What you need to know about Yoruba Beliefs about herbs and their Usage

The beliefs of the Yoruba people about herbs, their usage and Why they are preferred to some Medical Tablets.

 

The medical traditions of the Yoruba people of western Nigeria developed within a culture that deeply respects and venerates ancestors. The Orishas, or gods of the Yoruba, were former ancestors such as Oduduwa, the legendary ancestor of all Yoruba people, and his son Ogun. Respect for family and ancestors is so deep that when Yoruba people die, they are buried under the floor of the family house. Their spirits remain with and protect the family.

The Yoruba believe that sickness is a whim or punishment of a specific god or ancestor, who must be identified and placated, or else is caused by witchcraft for which the appropriate counter charm must be employed. They developed a shamanistic medical tradition utilizing both Herbalism (practiced by the onishegun, herbal healers) and divination (practiced by the babalawo, priests of the Ifa cult.)

 

Diagnosis In Yoruba Medicine 

The babalawo uses both psychotherapeutic techniques in discussing the illness with the patient, also casts an oracle reading using the Ifa system revealed to the Yoruba by the trickster god Eshu Elegbara. The oracular reading involves throwing a handful of 16 kola nuts from the right to the left hand, 16 times, after which the right hand is checked to see whether an odd or even number of kola nuts remains. The outcome of each set of 4 throws is marked in a sand tray with a single or double line. At the end of this process, the pattern left in the sand tray corresponds to one of the 256 verses of the Odu, which the babalawo interprets for the patient.

Because diseases may also be caused by witchcraft, curses, or a form of the evil eye, the babalawo also asks the patient questions about events that occurred in the patient’s life around the time that the illness began. Relevant information might include strained relations with family or neighbors who might have deliberately or unwittingly put a curse on the patient.