ESENTAYE; YORUBA MIRROR THAT REVEALS THE PURPOSE OF MAN ON EARTH
“The meaning of life is eudemonia- living a fulfiling and satisfying life.”----Aristotle
The world is bleeding; humanity, particularly Black race is at the cross road. Mending the broken world of man has become herculean task, because Black race, a great race at the centre of humanity and civilization no longer knows, value and walk in the reality of their being, through the instrumentality of mirror of wisdom that reveals their purpose on Earth to them individually.
Did you just asked if one could know his or her purpose on Earth? Absolutely! Every created things that exist or something done have a purpose.
A computer or mobile phone for example, cannot talk about its purpose. It is the responsibility of the maker to make the purpose known, and human being cannot be an exemption.
When the purpose of a thing is unknown, abuse is inevitable. Generally speaking, prior to the modern discoveries, human race do not know the purpose of ants and cockroach, so we kill them.
A professor of physics was once reputed to have said, he pitied us because we have many ants, but we don’t know how to use them. He asserted, “ under a certain process, if we grind ants, and squeeze the juice that comes out of it and add one or two things, it could be used to cure leprosy.”
It is in the realization of the fact that, the purpose of life is to lead a life of purpose that propelled the Yoruba ancestors to explore, and institutionalized the ‘principle of Esentaye’ in IFA.
Esentaye is a traditional Yoruba divinatory procedure embarked upon by parents of a new born baby, through the help of a competent and versatile Babalawo to ascertain the purpose of the new born on Earth, and his/her do’s and don’t, with the aim of guiding him/her to lead a successful and fulfilling life on Earth.
It’s undertaken within three to eight days of his/her birth.
However, many parents of today Africans now sees the process as evil that can expose their child to the attack of enemies, as if not doing it prevent such child from being attacked spiritually. Africans now embark on the game of trial and error that Europeans gave to us,
instead of using our own divine method to ascertain our purpose on Earth and walk in it without wasting time. It is a pity that many became what their parents wanted them to become.
Some became what they themselves or friends wanted to become etc. It is very appalling to see very few people becoming what ‘Olodumare’ wants them to become in life, which has led many to start learning soap making, cake baking, fish farming, shoe making, fashion designing etc out of frustration of not been gainfully employed after graduating from the university, polytechnic or even colleges of education, all in an attempt to fulfill the purpose they knew nothing about.
According to William Bascom (1980), quoting Awo Olorisa Salako without mentioning the Odu from which the assertion is derived. Olodumare has 401 children, and also created 401 professions.
Orunmila seeks for gift of divination due to his nature, and he was given, while all other Orisa have theirs, but still show interest in the gift Orunmila, with exemption to Erinle, Ogun, Orisa Oko, Egungun etc. Osun can also make use of sixteen cowries for divination, so also other Orisa that shows interest in Orunmila gift.
Yet, IFA or wisdom of divination is synonymous with Orunmila alone. This shows that every human being are given a talent from Olodumare, just like the normal Orisa, because it is human being that becomes Orisa, which the Yorubas called ‘Ebun amutorun wa’ i.e heavenly gift that was brought to the Earth, and no human being can excel in a profession he or she was not created to operate in or gifted in to the admiration and honour of the local or global audience.
You are synonymous with the gift you are given by Olodumare. For example, Orunmila is synonymous with IFA, while Sango is synonymous with Lightening and thunder or should i say physics, and Osanyin is gifted in pharmacy/herbal medicine.
The deepness of the above analogy was corroborated by Erasmus Desiderus when he opined that,“ the seed of life are planted in us by nature, and the job of a teacher is to make it grow and sprout.” But, failure to ascertain the gift of man , which is an indicator of man purpose, and make it grow and sprout through quality teaching and learning process, will cause one to live a wrong life, and a life of an imitator, which does not glorify anyone on Earth.
Consider this, while I was a very young guy, there was a musician in Yorubaland called ‘Lagbaja’, because he usually dressed like masquerade, and was very successful at it. Suddenly, an imitator emerged from nowhere with similar dress code and called himself ‘Tamedo’, but I doubt if he used two years before he disappear to the thin air of Afrobeat music.
In conclusion, ‘Esentaye’ or ‘itefa’ if now a grown up man/woman is all Yorubas and modern Africans need to fix themselves for global competitiveness, because if we failed to fix a man, we cannot fix Africa and the world at large.
AWO IDINGBE SPEAK
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