Many have asked me how they can go about becoming a Babalawo, and the first thing that comes to mind is why in the world would anyone want to become a Babalawo.
Why Would Anyone Want to Bear This Burden?
The agency of a Babalawo demands much of an individual and the rewards are meager at best. Becoming a Babalawo is a burden which few have been able to bear successfully. Much is demanded of you, and little if anything is promised.
The First Step: Ask an Elder Babalawo If This Is Your Path
The first step to becoming a Babalawo is to visit a Babalawo and inquire if this is in your path. We all have a particular destiny to fulfill, and not everyone is born with becoming a Babalawo as part of their destiny.
Becoming a Babalawo requires much training and discipline. So one of the recommendations I can give you is to be willing to study much before you even face a potential client. Even if this takes you several years of study.
Years of Study, Like a Physician’s Path
Consider this: not everyone is born to be a physician, and those who labor to be one spend nearly 10 years or more of hard study and hardship to become an efficient physician. In respect to those who have pursued this admirable profession and calling, becoming a Babalawo requires no less persistent study and hardship.
The Weight of a Community’s Spiritual Care
As a Babalawo you will be charged with the spiritual care and healing of a community. You will be called upon to solve disputes, and empower your community to be self-reliant and sufficient, but most importantly to grow spiritually. These objectives are not easy to accomplish, as few are interested in “spiritual growth,” and prefer to know how to increase their lot in life. Many times at the expense of someone else’s failure.
Therefore, you must show how wrong this is, and find a way to help them understand that everyone can be equally successful and can live in harmony, even if the other person is in the same type of business as they are. They need to know that all they have to do is offer a better service and not a better price.
Facing the Person in the Mirror
Becoming a Babalawo requires a person to first learn how to overcome their own idiosyncrasies as well as challenges brought upon by their own personality misgivings. Upon receiving the “Hand of Orunmila” you will be challenged by the man in the mirror.
You will have to finally face the person in the mirror, and learn to overcome all the obstacles which that person has brought to your life. If you are not able to solve your own issues, how can you solve the issues of your community?
Becoming a Babalawo requires you to first overcome all your personal issues, so that you can help others do the same. If you have not personally experienced their troubles, how can you help them? This is why becoming a Babalawo is so challenging.
The First Year After Receiving the Hand of Orunmila
The very first year after receiving the “Hand of Orunmila” will be a very challenging year. You will find yourself faced with issues you thought stayed in your past. Every aspect of your personality which has caused you issues in the past will come to visit again.
You will have to deal with yourself, and recognize that the issues and stumbling blocks you are dealing with are nothing else but opportunities to grow, and to learn how to overcome your deficiencies. If you have a tendency to go into denial when you do something you should have never done or when someone does something to you, then such situations will present themselves again in order for you to once and for all confront your fears.
Learning to Confront Fear
Becoming a Babalawo means you need to learn how to confront fears. Everyone runs away from that which creates fear. Yet it is that very fear which we have to learn to conquer.
Becoming a Babalawo means you have to learn how to empower others with the knowledge needed to overcome their own fears and obstacles.
No Mystery, No Cloak and Dagger
The biggest mistake, and an often-practiced behavior, is to create an aura of mystery and cloak-and-dagger about what you do. There is no mystery; people attract to their lives that which they project. Becoming a Babalawo requires you to learn how to empower people with the knowledge of how to attract everything that is good in life. If they are projecting negativity and doubt, people will feel negative about them, and will doubt their intentions and capability.
Related reading: for the procedural guide to the path — the years of study, the initiation, the milestones from Hand of Orunmila to Itefa — see How to Become a Babaláwo: What the Path Actually Requires.
Great Article Baba, I reposted on my blog too.
Aboru Aboye Abosise,
Adupe O Baba, it is important to know that initiation into any of the priestly capacities/ agencies of our ATR’s should be viewed in the correct light. We are becoming and working on behalf of the energies of this universe, we are offering ourselves to the Orisa, not the other way around.
A hungry man can not tell the truth IFA say says:
Like in any other religion there are rotten people with desperate need for taking advantage of other people. Hiding behind the religion and trying to abuse the authority as Babalawos for their own needs or financial gain. This religion is becoming business in the first place. Because some babalawos had difficult life they are prone to take advantage of other people like anaybody else. Therefore why we should continue to glorify Babalawos as some of them are psichologicaly disturbed and trying to hide their shortcomings behind the religion and being able to function only as Babalawos nad not as normal people
Awo Orisha