EweTHE USE OF PLANTS IN YORUBA SOCIETY

PIERRE FATUMBI VERGER

ODEBRECHT

A few days ago somebody asked me, quite seriously, whether

Pierre Verger actually existed or if he was yet another folk tale from

Bahia. Who knows, but maybe an attempt is being made to explain the

syncretism of our culture, not by a god, but by a human being.

Born in France into — I've been told — a noble lineage, citizen

of the world, photographer of faraway places from Beijing to La

Habana, young adventurer exploring pathways of knowledge and emo-

tion, and then a Doctor of science at France's Centre de Recherches

Scientif iques alongside Roger Bastide, a man of great wisdom.

In Africa those who want to find him will have to ask for

Fatumbi, a title given him by Yoruba sacred men and women which he

has incorporated into his name, prompting the professor and

researcher, the University man and the man of books, to become even

richer is his humanity, to become a man equal to, and an integral part

of the sacred circles and initiations of the Yoruba. In Africa he taught

and learned not only the complete routes of the slave ships, but also the

ways of mystery. He became a sorcerer: Pierre Fatumbi Verger.

At the Axe Op6 Afonja holy circle, Mae Senhora, she who is so

unforgettable, proclaimed from her queen's throne that he was Ojuoba,

the eyes of Sango, the one who sees and knows all. At the houses of

saints he became a well-known figure, master of us all, equal to us in

the vibration and warmth of the drums. Professor, researcher, photogra-

pher, writer; in Bahia he is Pierre Fatumbi Verger Ojuoba.

Here in Bahia, his life's experience and knowledge have

become forever syncretized. The mixture of the Frenchman from rue

Cardinal Lemoine, Paris, with the African from Dakar, Porto Novo,

Oyo, has resulted in the definitive and yet unique man from Bahia, so

extraordinary he seems an invention.

And yet he is not an invention because he lives, works, writes

and tarvels the world. A sorcerer for sure. It is not possible to hide, to

deny. Mae Senhora used to tell my wife Zelia, with a friendly smile:

"Be careful with Verger, he is a sorcerer, he has powers." He has pow-

ers, he knows things.

Jorge Amado

INDEX

Editor's note................................................................................................... 9Acknowledgements....................................................................................... 11Introduction.................................................................................................... 13

THE ACTION OF PLANTS AND THE ACTIVATING WORDSOF INCANTATIONS

Chapter 1 - The efficacy of the word ............................................................ 23

Yoruba system of plant classification ...................................................... 23The activating words in the ofo (incantations)........................................... 29The signs odu of I f a and the verbal links .............................................. 42The many meanings of the words ............................................................ 50Links between names .............................. ............................................. 53Magical and medicinal names ........................... .................................... 60

Chapter 2 - Oppositions ................................................................................ 65

Beneficent and evil works ....................................................................... 65

Stimulants and tranquilizers .................................................................... 74

Chapter 3 - Works most asked for ................................................................ 83

Opulence ............................................................................................... 83Power....................................... ............................................................ 87

Afose ................................................................................................... 91

MEDICINAL AND MAGICAL FORMULAE

Oogun, remedies for healing the body ....................................................... 96Ibimo, remedies relating to pregnancy and birth ........................................ 266Orisa, works to worship yoruba deities...................................................... 286Awure, beneficent works ............................................................................ 320Abilu, evil works ......................................................................................... 394Idaabobo, antidotes to "evil works" or "protective works" ........................ 424

ANNEXES

Illustrations.......................................... ....................................................... 459Glossary of plants: Yoruba — scientific names ......................................... 501Glossary of plants: scientific names — Yoruba ......................................... 615Notes............................................................................................................ 721Index of Formulae ...................................................................................... 729Table of Illustrations ................................................................................... 741Bibliography................................................................................................ 743

EDITOR'S NOTE

It has been a pleasure to be involved with the production of this

most important work and we are extremely grateful for the assistance

received from Editora Schwarcz Ltda of Sao Paulo, Brazil which has

enabled us to bring our side of the work to completion on behalf of the

Pierre Verger Foundation. It has been my pleasure to have known

Professor Fatumbi Pierre Verger since 1956 when I was curator of the

museum at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. I have been associated

with Professor Verger's work from time to time ever since.

Fatumbi Pierre Verger has been absorbing the data now pub-

lished in this book over a period of some forty years and this has meant

that changes in style have probably occurred. It is important for those

coming to the Yoruba culture for the first time to realise how essential

to it is the "play-on-words" well described by the author in the text.

This factor and the plentiful use of metaphor allows the reader, who

also becomes an interpreter, a lot of scope for the imaginative under-

standing of the ultimate meaning of the message. I am sure this publi-

cation will give rise to further investigation and research particularly in

the area of Black Studies, now a feature of many Universities.

The transcription from field notes and other texts collected over

a long time span was done with the help of the following persons:

Louise Perks, Linda Reynolds, Jane Fallows, Anna Clark, Femi

Johnson and Alan Senior. I am specially grateful to our Yoruba team:

Dr. Gbenga Fagborun and Dr Akin Oyetade, both of whom are profes-

sional linguists and who spent many long hours correcting the Yoruba

and translating some of the more metaphysical texts received form the

babalawo, onisegun and others within the Yoruba culture.

I am also indebted to the director of the Royal Botanic Gardens

at Kew, Dr. G.Prance, for his encouragement, to Dr. Burkhill, Research

Fellow at the same establishment, Miss M. Ward, the librarian at Kew

and Dr. Joyce Lowe, Reader in the Botany Department at the University

of Ibadan, all of whom have given their help most generously.

Dr. Karen Barbour of the Africa Department, University of

Birmingham and Dr. John Picton, of the School of Oriental and

African Studies, University of London have been very supportive.

The documents used for this book were mainly recordings made

in Nigeria, which were transcribed and later translated into English.

Over two thousand remedies and practices are described in some detail,

consisting of plant-parts used (leaves, roots, barks etc.), their prepara-

tion (pounded, boiled, burnt to ashes etc.), their use externally and/or

internally, the words of the incantations which generate the necessary

power for their effectiveness and the I f a divination sign ( o d u ) on

which the remedy depends and which also provides a basis for their

Yoruba classification.

This work is completed by two glossaries. The first consists of

3,529 Yoruba plant names and their corresponding scientific names and

the second of 1,086 scientific names and their corresponding Yoruba

names.

Doig Simmonds

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As a great number of people have helped me in the publishing

of the present work, I will mention here only those I may in this short

page: the botanical services from the Ibadan Reforestation

Department and the French Institute of Black Africa (IFAN), Dakar,

who have made the first plant identifications; professor Portere from

the Paris Museum, who has confirmed them; doctor Burkill and all

the staff from the Botanic Gardens of Kew, London, for the plant

identification and for the illustrations kindly provided to us; Ulli

Beier, for having published my first book on Yoruba plants in

Nigeria, introduced by professor Akinjogbin; Theodore Monod, who

invited me to research in Africa; friends Carybe and Jorge Amado;

the late and remembered Maria Bibiana do Espirito Santo, Mae

Senhora, iyalorisa from the holy circle He Axe Opo Afonja in

Salvador; Balbino Daniel de Paulo, babalorisa of the He Axe Opo

Aganju; the late professor Alexandre Leal Costa; Araba from Ife,

supreme master of the Orunmila cult in Africa; Oluwe Ojo Awo, my

master; babalawo Iroko, my serifa; the babalawo Babalola, Aworinde

and Adesokan, who have told me many stories of If a ; Adefolalu

Adeyanju, who has helped me collect the first field data and tran-

scribe it; Fabio Araujo, who has checked the scientific names of the

plants; Eliana Miranda, for the many readings of my text; Ayodele

Fasoyin, for the Yoruba proof-reading; Dione Araujo; Olga Regis do

Alaketo; Jose Flavio Pessoa de Barros; Jean Marc Bonneau; doctor

Decanio and Isabel for the cure performed on me with Brazilian ewe;

professor Leticia Scarolino Scott Faria and professor Luciano

Paganucci Queiroz, who helped me name the plants.

SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

To the Odebrecht Organization, who sponsored the publishing

of this book.

INTRODUCTION

My interest in Yoruba botany was awakened as a conse-

quence of my initiation as babalawo (father-of-secrets) in 1953 in

Ketu, Republic of Benin. Because of that honour, I had to learn the

secret utilization of plants for traditional medicinal preparations and

practices. I learned that during their preparation, the names of the

plants and ingredients are always associated with short incantations

called ofo, which express their qualities in poetical terms. At the

beginning of my research, it was the literary aspect of these o f o

which attracted my attention. By 1967, I had already collected thou-

sands of these formulas and thanks to Ulli Beier and Professor

Akinjogbin's initiative, eighty of these o f o were published by the I f e

University in a pamphlet called "Awon ewe Osanyin" (Yoruba medi-

cinal leaves).

The research was undertaken in West Africa, in a cultural uni-

verse established through oral traditions, where the values are different

to those of a civilization based on written documents. In the first case,

memory plays a fundamental role. The recipes were collected among

the babalawo who, in the Yoruba community, perform divinations

using a system called I f a . This is based on 256 signs called odu under

which traditional medical practices are classified. These 256 odu I f a

are double signs derived from sixteen single1 ones and paired, either

with themselves to form sixteen primary odu,2 or with one of the fif-

teen other single signs to form the 240 secondary ones3.

The first of these secondary odu results from the association of

the two first single signs, ogbe and oyeku, and is called ogbe alamuulu,

ogbe-owner-of-the-variety or ogbe-owner-of-diversity. During the

preparation of a plant medicine, the babalawo establishes a link

between it and the corresponding I f a sign, which he draws on the I f a

divination board with the powder iyerosun4.

During my studies I observed the existence of verbal links

between the name of the plant, the name of its expected medicinal and

magical action and the odu, or sign of I f a under which it is classified

by the babalawo. These verbal links are essential to help them memo-

rize the knowledge transmitted by the oral traditions, believed to be the

vehicle of ase (power). This means that they consider the written word

to be entirely ineffective; in order to have an effect and in order to act,

words have to be spoken.

Thus knowledge, verbally transmitted, is an essentially cre-

ative force, not just at the intellectual level but at the dynamic level

of behavior. It is based more on reflexes than on reasoning, reflexes

which originate from impulses that come from the cultural back-

ground of the Yoruba society. This knowledge is transmitted by

babalawo to omo awo (from master to disciple) through short sen-

tences based on the rhythm of breathing". Being constantly repeated,

they become verbal stereotypes which, in turn, become easily

accepted definitions. This method has been used in many other tra-

ditions, including those of the ancient Greeks, whose rules for com-

posing poetry, according to Jean-Pierre Vernant6, required knowl-

edge of diction techniques which were composed of pre-established

rhymes.

Similarly, ancient Chinese (Marcel Granet7) literature was based

on popular sayings, used when even the most original artists wanted to

prove and explain, narrate or describe anything. This did not mean that

they were thinking in a communal fashion, rather that the best way to

express an idea was to insert it into an established formula borrowed

from a well tested influential force. Later we shall see the importance

of melody in the magical usage of the Yoruba language, where asso-

nance and alliteration play a vital role.

CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM

It was also important to learn the scientific names of the

plants used, so I collected 3,529 specimens which were submitted to

the Botanical Department of the Institut Francais d'Afrique Noire

(IFAN) of Dakar, the Forestry Department of the Ibadan University,

Nigeria, Professor Portere from the Ethno-botanical Laboratory of the

Museum d'Histoire Naturelle de Paris and finally to Professor H.M.

Burkhill of the Royal Botanical Gardens of Kew, in London. These

3,529 Yoruba names correspond to 1,086 scientific names, the reason

for this difference being the fact that the Yoruba classificatory sys-

tem is different to that used by western botanical institutes and Carl

Von Linnaeus.

But knowing the scientific names of these plants is not

enough. A study must be made of the medicinal properties of these

plants, which I am sure will give us very useful information about the

value and virtues of the different plants used by the babalawo and

herbalists of Yoruba land. The aim of this book, is to show what

types of plants are used in Yoruba pharmacology and for what types

of medicinal or magical formulae they are used. The medicinal

virtues and values of a plant are not easy to find out, because rarely is

a plant used on its own. In general, formulae are made up of three to

six different plants. A plant may be compared to a letter of a word.

On its own it is insignificant, but when joined with other letters it

contributes to the meaning of the word.

I have collected several thousand recipes, or formulae, which I

have classified under six categories:

1. 237 formulae for medicinal remedies (oogun) which tally,

to some extent, with similar ideas in western medicine.

2. 31 formulae for remedies relating to pregnancy and birth, (ibimo).

3. 33 formulae for "magical works" relating to the worshipping of

Yoruba deities (orisa).

4. 91 formulae for "beneficent works" (awure).

5. 32 formulae for "evil works" (abilu).

6. 41 formulae for "protective works" (idaabobo).

It is not easy to classify these formulae under categories. If I take

the example of an aforan, "to make people forget a case in court", I will

find it is an awure (beneficent work) for one of the parties but an abilu

(evil work) for the other. In this example, a certain leaf is required to

"kill" the voice inside a witness and another leaf may be used to "open

the mouth but not allow it to speak". This seems clearly an evil work

(abilu), but if one realizes that this remedy is required by a person who

needs to win a case in court and must neutralize the false testimony of an

enemy, it may be classified among beneficent works (awure) or among

those which render protection against evil works (idaabobo). It is also

difficult to trace a line of demarcation between scientific knowledge and

magic. This stems from the importance, in a traditional oral culture such

as that of the Yoruba, given to the notion of an incantation (ofo) spoken

during the preparation or application of the medicinal formulae (oogun).

If western medicine prioritizes a plant's scientific name and its

pharmacological characteristcs, then traditional societies prioritize the

knowledge of ofo. Countless remedies from around the world were

originally extracted from plants and later replaced by chemically recon-

stituted drugs, which had the same curative effects on the human body.

But in traditional societies, it is the knowledge of the ofo (incantation)

which is essential, as it contains the "power-to-alter" the formula's

pharmacological effect.

In those ofo transmitted orally, we find a definition of the action

expected from each of the plants used in the formula. I have not person-

ally made experiments to ascertain the efficacy of the action of these

plants, as this work can be more properly undertaken by a specialists in

pharmacology. There exist several plants which at first glance seem

merely symbolic but which actually have therapeutic value. This is the

case with two aquatic plants, oju oro (PISTIA STRATIOTES, Araceae) and

osibata (NYMPHEA LOTUS, Nymphaceae) which evoke in their ofo the

idea of superiority and domination in the following sentences:

Oju oro ni i leke omi, Oju.

Oro is above the water

Osi bata ni i leke odo.

Osi bata is above the river

This is followed by the pleasant mention:

Fila ni i leke ori.

The cap is above the head

And a more flattering one:

Ti Oba ni i leke ori.

The King is above all of them.

I believed for a long time that PISTIA STRATIOTES and

NYMPHEA

LOTUS were only used in those preparations for the symbolic reasons

already alluded to, but I have recently found an article written by

Professor Jean-Marie Pelt mentioning the sedative elements found in

NYMPHEA LOTUS.At first glance, it is difficult to decide which parts of the recipes

have ase, or power, and which parts can be tested experimentally. We

must keep in mind that in the Yoruba language there is often a direct

relationship between the name of the plant and the plant's qualities, and

it would be important to know if the plants received their names because

of their virtues or if it is because of their names that certain characteris-

tics were attributed to them, like a kind of play-on-words, or ofo.

These play-on-words, or incantations, have an enormous impor-

tance in those civilizations with a strong oral tradition, where they are

spoken in a solemn traditional manner. I believe that they can also be

considered as definitions. The incantations are often based on a partic-

ular reasoning being used for a particular situation or remedy. They

also serve as evidence of the continuity in the traditional archive of

data transmitted from one generation of babalawo to the next. This

ancient tradition expresses the philosophy of Yoruba culture and is part

of the "common sense" of Yoruba people.

It is obviously important to know if the interpretation corre-

sponds to the reality, and if the qualities ascribed to these herbs are

based on their "true" virtues, but I have to leave much of this study to

other specialists. My part has been restricted to the cataloguing of the

leaves used by the babalawo and herbalist doctors, and the description

of the preparation of the various ingredients, together with the texts of

the incantations spoken during their preparation. In those incantations

the names of the plants are accompanied by two or three stanzas

describing their specific qualities. It is vital to realize that a plant can

acquire a variety of attributes dependent upon its relationship with

another plant. Thus, a plant ascribed a virtue with one set, will be

ascribed a completely different one with another set. It will all depend

on the final preparation and the circumstances surrounding its use, not

forgetting the relevant incantation.

I have to stress the importance of a new attitude to pharmacolo-

gy here. In the western tradition it is often presumed that there has to be

one identifiable chemical to produce a given effect. Little thought has

been given to the possible effects arising from the complex chemistry

that results from the combination of different chemicals. In spite of the

many different qualities ascribed to plants, there is sometimes an

underlying structure in their symbolism, as is shown in the four plants

called awon ako ewe merin, considered to have masculine attributes

due to their power: ewe ina (URERA MANII, Urticaceaej, ewe aaragba

(BRIDELIA ATROVIRIDI, Euphorbiaceae), ewe esisi funfun (TRAGIA BEN-

THAMII, Euphorbiaceae), ewe oloyin (STRIGA ASIATICA, Scrophula-

riaceae). There are four other plants which have feminine attributes,

called ewe ero due to their soothing qualities: ewe odundun

(KALANCHOE CRENATA, Crassulaceae), ewe tete (AMARANTHUS HYBRIDUS

subsp. INCURVATUS, Amaranthaceae), ewe rinrin (PEPEROMIA PELLUCI-

DA, Piperaceae), ewe ikupero (DICHROCEPHALA INTEGRIFOLIA,

Compositae).