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Juju magic ‘more controlling than chains’ says Harvard expert. Lizzy Idahosa used the fear of a juju curse against the two women In October 2014, it was reported in the news on BBC how the Crown (Criminal) Court in Cardiff, Wales, in the United Kingdom tried a Nigerian lady, Lizzy Idahosa, for human trafficking offences.
“Kíní ńbẹ n’ígbó tí ńdún màwuru màwuru màwuru? Bí ó pa’ni jẹ k’ó kúkú pa’ni jẹ, bí ò sì pa’ni jẹ k’ó má ṣé pa’ni jẹ, k’ó yé dún màwuru màwuru mọ́ ni mọ́”.(What lurks in the wild making scary sounds? If it wants to kill me, let it do so; if it is not
Pánsá ò fura pánsá já’nà; àjà ò fura àjà jìn; b’ónílé ò bá fura olè ni ó ko. (The dried calabash was careless hence it was plucked! The attic was careless hence it caved in! The head of the household that is not careful will be cleaned out by thieves.) ÈṢÙ Ọlá Ìlú Young Ṣemílóre had become so acquainted with and attached to his ancestral Yorùbá customs and belief system that
There are many Yorùbá names whose meanings are now lost due to the fact that the words forming their roots are no longer in use. For instance, ask the young Master Ọlọ́pàádé the meaning of his name and he will probably tell you that his name means “the policeman has come“. Ask Mr. Ọlọ́paádé, his father, and he would
“Ilé làá wò ka tó s’ọmọ l’órúkọ”. (We examine the home or lineage before we name a child) The question – what is in a name? – is often posed and, in most cases, the answers indicate a tendency to shrug them off as mere identification tags. But for the Yorùbá, or indeed most Africans,
Binary Counting: Is its origin in West African traditional systems?
“Computer Science borrowed from Ifa Corpus-Longe” – Professor Olu Longe
‘As above, so below‘ is a popular phrase in metaphysics. In Yorùbá, igbá aiyé (world’s calabash, symbolic of the cylindrical shape of our globe) – see diagram above – represented by the circle as a symbol of universality. Igbá aiyé suggests that the Yorùbá worldview comprehends a spherical globe long before the Galileos and Copernicuses of this world refuted the early position of Christendom, that the
