By OLUWANBEPELUMI A. Pelumi-Folarin
A culture does not die only when its language disappears or its monuments are destroyed. More often, it is dismantled quietly when its spiritual foundations are erased and replaced with borrowed meanings. For the Yoruba people, this is not a distant threat. It is happening now.
Yoruba culture was never a collection of customs designed for entertainment. It was built upon a complete spiritual philosophy: Aṣẹ as the authority that animates existence, Ori as the seat of destiny, Iwa as the measure of moral alignment, and the living presence of the Irunmole and Orisa as mediators of cosmic order. These were not metaphors. They were the operating laws of Yoruba civilization.
To remove spirituality from Yoruba culture is not to modernize it: it is to hollow it out.
Today, what we increasingly see is culture without consciousness. Rituals are performed without understanding. Proverbs are recited without internalization. Festivals are celebrated without reverence. What was once a sacred system of meaning has been reduced to performance, spectacle, and nostalgia. The symbols remain, but the spirit that once gave them power has been displaced due to foreign and internal influence.
The first casualty of this displacement is self-knowledge. A people who no longer interpret reality through their own metaphysical framework begin to think through foreign categories. Destiny is no longer understood through Ori. Moral discipline is no longer shaped by Iwa. Existence is no longer animated by Aṣẹ. The Yoruba person may still look Yoruba, speak Yoruba, and dress Yoruba, yet interpret life through a worldview that is not Yoruba.
The second casualty is moral grounding. In Yoruba philosophy, ethics is not a social agreement; it is cosmic alignment. Right and wrong are not arbitrary; they are anchored in the order of existence itself. When spirituality is abandoned, morality becomes negotiable, fragile, and easily manipulated by power, fear, or imported doctrines. What once produced character now produces compliance.
The third casualty is leadership and social responsibility. Yoruba systems of authority were never purely political. Kingship was sacred. Justice was metaphysical. Leadership carried spiritual accountability. When the spiritual core is removed, leadership becomes transactional, governance becomes mechanical, and power loses its moral weight. Society may still function, but without soul, without higher obligation, without sacred restraint.
A Yoruba person raised without spiritual grounding becomes culturally visible but existentially disoriented.
Pelumi-Folarin
Then comes cultural commodification. Songs, dances, sacred symbols, and even ancestral names are repackaged for profit, tourism, and entertainment. What was once lived becomes staged. What was once revered becomes content. Culture becomes something to consume rather than something to embody.
But the deepest damage happens within the individual.
A Yoruba person raised without spiritual grounding becomes culturally visible but existentially disoriented. They inherit fragments of identity without inheriting the philosophical system that once unified them. They may know the outer forms of tradition but remain disconnected from Ori, untrained in Iwa, and alienated from Aṣẹ. The result is a generation that belongs to a culture it does not fully understand: a people spiritually displaced within their own inheritance.
This is not progress. It is civilizational amnesia.
Let us be clear: this is not a rejection of change, education, or global engagement. Civilizations must evolve. But evolution without spiritual anchoring is not growth, it is surrender. The problem is not encountering other worldviews. The problem is abandoning our own.
That is why the preservation of Yoruba spirituality is not nostalgia. It is resistance. It is survival. It is the refusal to allow a living civilization to be reduced to folklore.
Those who uphold Ìṣẹ̀ṣe are not merely keeping traditions alive. They are defending an entire way of understanding existence—destiny, morality, community, leadership, healing, and cosmic order. They remind us that Yoruba culture was never meant to exist as decoration. It was meant to shape consciousness.
So what happens when Yoruba culture loses its spiritual core?
It may survive in appearance, but it will no longer guide.
It may be celebrated, but it will no longer transform.
It may be remembered, but it will no longer live.
To reclaim Yoruba culture is not simply to revive language, clothing, or ceremonies. It is to return to the spiritual architecture that once ordered Yoruba life. For culture without spirituality is memory without meaning. But culture rooted in its spiritual core remains a living force, capable of dignity, resistance, renewal, and a self-determined future.
Call to Action
This moment demands more than admiration of heritage. It demands responsibility.
If you are Yoruba, study your spiritual foundations. Do not outsource your identity. Do not reduce your culture to aesthetics. Relearn the philosophy of Ori, the discipline of Iwa, the authority of Aṣẹ, and the sacred logic of the Orisa. Support indigenous knowledge systems. Engage the Ìṣẹ̀ṣe community with seriousness, not curiosity.
And if you are not Yoruba, respect this struggle as a universal one: the right of a people to define their reality through their own spiritual and cultural consciousness.
A culture that loses its spiritual core does not simply fade; it is replaced.
But a culture that reclaims its spiritual center reclaims its future.
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