The Babalawo and supporters claim that the Babalawo was an Ifa-thumping physician and herbalist. Illness they say were imbalances caused by supernatural forces. Some like Buckley even claim that the Yoruba viewed the human body as a cooking pot that was susceptible to overflowing, and that it was this overflowing that caused disease. These concepts are bizarre, totally made up, and alien to the Yoruba Traditional Medicine.
When the Yoruba of old invented anything they gave it a name that identified its function. ‘Oogun’ meant ‘medicines’. ‘Baasegun’ meant ‘Master of Medicines’, a physician. ‘Onisegun’ meant ‘Maker of Medicines’, a herbologist. It is clear and unambiguous from their meanings what these two professionals – Baasegun and Onisegun – did in the delivery of the Yoruba Traditional Medicine: ie diagnosing and treating.
The word ‘Babalawo’ meant ‘Master of Plate’. It is not at all obvious from this title exactly what the Babalawo would be doing in the context of the Yoruba Traditional Medicine. The word ‘Oogun’ is not in the Babalawo title. This effectively dismissed the perception that the Yoruba intended the Babalawo to be a member of the healthcare team, or to play a direct role in the delivery of the Yoruba Traditional Medicine.
The work of the Babalawo
What we do know is this: the Babalawo used a plate (the Opon) for his work. What we also know is that the Babalawo cast 16 Ikin nuts on the face of the Opon to generate a pattern, and that each pattern had a pre-assigned number. What we further know is that each number was linked to a specific piece of information contained in the Odu, a literary corpus of 256 chapters (ie the Encyclopaedia Yorubanica), that the Babalawo had previously committed to memory. Ifa was the act of casting the Ipin seeds and then assigning a number to the pattern so generated. Ifa was an ingenious method that the Yoruba devised to retrieve information from the memorialised Encyclopaedia Yorubanica.
The operational circumstances of Ifa meant that it was just another physical asset. Ifa has a measurable physical presence and an operational importance providing direct access to ancient Yoruba knowledge that had been packaged into the Odu. Ifa, like all physical assets, lacked consciousness and intuition. Ifa is inanimate and is therefore not capable of realising ethical principles. Ifa is in many ways operationally comparable to the modern day computer with Ifa as operating system.
The divination fallacy
Divination, or using Ifa to unearth the ‘hidden knowledge’, is not applicable in the context of the Yoruba Traditional Medicine. The evidence is as follows.
One, the Baasegun as physician had to have the knowledge of ailments and how to treat them. The knowledge that he required to do his job was taught to him during apprenticeship. Two, the Onisegun as herbologist had to have the knowledge of plants and how to prepare medicines from them. The knowledge that he required to do his job was taught to him during apprenticeship. The operation of the Yoruba Traditional Medicine was based entirely on what the Baasegun and Onisegun knew, not on knowledge they did not have. The Baasegun and Onisegun simply could not practice their calling without the requisite knowledge.
Nature of the Yoruba medicine
Yoruba Traditional Medicine is direct ‘cause-and-effect’ medicine, operating on the principle that every disease (the effect) had an identifiable cause (the Kokoro). The Yoruba medical practice used herbal preparations (Oogun) to control, kill or expel these disease-causing agents. Direct ‘cause-and-effect’ meant there was absolute certainty, which in turn meant that there was no requirement for additional input from the Babalawo or anyone else.
The process of healthcare delivery was simple and uncomplicated: the patient consulted the Baasegun who diagnosed the ailment from the presenting symptoms and prescribed medication as appropriate; the Onisegun dispensed the prescribed medicine. Divination and religion had nothing at all to do with it. The Yoruba Traditional Medicine shared the cause-and-effect principle with Modern Scientific Medicine.
In the ancient times of professionalism and professional integrity, no respectable Babalawo would have paraded himself as Baasegun or Onisegun; no responsible Babalawo would have practiced as Baasegun or Onisegun. Those who now do or say otherwise are mischief-makers or just ignorant.
The translation problem
The erroneous association of the Babalawo with the Yoruba Traditional Medicine arose from confusion caused by the English translation of the word ‘Oogun’. To the Yoruba of old, the word ‘Oogun’ meant two distinct, distinguishable, separate, and unconnected things. On the one hand, by Oogun the Yoruba meant ‘therapeutic agents’ as used in the delivery of the Yoruba Traditional Medicine, whilst on the other, by Oogun the Yoruba separately meant ‘spells’ (Edi) as used in the Yoruba Metaphysical Tradition. The two are not the same but the literature on Yoruba medicine, nearly all written by the non-medical, wrongly conflated the physical ‘Oogun medicine’ of the Baasegun and Onisegun with the unrelated metaphysical ‘Edi medicine’ of the Babalawo.
Anyone writing about Yoruba medicine had an obligation to indicate whether he was writing about ‘Oogun medicine’ or ‘Edi medicine’ otherwise his thesis was misleading and worthless. The Babalawo practiced the ‘Edi medicine’, not the ‘Oogun medicine’.
The deliberate separation of the physical from the metaphysical by the Yoruba:
1) revealed the sophistication and uniqueness of the Yoruba Traditional Medicine;
2) distinguished Yoruba medicine from other traditions including Chinese, European and Indian, which had no such separation; and
3) confirmed how the Yoruba medicine provided the principle upon which the scientific medicine was built.