Ifa Divination Poetry Among the Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria

Abstract

Ifa divination poetry is one of the most popular genres among the Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria. A careful exploration of the Ifa Literary corpus reveals that quite a lot can be understood about the philosophy of the world. This study intends to seek for an alternative ways in Ifa poetic verses to address some socio-political problems. The study employs the literariness and functionality of Ifa literary corpus as an archetype of contemporary society. The paper is targeted towards identifying the archetypal elements in selected Ifa literary corpus, to analyze how archetypal characters in Ifa divination poems can be used to tackle contemporary social crisis among others. The objectives of the study include the examination of selected Ifa poems to proof that it has universal appeals and archetypes. Our methodology is descriptive using selected Ifa literary verses and adopting George Frazcr's (1992} mythological tenets (the Golden Bough) which stipulates that societal values and norms are the pivot of both oral and written literature and Carl Jung's (1967) archetypal images and symbols for our analysis. The study concludes that Ifa divination poetry contains archetypal potentials that have universal appeal to contemporary society and can be used as better alternative for societal growth and development.