What could a Yoruba priest in Nigeria, a santera in Havana and a feng shui master in Hong Kong have in common? On the surface, nothing: different languages, histories and gods. Yet, looked at closely, these traditions share an intuition: the world is pervaded by a living force, and living well means coming into harmony with it.
The two traditions in brief
Yoruba religion arose among the Yoruba of present-day south-western Nigeria, Benin and Togo. Above everything stands Olódùmarè, the supreme god, distant and without altars. In everyday life people turn to the orishas (òrìṣà), deities linked to forces of nature and to human temperaments: Ọ̀ṣun of fresh waters and love, Yemọja of the sea and motherhood, Ṣàngó of thunder, Ògún of iron and work, Èṣù the messenger of the crossroads, Ọbàtálá who shapes human bodies.
With the slave trade these traditions reached the Americas. In Cuba they gave rise to Santería, or Regla de Ocha, also called Lucumí: to survive under Spanish rule, the orishas were associated with Catholic saints. Changó with Saint Barbara, Yemayá with Our Lady of Regla, Ochún with Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, Babalú Ayé with Saint Lazarus. In Brazil a similar path gave birth to Candomblé.
Taoism is one of the great traditions of China. Its foundational text, the Daodejing attributed to Laozi, speaks of the Tao, the "Way": the nameless origin of all things and the way nature flows. Feng shui, "wind and water", is not a Taoist invention in the strict sense, but it belongs to the same Chinese cosmology: it is the art of choosing and arranging sites, houses and tombs in harmony with the forces of the landscape.
A force that runs through everything: àṣẹ and qi
For the Yoruba, everything that exists is pervaded by àṣẹ: the power to make things happen, a vital and sacred force that Olódùmarè gave to the world. The orishas are full of it, the words of priests transmit it, rituals renew it. "Àṣẹ" is also said at the end of a prayer, much like our "amen": so be it, may it come to pass.
Chinese thought calls qi (氣) the breath, the energy that animates everything, from mountains to the human body. Feng shui arose precisely to understand where qi gathers and where it disperses. An ancient text, the Book of Burial attributed to Guo Pu (4th century), explains it like this: qi rides the wind and scatters, but it stops when it meets water. Hence the name of the art.
Àṣẹ and qi are not the same thing: àṣẹ is more closely tied to the word, to command, to the power of gods and priests; qi is more impersonal, a breath of nature. But both describe a living world, in which nothing is mere matter.
The forces of nature: orishas and five phases
The orishas give a face to the forces of nature: the river, the sea, lightning, iron. Chinese cosmology instead thinks of them as five phases (wuxing: wood, fire, earth, metal, water) and as a balance between yin and yang, the two complementary polarities. Feng shui uses these categories to read a place: where there is too much fire, where water is lacking.
In both cases water holds a special place. Ọ̀ṣun dwells in the river, and her Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2005. The Daodejing says that "the highest good is like water", which benefits all without contending (ch. 8), and that nothing is softer than water, yet nothing surpasses it in overcoming what is hard (ch. 78).
Questioning destiny: Ifá and the I Ching
The most striking parallel concerns divination. The Ifá system, kept by the babaláwo priests and linked to Ọ̀rúnmìlà, the orisha of wisdom, is based on 16 principal figures which, combined in pairs, yield 256 odù. Each odù is connected to hundreds of verses handed down by memory, which the priest recites and interprets. UNESCO recognised it as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008.
The I Ching, the Book of Changes, works in a similar way: solid lines (yang) and broken lines (yin) form 64 hexagrams, each with a text to meditate on. Both systems are, at bottom, binary: two possibilities that combine into a finite number of situations. And in both, the oracle does not mechanically "predict" the future: it offers a situation to reflect on, a piece of advice, often a sacrifice or a change in behaviour.
Ancestors and places
In both traditions the dead remain close to the living. The Yoruba honour their ancestors in the egúngún masquerades, in which the departed return to visit the community. In China feng shui arose first and foremost for tombs (the "yin dwellings"), because a well-buried ancestor brings wellbeing to the descendants; only later was it applied to the houses of the living (the "yang dwellings").
Character: ìwà pẹ̀lẹ́ and the softness of the Tao
On one point the two traditions meet in an almost moving way. The Yoruba ethical ideal is ìwà pẹ̀lẹ́, "gentle character": good character is worth more than beauty and wealth, because it is what makes it possible to fulfil one's destiny. The Taoist sage, in turn, is soft, humble, does not force things (wu wei), and precisely for this reason is strong. Both prefer calm to arrogance.
The differences not to forget
Not everything is alike. Yoruba traditions and Santería are religions with deities, priesthoods, initiations and ritual possession, in which the orisha "descends" upon a devotee during dancing to the sound of drums. In some rites animals are offered in sacrifice, a practice that is controversial in the West and that in the United States was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1993 as religious freedom. Feng shui, by contrast, is today above all a practice: one can follow it without believing in any god, and many use it only for interior design. It should also be said that there is no scientific evidence that the orientation of a house affects health or fortune: it is a traditional wisdom of dwelling, not a science.
What we can take from this
From both traditions comes an invitation that requires no particular beliefs: to look at the world as something alive, not as a warehouse of things. To pay attention to the places where we live, to light, to water, to space. To honour those who came before us. And to cultivate a gentle character, one that does not force things but accompanies them: the ìwà pẹ̀lẹ́ of the Yoruba and the water of the Tao express, in very distant languages, the same wisdom.
Further reading
- Jacob K. Olupona, African Religions: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2014.
- Wande Abimbola, Ifá: An Exposition of Ifá Literary Corpus, Oxford University Press Nigeria, 1976.
- Rowland Abiodun, Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art, Cambridge University Press, 2014.
- Joseph M. Murphy, Santería: African Spirits in America, Beacon Press, 1993.
- Ifa divination system, UNESCO, Intangible Cultural Heritage (2008)
- Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, UNESCO, World Heritage (2005)
- Ole Bruun, An Introduction to Feng Shui, Cambridge University Press, 2008.
- Daoism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Tao Te Ching, English translation by James Legge, 1891 (public domain), on sacred-texts.com
- I Ching, English translation by James Legge (public domain), on sacred-texts.com