Ilé-Ifè in Time, Space, and the Imagination. by Jacob K. Olupona

Numen 60 (2013) 135–154 brill.com/nu

City of 201 Gods: Ilé-Ifè in Time, Space, and the Imagination. By Jacob K. Olupona. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. 334 pp. ISBN: 978–0- 520–26556–4 (pbk.)

In this book Olupona offfers a deeper insight into the city of the gods of the Yoruba people in Nigeria. In offfering this insight, he wants to move away from both the earlier missionary-type interpretation of Yoruba gods with its mono- theistic tendency (p. 6) as well as from the attempts of African scholars who tended to place their traditions within the framework of the so-called “Great Traditions.” Rather, he wants to approach the depiction of Yoruba tradition through the experience of Yoruba themselves (p. 7). But strangely, he seems to fall into the same trap by placing Ilé-Ifè alongside the cities of the so-called Great Traditions — Mecca, Varanasi, and Jerusalem (p. 13). There is certainly much in his account of Ilé-Ifè that lends itself to meaningful comparativism. For example, when he describes the great war-god, Ogun (ch. 4), it reminds me of the Vedic god Indra; when he describes the creator god Obatala (ch. 5), it reminds me of Brahma the creator god. But such similarities are stopped in their tracks very quickly. While Indra of the Vedic pantheon is not a fĳixed god but the title of whoever succeeds in becoming the king of gods, Ogun is intrin- sic and permanently related to the god-king Ooni of the Yoruba. Nevertheless Brahma has more resemblance to Obatala, who receives his injunction to create from Olodumare, while Brahma occupies a lower status in the hierarchy of gods because he receives his command to create from Vishnu. So, one could use Olupona’s account of Ilé-Ifè to tease out meaningful comparisons in the overall project of the history of religions. Olupona locates the city of Ilé-Ifè in the overarching universe within which exist sacred towns and cities, and Ilé-Ifè is the chief of all of those sacred places of human inhabitants (p. 34). It is the fĳirst and foremost sacred city in the cos- mos. Thus, Olupona locates Ilé-Ifè in time and space that reaches beyond human imagination to the extent that it is stripped of its real social environ- ment and becomes an “imagined sacred city” as the title of chapter 2 aptly reflects. However, the European outsiders and the locals imagined it difffer- ently. While in the minds of the Europeans (e.g., Frobenius) it was an exotic place of ancient rituals likened to the Etruscan and the “lost” Atlantean civili- zations (p. 56), the prior local accounts link it through myth and legend with Islam and Mecca. But it is its connection to the kingdom of Benin which gives it the more legitimate place in the Yoruba imagination (pp. 61–62).

The sacredness of the city Ilé-Ifè is derived from the central role it plays in the religious quest of the Yoruba people. If Yoruba religion focuses on “healing, procreation, human and agricultural fertility, and the quest for long life and wealth” (p. 87), then Ilé-Ifè is the place where one can be guaranteed to receive them — “the Ife people believe that whatever they ask for in its presence will come to pass” (p. 87). But seemingly, not everyone gets what they want even in the sacred city. The partisanship toward males and the notions of fertility are betrayed when the myth sets up the barren goddess Olukun against the goddess of many children, Osara, and eventually subordinates the barren goddess to the fertile goddess. So much for gender equity! Notwithstanding the collaborative arrangements among the three gods — Ogun, the god of war, Ifa/Orunmila, the god of divination, and Obatala, the god of creation — Ogun takes central place in the Olojo festival, thereby giving pri- macy to the ideology of prosperity through profĳit-making as in the case of the prosperous people in Benin and the white people in Irale (p. 113). The emulation of the European prosperity model is made abundantly clear in the Ifa myth. It is therefore no coincidence that the Olojo festival occupies such centrality in the Yoruba mythology. The Ifa narratives are full of emphasis on trade and com- merce to which the goddess of wealth and prosperity Aje is directly linked, espe- cially during the fĳifteenth- and sixteenth-century Atlantic Ocean Trade (p. 131). Having provided this background to Ifa culture, Olupona sets out to deal with the theoretical issue of identity construction, vis-à-vis the Idita people who have been subjugated by the Oduduwa people. It is fascinating to see how this identity discourse traverses through the modern context, where modern schools are named after the gods to restore their ancient identity. The Idita people who in their mythic times were displaced by the Oduduwa group from Idita Ile to Idita Oko could in modern times, despite the bureaucratic objec- tions, name their schools after their Ife gods — Obatala High School in honor of their god and cultural hero (pp. 153–154). The sacred king is the raison d’être of the Ifa festival. It is this logic and mean- ing that guides the Ifa festival. Everything relates to the protection of the king and his palace. The role of the diviners is to ensure his security. But it is the Araba, the chief priest, who links the two, for in his dance to the king’s palace the Ife seeks to establish its peace. Olupona points out, “When the Araba changes, becoming a leopard for all to see, and when he temporarily takes over the Ooni’s palace and is praised as the king (Oba) by his followers, he reafffĳirms not only his kingship among his fellow diviners and subordinates but also his integral role in maintaining the cosmic order of Ilé-Ifè” (p. 202). In dealing with the legend of Moremi, Olupona develops a gender narrative that “blends male and female gender characteristics” in Yoruba society (p. 208).