A fierce and inspirational guide to Black resistance, resilience, and healing, using the principles of Afro-Indigenous spiritual practices
Understanding where you came from is crucial to understand where you are going.
The Five Blessings of Ifá explores how Black communities across the diaspora draw strength from ancestral wisdom, family, community care, and mutual aid, using the principles of Ifá—a West African spiritual tradition—as a guiding framework. Gabrielle Felder provides a blueprint for living a more fulfilled and abundant life through the blessings ofAiku (longevity), Aje (wealth), Aya and Oko (relationships), Omo (children), and Isegun (victory over negative forces), providing practical examples of how Black folks have built resilience and learned to thrive in the face of oppression.
- Longevity exists in ancestral traditions that we cultivate over generations, which Felder explores through practices of traditional herbalism as well as contemporary sustainability and food sovereignty movements.
- Wealth, in Felder’s interpretation, has to do with the richness created by community, including cultural traditions of food, dance, and music that connect seemingly disparate African diasporic cultures.
- Partnership, traditionally understood in Ifá as husband and wife, is reconsidered by Felder to include a wide variety of relationship structures, including familial bonds and queer families.
- To explore the blessing of children, Felder dives into the important history of doulas and midwives in Black communities, and their crucial role in combatting the high maternal mortality rate among Black women in the US.
- Finally, Felder draws out the meanings of the blessing of victory through a wide range of examples of Black autonomy: slave rebellions; the rejection of Euro-centric beauty standards; mutual aid practices among Black revolutionary groups; and the contemporary Black witch movement.
As a collective, Black folks have managed to usher in the five blessings of Ifá into our lives despite all odds. This book is a love letter to those who have come before us, and a guide to the possibilities that lie in our collective future.