditions takes us across the waters and back again. Ã’sun traditions continue to grow and change as they flow and return from their sources in Africa and the Americas.

Osun Seegesi

Osun Seegesi
Author: Diedre Badejo
Publisher: Africa Research and Publications
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1996
Genre: Osun (Yoruba deity).
ISBN:

What does our sophisticated, technically advanced society have to learn from a venerable African goddess? That is the question Dr. Diedre Badejo set out to answer a decade ago, armed only with a tape recorder, a working knowledge of Yoruba language, literature, and culture, and a mental "image" of the African Motherland molded as much by her great grandmother's character as by her own experience of the Black Power and Black Studies movements of the '60s and '70s. The answers Dr. Badejo found as she immersed herself in the ritual orature, sacred songs, and festival drama of the Yoruba goddess Osun Seegesi at the deity's principal shrine in the city of Osogbo, Nigeria, are shared with the world in this detailed documentary/analysis that presents a startling view of human relations and relationships that is powerful in its practicality and revolutionary in its civility. What Osun (pronounced "Oh-Shoon") offers to a civilization standing "at the crossroads" and poised on the "abyss of transition", says the author, is nothing less than "an African feminist theory that challenges the hegemony of the Western social order" with a holistic sociocultural vision that recognizes and affirms the reciprocal role of women and men in building and sustaining a truly civil society.

Ifa Divination

Ifa Divination
Author: William Russell Bascom
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 608
Release: 1991-03-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780253206381

"The sacred texts of Ifa, repository of the accumulated wisdom of countless generations of Yoruba people, are an invaluable source not only for all students of African oral literature and Yoruba civilization, but also for future generations interested in the continuing vitality of Ifa divination and a Yoruba way of life and thought." —Henry Drewal This landmark study of Ifa, the most important and elaborate system of divination of the Yoruba people of Nigeria, remains a monumental contribution to scholarship in anthropology, folklore, religion, philosophy, linguistics, and African and African-American studies.

Women in the Yoruba Religious Sphere

Women in the Yoruba Religious Sphere
Author: Oyeronke Olajubu
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0791486117

Drawing on a wide range of oral and written sources, this book shows that women occupy a central place in the religious worldview and life of the Yoruba people and shows how men and women engage in mutually beneficial roles in the Yoruba religious sphere. It explores how gender issues play out in two Yoruba religious traditions—indigenous religion and Christianity in Southwestern Nigeria. Rather than shy away from illuminating the tensions between the prominent roles of Yoruba women in religion and their perceived marginalization, author Oyeronke Olajubu underscores how Yoruba women have challenged marginalization in ways unprecedented in other world religions.

Yoruba Creativity

Yoruba Creativity
Author: Toyin Falola
Publisher: Africa World Press
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2005
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781592213368

In songs, dance and drama the fame of the Yoruba of Nigeria is firmly established and universally acknowledged. Also an established writing and literary tradition, the Yoruba have asserted themselves as a dominant force in the world of creativity. Such stars are represented here, as in the works of Wole Soyinka and Zulu Sofola. The future of language in the making of new idioms and dictionaries is also examined in an attempt to position the Yoruba and their cultures in the ever-changing world of cultural inventions.

African Sacred Spaces

African Sacred Spaces
Author: 'BioDun J. Ogundayo
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2019-02-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1498567436

African Sacred Spaces: Culture, History, and Change is a collection of carefully and analytically written essays on different aspects of African sacred spaces. The interaction between the past and present points to Africans’ continuing recognition of certain natural phenomena and places as sacred. Western influence, the introduction of Christianity and Islam, as well as modernity, have not succeeded in completely obliterating African spirituality and sacred observances, especially as these relate to space in its various iterations. Indeed, Africans, on the continent and in the Diasporas, have responded to the challenges of history, environmentalism, and sustainability with sober and versatile responses in their reverence for sacred space as expressed through a variety of religious, historical, and spiritual practices, as this volume attempts to show.

Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba

Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba
Author: John David Yeadon Peel
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2003-02-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780253215888

"Peel is by training an anthropologist, but one possessed of an acute historical sensibility. Indeed, this magnificent book achieves a degree of analytical verve rare in either discipline." —History Today "[T]his is scholarship of the highest quality. . . . Peel lifts the Yoruba past to a dimension of comparative seriousness that no one else has managed. . . . The book teems with ideas . . . about big and compelling matters of very wide interest." —T. C. McCaskie In this magisterial book, J. D. Y. Peel contends that it is through their encounter with Christian missions in the mid-19th century that the Yoruba came to know themselves as a distinctive people. Peel's detailed study of the encounter is based on the rich archives of the Anglican Church Missionary Society, which contain the journals written by the African agents of mission, who, as the first generation of literate Yoruba, played a key role in shaping modern Yoruba consciousness. This distinguished book pays special attention to the experiences of ordinary men and women and shows how the process of Christian conversion transformed Christianity into something more deeply Yoruba.

From Traditional to Modern African Water Management

From Traditional to Modern African Water Management
Author: Chrispin Kowenje
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2022-10-14
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3031096630

This book preserves and scientifically interprets the African foreknowledge on water resources management. It offers insight into the relevance of the traditional knowledge and practices to modern approaches on sustainable water management. The African continent has partially preserved its natural habitat for centuries. In this book, this knowledge is combined with the current scientific understanding. The traditional practices are categorized as: i) water harvesting, ii) water transportation, iii) water storage and conservation, iv) water treatments, v) myths and folk stories about water management or conservation, vi) water resource management systems, and vii) soil–water–forest conservation/management systems sub-topics. The findings presented here are in line with SDG 6, which aims at ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by the year 2030.

Rewriting Osun

Rewriting Osun
Author: Jessica M. Alarcon
Publisher: Torkwase Press Incorporated
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2008
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN:

Known to practitioners and scholars as the Yoruba goddess of sweet (waters), sensuality, fertility and delight, Osun is a deity of great controversy. Nigerians see her as an astute, responsible mother of many children, yet across the ocean in the New World she has become a promiscuous, fun-loving deity who abandons her children and gives them to Yemaya to raise. Alarcns research analyzes the diverse representations of Osun (as a metaphor for women) found in trans-national Yoruba literature, specifically the verses of Odu Ifa (divination poetry) and Apataki (stories/legends), and examines the roles gender, race and sexuality have played in cultural interpretations of Osun and therefore on the journey of women throughout the diaspora. (Re)Writing Osun challenges us to move beyond the remnants of limited colonial interpretations of African spiritual practices and begin the process of (re)writing OsunS narrative. Book includes color photographs!