Animal sacrifice and other offerings are part and parcel of Yoruba worship

Animal sacrifice and other offerings are part and parcel of Yoruba worship. To our Western minds, the nonanimal offerings of fruit, flowers, tobacco, cloth or foods may not be much of a stretch, but the sacrifice of animals perhaps is. The thinking behind this sacrifice though is as follows: the essence of primal power must be replenished and, apart from air, blood is the single most powerful representation of life’s essence. To describe it in an analogy more understandable to us today, when we eat meat, through a transformation of energy within our bodies, that meats coverts into and replenishes our life force. To the Yoruba, blood sacrifice accomplishes this on a more global level.

Finally, Ifa is a nature-based religion. All of nature is viewed as a manifestation of God Essence and as such is revered. But it is not the tree or rock itself that the Yorubas “revere and worship, but the deep energy that brought about its being.” [B. I. Karade, page 21] Think of this concept in terms of our American flag. When we pledge allegiance to the flag, we do so because it is a symbol of something greater, our nation; and that nation, in turn, is a symbol of something else, our sense of the importance of community.

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