religion
Out of context: Reply #900
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Yorubic medicine is indigenous to and widely practiced on the African continent. Yorubic medicine has its roots in the Ifa Corpus, a religious text revealed by the mystic prophet, Orunmila, over 4,000 years ago in the ancient city of Ile-Ife, now known as Yorubaland. Within the last 400 years, this healing system has also been practiced in the day-to-day lives of individuals in the Caribbean, and South America, in large part, because of the traditions brought over by African slaves arriving in the Americas.
Orunmila’s teachings were directed at the Yoruba people which centered around the topics of divination, prayer, dance, symbolic gestures, personal and communal elevation, spiritual baths, meditation, and herbal medicine. This ancient text, the Ifa Corpus, is the foundation for the art of divine herbology. Although Yorubic medicine has been practiced in Africa for over 4,000 years, its fundamental principles are little known to Westerners around the world. Among the various medical techniques for diagnosis and treatment, Yorubic medicine provides an important and valuable system worthy of study. The purpose of Yoruba is not merely to counteract the negative forces of disease in the human body, but also to achieve spiritual enlightenment and elevation which are the means of freeing the soul.
As with all ancient systems of medicine, the ideal of Yoruba herbology is to condition the body in its entirety so that disease will not attack it. (The term Osain is also used to describe Yorubic herbology. The word “Osain” means “the divine Orisha of plants”. I will also use this term throughout the essay.) Many Westerners take it for granted that “African medicine” is a vague term for a collection of medical “voo doo”. This myth about African medicine crept in over centuries of misunderstandings. What is left is the negative image of primitive “voo doo” witch-doctors. This “voo doo” mentality is devoid of the sacred realities born of African thought in respect to religion, philosophy, and medicine. Therefore, the reader must separate witch-doctor myths from the genuine article when considering African herbal medicine.
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