The Cosmological Vision of the Yoruba-Idààcha of Benin Republic (West Africa): A Light on Yoruba History and Culture

Abstract

The essay examines Idààcha cosmological vision as a kind of incorporation of Yoruba cosmology. It shows a process where the two strands, that is to say, knowledge and belief can not be readily distinguished. The divinatory traditional calendar is indeed based on a scale of fixed number values whose definitions are drawn from the concepts early traditional people have of the universe. Thus, the signification of the terms that designate entities such as angle, circle, center of the circle, midnight, time zone, the number of days in a week, etc., in the Yoruba dialect Idààcha, mirrors cosmological standards. These words constitute a landscape of memory shedding light on early Yoruba culture and history. Hence, Idààcha being a significant western periphery of the Yoruba region, we examine why its divinatory calendar would preserve an older spatio-temporal logic, beyond Ifè and Oyo revisionism in Yoruba history. Finally, the article points out that the translation of spatial and geometrical relations into temporal terms and vice-versa may suggest a new indexical approach to the study of cosmology in relation to the human body. As the body is in the mind, we say in relation to the human mind.