HISTORICAL STUDY ABOUT THE LIVE OF YORUBA

Yoruba people

The African Yoruba Religion

The Yorubas also believe that when Earth was very young, sixteen heavenly prophets, called The Ancients or The Elders, were sent here by the Heavenly Council. Their mission was to elevate the consciousness of the people on Earth. These sixteen prophets also revealed themselves later to a Yoruba man, Orunmila, who is thought to have lived sometime between 4000 and 2000 BCE; that is, while the Yorubas were still in the Nile area. Born of humble parents, Orunmilla became the great spiritual teacher of his people and is now considered by them to be a deified person, comparable to the Son of God in that he is both human and divine. Orunmilla reformulated for his people a system of ethics, religious beliefs, and mystic vision that had already existed eons before his birth.

Traditional Yoruba Religion

Yoruba religion and mythology is a major influence in West Africa, chiefly in Nigeria, and it has given origin to several New World religions such as Santería in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Candomblé in Brazil.

Itan is the term for the sum total of all Yoruba myths, songs, histories, and other cultural components. These mostly originate from the ese (verses) of the Odu Ifa.

After the Ọyọ empire collapsed and the region plunged into civil war, ethnic Yoruba were among the largest in number of African peoples who were enslaved and taken by European traders to Cuba,^[16] Puerto Rico,^[17] Brazil, Haiti, Trinidad^[16] and the rest of the New World (chiefly in the 19th century). The enslaved Africans carried their Orisha religious beliefs with them. These concepts were combined with preexisting African-based religions, Christianity, Native American mythology, and Kardecist Spiritism into various New World lineages which are Lucumí (Cuba, Puerto Rico), Oyotunji (U.S.), Anago (Nigeria), Candomblé (Brazil), Umbanda (Brazil), Batuque (Brazil) and Kaaro oojire (Nigeria).