Yoruba Tradition

Yoruba settlement and the Ifá listing

A Nigerian philosopher writing in 2007 describes the Yoruba as one of the major ethnic groups of Nigeria, occupying Ogun, Ondo, Oyo, Ekiti and Lagos States and a substantial part of Kwara State, with sizeable numbers also in the southeastern Republic of Benin and in Togo. The same paper notes a Yoruba cultural presence in Brazil and Cuba, where descendants of enslaved people kept elements of their heritage. This page uses "Yoruba tradition" as an umbrella for religious and healing practice in these settings, and the sources reviewed do not all use that exact label.

UNESCO inscribed the Ifá divination system on its Representative List in 2008, after a 2005 proclamation, and lists Nigeria as the source. UNESCO states that the system is practiced among Yoruba communities and by the African diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean, and it reports that young people and the Yoruba are losing interest in practicing and consulting Ifá. Ifá divination has its own Machipedia page, and this page does not repeat that material.

Diaspora forms in Cuba and Brazil

Two diaspora traditions are named in the sources. Rosario and De La Rosa describe Santería as emerging in Cuba in the late 19th century from the slave trade, from Yoruba-based systems of Ifá and Orisa worship, and as an amalgam of popular Catholicism, 19th-century Kardecian spiritism and several African traditions. A Harvard essay describes Lucumí, or Regla de Ocha-Ifá, as the Cuban version of the Yoruba tradition from Nigeria.

For Brazil, an ethnobiology paper states that Candomblé was introduced in the 18th and 19th centuries by enslaved Yoruba, whose origins it places in present-day Nigeria and Benin. Ogunnaike traces a later debate over women in Ifá initiation across Cuba and the United States, in which Cuban-style and Nigerian-style practitioners disagree. These sources show that practice differs by country and lineage, so statements about one form should not be carried to another.

Islam, colonial health services and medical pluralism

Sanni reports that Yoruba contact with Islam in southwestern Nigeria goes back to the 14th century, and that the faith became firmly established in the 19th century. His abstract says divination with palm kernels and cowries, used to diagnose ailments before Islam, lost position among Muslims to divination with rosary and sand, while elements of the indigenous medical tradition were incorporated into the Islamic one.

Adetiba and Msindo study the 1920s to 1950s and conclude that chiefs promoted indigenous practitioners alongside Western medicine, sustaining medical pluralism in the region. They report that by 1927 only three missionary hospitals and ten dispensaries existed in southwestern Nigeria, which helps explain why rural communities relied on other sources of care.

Ori, ara and emi

Balogun notes that ori literally means head and that, in discussions of destiny, it refers to the inner or spiritual head, called ori-inu. In the creation accounts he summarizes, the body (ara) is molded, the Supreme Deity Olodumare adds the life-giving emi, and Ajala, a potter, molds ori. Ajala is described as not being an orisa. People are said to choose an ori, and philosophers disagree on whether this implies fatalism or a soft-deterministic view.

A 2025 paper on oral health glosses orí as the inner head or spiritual essence and presents it as one component of personhood alongside ara and ẹ̀mí. The authors link oral care to harmonizing orí with the physical self. This is the authors interpretation, drawn from songs, proverbs and Ifá poetry, and it is not a clinical definition.

Orisha, aché and spelling variants

The sources spell the divinities differently by region: orisa in Nigerian philosophy, oricha in Cuban usage, and orixás in Brazil. The Candomblé paper states that each adherent is associated with, and in many respects governed by, one or two orixás, and that a terreiro is the physical space where ritual takes place. Balogun distinguishes the orisa, described as lesser gods, from Olodumare.

A fieldwork essay on Lucumí defines aché as energy, power and divine power, and notes that the word is also used for thanks and blessing, close to amen. This page gives only that gloss because the sources reviewed do not define àṣẹ in more depth, and the Yoruba spelling, with its tone marks, is not discussed in them.

Priestly and healer titles

UNESCO glosses babalawo as the priest who interprets the signs of Ifá. Ogunnaike writes that iyanifa is the traditional Yoruba counterpart of the male Ifá priest, while iyalawo, meaning "mother of secrets", was coined by some American practitioners as a female form of babalawo. He states that he never heard iyalawo in Yorubaland and believes it is a neologism there. Cuban spelling renders the male title as babalao.

Health surveys use English terms such as traditional healers, herb sellers and herbalists, and name some Yoruba herbal mixtures such as agbo iba. The sources opened for this page did not define onisegun or egbogi, so those terms are not glossed here, and the roles of herbalists and diviners may overlap in practice.

Health as framed by practitioners and scholars

Foláyan and colleagues present a Yoruba view in which a person has ara, ẹ̀mí and orí, and in which an Ifá poem, Òdí Méjì, links the appearance of the teeth to the state of health. Jegede, an ethnographer who is also a practitioner, draws on twenty years of research with healers in southwestern Nigeria to argue that wèrè, the term for mental illness, refers to an unraveling of connections across bodily, environmental, ancestral and spiritual domains. These are descriptions of how the tradition frames illness, and they are not tested claims.

Sanni adds that diagnosis before Islam involved palm kernels and cowries, and that Muslim healers later used rosary and sand. Practices therefore vary by religious setting within Yoruba communities.

Herbal remedies in southwestern Nigeria

Ajaiyeoba and colleagues interviewed 514 people, including traditional healers, herb sellers, elders and mothers, in an urban and a rural area of Oyo State. Respondents named 12 types of fever and 112 herbal remedies, and 25 recipes were reported, each with 2 to 7 ingredients. Oral decoctions were the most common form, at 84 percent, followed by oral powders at 63 percent. The most frequently named plants were Azadirachta indica, Mangifera indica, Morinda lucida and Citrus medica.

In Yoruba-speaking communities in Kwara State, Adeyemi and colleagues recorded mixtures such as agbo iba and agbo jedi-jedi, and plants including neem, bitter leaf and mango leaves. Foláyan and colleagues mention chewing sticks such as pákò and orín used for oral care.

Diaspora care settings

Rosario and De La Rosa describe Santería as both a religion and an informal health care system, with botánicas serving as supply outlets for folk healing. Practitioners are difficult to count because some conceal their identities, so prevalence figures are uncertain.

A qualitative study in Camaçari, Bahia, interviewed Candomblé priests, health professionals and managers. It reported that terreiro practices address physical, emotional, social and spiritual dimensions, that the knowledge of terreiros was often excluded or delegitimized in primary care, and that terreiros themselves recognize the limits of spirituality in health.

Reasons people use traditional medicine

In a cross-sectional study of 748 adult women in Ibadan interviewed between 2013 and 2015, 81.6 percent reported using traditional medicine. The questionnaire did not separate herbal medicines from spiritual practices, so the figure covers both. Igbo and Hausa women were less likely than Yoruba women to report use, and women with a secondary education were less likely than uneducated women.

Practitioners and respondents describe herbs for fevers, gastroenteritis and general prevention. In Kwara State, 42.5 percent of respondents reported herbal medication for acute gastroenteritis, and 54.6 percent reported antibiotics. In the Oyo State survey, herbal decoctions and powders were the main methods of fever prevention. These are reports of use and not of effectiveness.

Spiritual and psychosocial support

Rosario and De La Rosa describe Santería as informal psychosocial support for Latinos living with cancer, and Jegede describes healer-led approaches to wèrè as an alternative to neuropsychiatric labels. In a Brazilian study of 100 hemodialysis patients, those who identified as Candomblé followers had higher positive religious and spiritual coping scores than others, while Evangelical patients had higher negative coping scores.

What has and has not been studied

Searches of PubMed for terms combining Yoruba, Santería, Candomblé and Lucumí with traditional medicine, herbal medicine and health care returned surveys, ethnographies, laboratory screens and qualitative studies. No randomized trial or systematic review testing the tradition as a whole system, or a Yoruba-specific diviner-led treatment, was found. The studies cited here document who uses these practices and what is used.

Survey data show that use is common in southwestern Nigeria. Li and colleagues found 81.6 percent use among women in Ibadan, and Ajaiyeoba and colleagues compiled 112 remedies for fevers with the stated aim of identifying potential antimalarial candidates, which means the work was documentation and not a test of efficacy.

Laboratory findings

Adeyemi and colleagues tested ethanolic extracts of 12 plants reported by respondents against bacteria linked to gastroenteritis. All but Ficus vogelii showed some antibacterial activity, and Ficus vogelii enhanced bacterial growth. These are in vitro findings, did not include viruses, and do not show clinical benefit.

A zebrafish model of G6PD deficiency was exposed to three compounds used in newborn umbilical care. Eucalyptus oil increased the hemolytic phenotype by 13.4 percent and methylated spirits by 39.7 percent compared with control, while Yoruba herbal tea showed no effect. The authors state that clinical correlation is still needed.

Limits of the literature

Several sources are discussion or interpretive papers. The oral health paper argues from cultural texts, and the wèrè paper rests on one ethnographer who is also a practitioner. The Ibadan survey recruited from communities and could not tell whether remedies were self-prescribed or recommended by a specialist. The Camaçari study is qualitative and limited to one municipality.

Herbal remedy cautions

Li and colleagues write that earlier reports described widespread contamination of herbal products in Nigeria, including heavy metals such as cadmium, lead and mercury and microbial contamination above international benchmarks, while users often regard traditional medicine as safe. These are statements about earlier studies, and contamination varies by product and source.

In Kwara State, 36.2 percent of respondents self-prescribed herbal medication, compared with 17.7 percent whose herbal medication came from herbalists. The authors note that some mixtures contain hepatotoxic or other toxic components, that one mixture included naphthalene tablets, and that Aristolochia ringens was among the reported plants. They also raise concern about antimicrobial resistance.

Preclinical work on umbilical care compounds suggests that eucalyptus oil and methylated spirits may be hemolytic triggers in G6PD deficiency, according to a zebrafish model. The authors call for clinical study before conclusions are drawn.

Delayed or parallel biomedical care

Li and colleagues report that earlier studies found a relationship between traditional medicine use and non-adherence to biomedical medication, and that many patients turn to biomedical treatment only after traditional medicine has failed. Foláyan and colleagues argue that spiritual interpretations of oral disease may lead people to seek traditional or spiritual remedies and delay a visit to a dentist.

In Brazil, a qualitative study found that primary care often excluded terreiro knowledge, which can discourage open discussion of what people use. A conventional care boundary applies here: traditional practice does not replace necessary medical assessment, and anyone taking prescribed medication may wish to tell a clinician about any herbal product.

Diaspora-specific cautions and suitability

Interviews in Hudson County, New Jersey, found that 17 of 21 Santería, Espiritismo or Palo Mayombe practitioners reported using mercury in practice or services. The authors considered accidental spills the main exposure concern, and mercury was never recommended to clients for individual use. A related risk analysis found that some of the highest-exposure mercury uses appear to have roots outside the religion.

The sources reviewed did not identify a professional register, code of ethics or training standard for Yoruba healers, diviners or herbalists, and no such standard is described here. Practices differ widely by region and lineage, and initiation material is not covered in this overview.