Awo Agbọn Oyibo

The Truth About The Lies

Òrúnmìlà retorted and said:

“I am not lying. Have you ever found my words to be untrue? A lie is not a garment that I can wear. A lie is not shoes that can adorn my feet. A lie is not a cap that can fit my head. It is a hasty person that tells lies. It is a liar that takes a short cut route. One that takes a short cut route lands in shame and reproach. Tell-a-lie-to-be-famous, its aftermath is huge disgrace.”

— A. Akinyeme & Akintunde Akinyemi, Orature and Yorùbá Riddles

Ògún — Ogun is the traditional deity of warriors, hunters, blacksmiths, technologists, and drivers in the Yoruba religion. Followers of traditional Yoruba religion can swear to tell the truth in court by “kissing a piece of iron in the name of Ogun.” — Image / adaptation of a James C Lewis photo

“TRUTH IS LIKE LIGHTNING WITH ITS ERRAND DONE BEFORE YOU HEAR THE THUNDER.”

— Gerald Massey

Ògún: Spirit of Iron

“Ògún is the Spirit of Iron in the West African religious tradition called Ifá. The essence of Ògún is considered one of many Spiritual Forces in Nature which are called Orisha.

There are a large number of Orisha and each Orisha has its own Awo.

The unique function of Ògún within the realm of Orisha Awo (Mysteries of Nature) is to remove all obstacles that stand in the way of Spiritual evolution, which includes the evolution of all that is. In order to do this Ògún must sacrifice all that stands in the way of spiritual evolution.

Because of these sacred responsibility Ògún is considered the Guardian of Truth.

Ògún does not protect the truth of what we would like to be, he guards the truth of what is. It is the process of making this distinction that lies at the core of Ògún’s mystery.”

— Awo Fa’lokun Fatunmbi

Ciana sat and once more used her own personal Oracles to ascertain where she was going in all this, as many occurrences were feeling very ominous. Following are outlined the blend of the traditional great wisdom of The Book of Changes, with the experiences Ciana was living through. I hope it comes together for you, beloved bravehearts.

The Divination & The Outcome

18 Corruption/Renovating GU

Managing & Straightening The Father’s Corruption.You must deal with the corruption of authority.

The meaning of GU is about the acts of poisonous corruption done by parents which then through their acts manifested in certain of their children. The evil within those adult children is seriously affecting us all, and we need to take action.

So, now we’re openly confronting the source of evil in those particular parents that then established itself in the lives and souls of those children.

When we clear out their poison and corruption, this will allow healthy new growth into our world. I know you’re aware there’s now great immorality in the world, there is decay, and there are hidden poisons.

Also beloved, be prepared for deflection of nasty unexpected attacks. In this way you’ll make it through this day. And protect the beautiful new growth, as we surgically remove the old corruptions.

It’s soul surgery for a sick planet. Heart surgery for a broken world. We’re finding the secret and hidden places of hurt and beginning the deep healing. This is a great and moving time for spirit.

And a healing time for the seriously negative effects of the inner corruption of our parents on the children. Part of this healing will also be around our concepts of our own inner parent and experiences of toxic and severely dysfunctional family.

This is a critical time where we protect the budding new as we clear out the planetary sickness living in the link between the personal and the political.

— inspired by the Family Way I Ching

Being Yorùbá — Being Modern

Excerpt from : ‘Arts of Being Yorùbá: Divination, Allegory, Tragedy, Proverb, Panegyric’

By Adélékè Adéèkó

The foreword of Ìrìnkèrindò — the chronological endpoint of Fágúnwà’s trilogy about three great hunters loosely bound by their attachment to one beloved, but unnamed, hometown — would serve as a good beginning for content analysis of the uncertain epistemic shifts in the storyworld of his adventure tales. The novel is dedicated to chieftains and other teachers of the formal schooling system in colonial southwestern Nigeria, including representatives of the indigenous high clergy of the Anglican church and Yorùbá traditional royalty. Among these, Bishop Phillip’s citation stands out:

“Igbesi aye Bishop S.C. Phillips ni nkan pataki lati ko omo Yorùbá. O je eni ti a nilati ma a ranti lati iran de iran wa. Eyin naam o pe abuku awa Yorùbá ni eke sise, ati so odod a maa soro fun ni. Bi o ba wi fun eni kan pe ‘Mase ba mi lo Yorùbá’, Itumo oro re ni ‘mase puro fun mi.’ ”

(Fágúnwà, Ìrìnkèrindò, v -vi)

Translated, this means:

“Bishop S. C Phillips has a lot to teach Yorùbá people. He is a person we have to remember through and down the ages. You know as much as I do that falsehood is our stock-in-trade as a people: telling the truth is rather difficult for us. If one person were to tell the other, ‘Do not play Yorùbá with me’, it means ‘Do not lie to me.’ ”

We have here extradiegetic evidence of how epistemological uncertainty bothers the novelist. To the Christian Yorùbá writer, it is scandalous that colloquial speech equates Yorùbá with blatant lying, and advertises cultural duplicity as a cultural trait about which one need not be ashamed.

On the one hand, Yorùbá culture has been exceptionally enlightened, before the whites came and before the advent of alphabetic systems of reading and writing. In colloquial terms, Yorùbá eyes were wide open before colonization and Christianity reached Yorùbá-land. On the other hand, modern descendants of these long-civilised people seem not to care that their manner of speaking represents their interactions with the world and one another as driven by falsehoods, if advancement and falsehood can cohabit peacefully among a people. To demonstrate that duplicity does not define Yorùbá being, Fágúnwà holds up the example of Bishop Phillips, a Yorùbá man who rises to the pinnacle of his calling because he is straightforward and honest. Fágúnwà uses Bishop Phillip’s name to remodel the terms of proper Yorùbá being:

“Bishop Phillips fi han ni pe ki I se gbogbo omo Yorùbá ni o npuro.Tani eni naa ni odi aye yii, yal dud, yala funfun ti o le wipe Bishop Phillips bao un lo Yorùbá? Ko si, afi eni ti o ba ma pe aguntan ni amluu, ti o pe moto ni keke, ti o pe Omotunde ni Akintunde, ti o pe ara aye ni ara aye ni ara orun. Ooto nikan ni Bishop yiimaa nso, gbogbo enniyan so ti mo bee fun un. Apeere ni eyi fun gbogbo wa. Bi eru ba nba o lati so ooto ma se gbagbe Bishop Phillips Olododo nitori Bishop yii ti o je asaju pataki fun ni ko fi eke ko iwoati emi.” (Fágúnwà, Ìrìnkèrindò, vi)

Translated, means:

“Bishop Phillips shows us that lying does not define Yorùbá being. Who in the world, black or white, will accuse Bishop Phillips of “being Yorùbá” with him or her? No one, except that individual who habitually mistakes a sheep for a cow, calls an automobile a bicycle, refers to Omotunde as Akintunde, confuses a living person for the dead.”

In short, Bishop Phillips is a Yorùbán, whose worldly comportment is decidedly un-Yorùbán.

1 Giant Leap · Robbie Williams and Maxi Jazz · My Culture

Ciana Reaches Out

Ciana had been reading the fascinating and brilliant extensive online posts of a non-Afro-American Baba for a few years now. This was Awo Agbọn Oyibo. Something he’d very recently written suddenly caught her eye and deeply piqued her interest. This was a post about the Yorùbán concept of the Elenini. She wondered if that’s what Petra really was, and having not had any real help from others around this to date, she reached out to this Baba. He was a big man — in presence, and in build — white-bearded and ageing gracefully, although a little lamed by a gang attack in recent years. And evidently a sorcerer, of which path she could not as yet say. She wrote to him about the bizarre impacts of the witch and stalker Petra in her life, and how she couldn’t understand how things had gone so badly for her, since her entry into Ciana’s world.

It was crystal clear Petra had invaded her personal and professional contacts and contacted them all, smearing her name with the aim of destroying her and her life, and gradually taking everything from her. And for some reason many people around her couldn’t seem to see straight about things, and were being badly hoodwinked and magically glamoured by Petra. Things were going from bad to worse in her own life, with gossip, rumours and slander spreading fast and furious about her, seemingly ‘round the globe. With Petra being promoted as something glorious and she herself as something terrible. It was a living nightmare, and things seemed somehow being turned upside down and reversed, like a bizarre planetary inversion. At that time Ciana had no idea how to deal with it, as it was done on such a large scale, with access to such large and sophisticated technological resources by Petra and co. — and so, so insidiously.

“Greetings Baba, I wanted to give you a brief picture of things before we speak to help you understand why I need to contact you, ‘though I believe you already know. I believe an Elenini has been created by complex circumstances and actually within a person external to me, there’s nothing simple about this situation. So far, not many have been able to discuss this openly with me because they’re mostly part of the dynamic, afraid of it, or simply can’t see it. However I think they’re finally realising what has been done, although I could see it the whole time, it was as though a blindness was in everyone because they didn’t want to think this had happened, and my great distress and anxiety just fed into it — and fed it — and it grew and grew.

“But perhaps there’s still time for great healing to be done. I’m laying the groundwork for our conversation, as it’s incredibly difficult to discuss and explain. I’m feeling you’ll get it, you’ll fully understand. Also I’m personally doing all I can to heal myself, as I deeply understand what’s happened, and how my fear and anxiety has fed it. Yes, I’m on the road to recovery, but it’s still there. The Elenini still exists within another being just as Donald Trump exists. I truly look forward to discussing this with you, and I’ve just been researching this on your website writings — excellently helpful. Believe me, I’ll do anything to change this situation, anything that’s in the realm of good.”

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How It Happened

“To give a little more context, it happened on the tail-end of a terrible initiation experience in a ‘Mystical School’ — where as a TwoSpirited or Bi-Spirited woman(I’m not Native American or transgender, but it best explains who I am), I was cyber-terrorised and abused for an extended period of time. This left me quite vulnerable for a time, and Petra took big advantage of that fact. It was a complex situation, I wasn’t fully healed — there are complexities within complexities — and it was on the tail end of this serious wounding that this all began, with a little help from some ‘(ex-)friends’.

“Truthfully, it’s a miracle I’m alive after years of this situation, of daily abuse and attacks and loss, and I’m only alive due to the intervention of some particular friends who supported me through it all. The worst thing is that people who call themselves spiritual and work as psychics or mystics — whom you would think would understand such spiritual trauma — could not believe the issue was real. Although as a psychic I know they’re fully aware of it all.

“I’ve been lied to constantly by others who’ve been betraying me on a very deep and painful level. Thinking I can’t see through, or feel the extent of their lies. My goal is to heal this situation and do all I can to help others who might experience a similar situation. The people who were involved in the creation of this Elenini or whatever the hell it is— and it wasn’t my creation, believe me — act as though it’s a prophet or something. But all I see is a diabolical Demon. A group Demon channelled by a dark coven, that came through riding on the back of my stolen personal power. And a doorway giving access to my life was opened through my personal exhaustion.

“I feel they took this person Petra, and using ritual they brought in the spirit of some very dangerous and horrific Djinn or demon, and it’s taken control of her. The lies and denial about all this have been betrayal of the worst kind from people I really loved dearly. The demon Petra has verbally encouraged me to die a number of times in her writing, but it’s not what I intend to do. I’m not angry or broken anymore, but still need to heal the situation. People I’ve asked for help have told me I’m obsessed with it, but truthfully it seems everyone else is obsessed with it, and that’s been more than half the problem.

“I’ve been told through Vodun divination that Papa Adé is my head spirit, and perhaps this is my saving grace. I’m sure it looks as though I have some serious blind spots myself about all this and I’m ready to own that, but I’m doing my best to work through this. It — Petra — seems to be competing with me — for my life. But I’m ok, and I even feel it’s gradually losing momentum.”

Famous last words. Luckily though, not really her last.

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No Fear

The Awo quickly replied: “I live in Mexico but I’ll be home today until about 11, same schedule tomorrow, and all day Monday. Ifá says every problem has a solution. It sounds like YeYe Osunbotanica — the woman is evil, but not a threat. I’ve dealt with her repeatedly and she no longer attacks me. And there’s a reason for that.”