Prince Justice Faloye
When people argue vehemently that Esu and not Shango is the essence of Justice, I laugh because if only they knew that this is pure science, they won’t be reaching for dogmatic arts to argue against the indisputable. If only people knew how deep Yoruba Original African indigenous knowledge is, they would realize that Western Eurocentric knowledge took away our true Enlightenment.
Infact it was during what is known as the Axial Age, 700BC to 1BC that Asiatics copied and adapted our Yorubas Ifa knowledge that also encompasses how the universe came to be. To whitewash the Yoruba origin of knowledge, the Romans restarted the calendar to confuse our timing and knowledge bank. Two thousand years later, Euroasian Abrahamic colonists came to teach us our own knowledge that they misunderstood and disfigured.
European coloniality wrongly made us believe Orisas/Aliso/Agbara were dead deities and linear concepts understood only through arts and not science of the living. There is not only one Oduduwa, Osun or other Orisas but are recurring essences that keep coming forever, depending on the length of their orbit. Planets are the physical manifestations of Orisas. Ifa is the study of the universe, it’s workings and linkages. It is truly African spiritual and physical science.
Starting with the Sun, which is Orunmila, the father of Ifa that is called the eleri ipin, meaning the witness of the the formation of the universe, since all planets split from the Sun. Mercury is Esu, Osun is Venus, Earth is Oduduwa, Moon is Yemoja, Mars is Ogun, Saturn is Obaluaye, Jupiter is Obatala, Shango is Uranus, Olokun is Neptune and Oya is Pluto.
While Yoruba knowledge conceptualized the whole Solar system, Abrahamic religions are limited to the Sun/God and Mercury, the next planet to the Sun, is the messenger/prophet (Jesus/Mohammed). To Abrahamists, the only way to understand and reach the Sun/God is through Mercury/Jesus, but we have a fuller understanding of the solar system.
The Orisa stories and interrelationships are the easiest way to understand the natural laws guiding our lives and upon which the universe is based. The first few planets are personal essences while the outer planets are for the collective, and are a higher octave of the personal planets.
Orunmila/Sun, the essence of wisdom, is replicated in Obatala/Jupiter in a higher form as civilization, law, philosophy and higher education. Mercury/Esu the essence of information tied to personal truths, is replicated in a higher form in Uranus/Shango, the essence of collective Justice and the judicious use of Information. Venus/Osun, the essence of love and beauty is replicated in Neptune/Olokun as movies, collective consciousness and patriotism. Ogun/Mars the essence of positive action, war and force is replicated in Oya/Pluto, the essence of revolutionary force. Esu and Osun have two types of essences – positive and negative, feminine and masculine, a forceful or creative manifestation. This full understanding is why Yoruba, Igbo and all other indigenous African spiritual sciences are based on cyclic dualism, while Abrahamic dogma is based on linearity and extremes.
African spiritual sciences believe we all have Ori/Chi, a receptor and transmitter, that is composed of these Orisa essences in different mixes that shape our destiny. Our Ori emits and recieves different electromagnetic waves that guides us along our life path. We tend to act and react to pulses emitted by others, which is why we naturally gravitate or are repelled by other people’s Ori. We also react or are tuned by the placing of different Orisas in their orbit. Each orbital cycle is divided into twelve sectors like a clock or calendar that represent a specific stage. The first stage is life, second is love of oneself and money, third is communication with friends and family, fourth is mother and home, fifth is birth and father, six is work. While the first six are personal relationships, the last six is for the collective.
There are also amazing Orisa/planetary interrelationships like how in astronomy and study of the creation of the Universe, Obatala/Jupiter was the first ruler of the universe and was going to suck up all other Orisas, if not for Obaluaye that created a structure that enabled Oduduwa/Earth to be. Ogun/Mars essence of war is the opposite of creative Osun essence of brotherly love. As opposities attract, they married but Ogun’s amoral push for wealth and power, made Osun divorce him for Shango, the essence of Justice. Esu, the essence of information, in its masculine forceful spread of knowledge state is opposite to Obatala/Jupiter, the essence of civilization, law and philosophy, as opposities attract, they work together.
In Esu ‘feminine’ state, where it creates and analyzes information, it is in the tenth house of Obatala, the house of Fame, meaning for Obatala to be truly global it also needs Esu. For Orunmila/Sun to be loved and take a position of leadership, it needs to be merged with it’s opposite which is Shango/Uranus, the essence of Justice and judicious use of knowledge. Olokun/Neptune, the essence of propaganda, consciousness and religious dogma, is the opposite of creative Esu, information, and they attract since Olokun needs Esu’s information for propaganda and consciousness. Essentially, Esu has a relationship with all Orisas.
There are also practical relationships that describe the formation of the Planet Earth, like Yemoja being the opposite of Obaluaye, meaning that the pull of the Moon on the ocean, which we see as high tides, is also how the water pulled back to give space for land structure, Obaluaye. Oya, the essence of revolutionary change had to marry Shango, the essence of Justice.
Other Orishas apart from the major ones described above, are usually a mix of the essences of planets, Orisas. Orisas are also tied to different full moon cycles called Months, which are divided into three sectors/decans made up of about ten days each in the solar calendar month. For example in the month of Obatala/Sagittarius, the first decan/third, ten days, is ruled solely by Obatala, but the second decan is ruled by both Obatala and Ogun. In Western astrology, they are counted as separate, but in Yoruba astrology the mixed essence is known as Orisa Ossosi, the protector of the civilizational/religious realm, often symbolized as Ogun’s brother that uses bows and arrows, which incidentally is the symbol of Sagittarius. The third decan is ruled by Obatala and Orunmila.
Another example is that of Osun feminine house of Libra whose first decan is ruled solely by Osun/Venus but whose second decan is ruled by Osun and Shango. This is the Western symbol of Justice, the blind lady with a sword on one hand and scale of balance on the other hand. The third decan is ruled by Osun and Esu. The problem with the Western Justice system is that it is selective justice and based on money to buy the best lawyers and even bribe Judges. The Bench, the symbol of the Judiciary, was derived from the word banc that became banks. Initially Asiatic moneychangers were on benches as noted when Jesus threw them out of the temple. The New York Wall Street Stock Exchange initially traded on benches behind the Wall to keep out American Indians. It was in the Middle Ages, when steel became common and strong safes were built that banks/banc were created in Italy.
From the African perspective based on the full understanding of the universe, Justice/Shango is better served with Esu/Information, the second decan of the house of Shango, and not Osun the third decan of the house of Shango. This is why the Axial Age of the incoming Age of Shango used Africans as transatlantic slaves to bring about universal Justice, starting in the Americas.
The point of all these is that Yoruba knowledge is not just for dancing festivals and masquerades, but deep scientific and philosophical meanings. For our ancestors to have intellectually advanced to the point of knowing that it takes 256 Odus/bits to generate electromagnetism shows they were very advanced. It is known from Precession of the Equinox that humans go through phases where they forget and lose knowledge, but it eventually comes back. Now the universe, is demanding that it is our duty to dig deeper into the wealth of knowledge left behind by our ancestors, in order to advance humanity to a sustainable Just growth.
According to the binary science of Precession of the Equinox, a full cycle of civilizational knowledge is 24,000 to 26,000 years, and since DNA evidence shows that Yorubas and other Southern Nigerians differentiated as the first full sized humans about 89,000yrs ago, we have experienced at least 3 complete 24,000 year cycles. We know that our current civilizational knowledge bank started with the Age of Orunmila 10,000BC to 8,000BC (12,000 years ago), followed by the Age of Yemoja 8,000BC to 6,000BC (10kya) when we began to understand the connection between women menses and fertility to the 28 day moon cycle, which led to our creation of the first lunar calendar. This was followed by the Age of Esu from 6,000BC to 4,000BC during which writing started, then followed by Age of Osun from about 4,000BC to 2,000BC that spur international trade and massive monuments.
These 8,000 years was when we Black Africans accumulated knowledge, but we began to lose knowledge when Whites emerged from the Central Asian Andronovo Mountain cave complex. From the Age of Ogun from 2000BC to 1AD, Whites used brutal force of bows and arrows and Ajagungbade to annihilate established African civilizations, as shown in the Bible especially Revelation Chapters 4 to 6, the first Apocalyptic horseman. This era is followed by the Age of Olokun from 1AD to 2023, the Apocalyptic Second Horseman, when we faced religious and political dogma that took peace from Earth, buried our knowledge in mysticism of Ifa Olokun asoro dayo and Western academia. Christianity as seen with it’s symbolism of two fishes and baptism is a product of the outgoing Olokun era of the last two thousand years, the era of Second Horseman.
Now we are moving into the Age of Shango from 2024 to 4000BC when our knowledge bank will be revived for proper application. Instead of a baptism of water, we shall have a baptism of fire and nuclear holocaust that will teach and move humanity from the Era of Might is Right to an Era of Right is Might. We are leaving the era of scientific materialism for spiritual materialism when we would need and fully utilize our knowledge of Orisas.
There is so much to re-learn from Ifa-Afa-Iha-Fa-Efa and herbal medicine. However, we must unify all Original African Information Retrieval Systems to have a full understanding.
