Sh8peshift Your Life

My Journey to Ifá: Returning to Ancestral Wisdom

• Zakiya Harris aka Sh8peshifter • Season 1 • Episode 9

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The path to self-discovery often leads us back to the roots. In this episode, I'll share my personal journey of reconnecting with Ifá, an ancient Yoruba spiritual tradition. From ancestral healing to aligning with divine purpose, this sacred practice has been a profound guide in my transformation. Tune in as I reflect on the lessons, rituals, and revelations that have shaped my path. ✨

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Welcome back, Shapeshifters. Today's episode is all about my Ifa journey. Today's conversation is going to be intimate and personal, and I'm going to share a little bit about my path from growing up Christian to embracing African traditional religions. This is a story about transformation, ancestral veneration, and walking towards my destiny. So my people are from Richmond, Virginia. That's actually where I was born and my family relocated to the Bay Area when I was two years old. And both my parents grew up in very Christian, specifically Baptist households that didn't really raise me as a Christian. didn't grow, I didn't grow up going to church. Yes, we blessed our food, but I didn't really grow up in a very religious household, although I definitely could say it was spiritual and even though that was the case, every summer I would get sent home, sent back to Richmond to be with my people, to spend time with my grandparents, to spend time with my extended family. And they made sure that I was going to get this Jesus, right? So I was thrown into Sunday school, vacation Bible school.

Both my mother's and father's side have a tremendous love for music. have an aunt that was a choir director. So I was thrown into the children's choir. just had, they were just say, Hey, go up and get up in there and sing. And I just had to catch on because, know, luckily a lot of gospel music is call and response. And I remember the power of waking up on Sundays and getting dressed in your Sunday best and going to church and how beautiful black people looked in their Sunday best.

I remember the power of gospel music and gospel music is something that definitely stuck with me and moved me from a very, very young age. And gospel music is so critical and important for Africans in America, people of African descent in America, because unlike our brothers and sisters who maybe were taken to Haiti or Brazil or Cuba, African-Americans were denied the drum and the drum, as we know, is polyrhythmic. The drum, as we know, represents the heartbeat. The drum, as we know, represents a frequency that really stirs people into a trance. It becomes an energetic portal that allows other frequencies to come in. And white slave owners and people who are maintaining the system of chattel slavery in America recognized really, really early that when those drums come out, it brings forth a power and a freedom enslaved Africans that they did not want to see. And so for that reason, the drum was outlawed. And because the drum was outlawed, Africans in America really had to use the power of their clapping, the power of stomping, and the power of their voice to recreate the polyrhythms that we were no longer allowed to practice in the drum and so if you listen to gospel music and specifically you listen to the vocal tone of gospel music, it is something that you will not hear any other people in the world. There's a pain and there's a triumph in the African voice in America. And it's so powerful because we know that gospel music is the foundation of American music, is the foundation of jazz and blues and hip hop. And so all forms of music, because we know the black music is the blueprint of American music and American music is the blueprint for the sound of the planet, that the voice, the vocal tone of Africans in America went on to become a very powerful call for the entire world. And so that call was not lost on me. Gospel music also represents the power of call and response. know that call and response, can trace directly from the song patterns of Africans on the continent. so music and the power of music and the power of the voice was something that really was ingrained in me very, very early on. Another aspect of Christianity that really was pivotal in my formative years was the power of prayer. I remember growing up to a praying grandmother every morning that she would pray loudly. She would pray over the food before we ate and she would pray over food before we ate, sometimes very, very long prayers, right? But there was always this normalization of praying, of giving thanks of calling in what it is that you wanted. I also remember the visual of wearing all white. Many women in my family were deaconesses and so on their chosen Sundays, they would wear all white, white hat, white suit, white dresses, white gloves, white stockings, white shoes, everything in all white. And it would just be this beautiful, beautiful sight to see the female deaconesses walking down the aisle, ushering in the call to prayer, if you will. And so even though I did not grow up in a Christian household, I took those lessons, I took those memories, and they literally became imprinted and embedded within me. Not only because I was traveling to Richmond, Virginia in the summer, but also because they represented my lineage, my people. This is how the women in my family got over, got through, were able to persevere through some of the most difficult challenges that I can't even fathom. And so I have a tremendous amount of respect for Christianity. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the women in my family and for that as part of my lineage. And I would dare say, and I'm going to circle back to this as we get into African traditional religions, that the way Christianity was practiced in my family was actually extremely African. It is not the same Christianity that you would see in Europe, if you will. And I'll talk more about that a little bit later on. coming back home to California, as I said, my family was not very religious. However, California was a very mystical, a very metaphysical place. California is located in the West. We know the West is a place where people go for new beginnings, new ideas, new models, new ways of thinking, new ways of being. We think of innovation, we think of new language, we always think of the West. And so because of that, growing up in Oakland, California, I was exposed to not only many other spiritual traditions, but also exposed to metaphysical realities, metaphysical teachings, the ideas of astrology, of numerology. And so all of these ideas began to shape me as a human being. And so eventually I started in college, began dancing. I began dancing Afro-Haitian, dancing Afro-Cuban, just going to dance class because I've always been a dancer. I love to move and what was so profound when I went into those classes was that my body already knew the dances. It was if when those drums started playing, it opened up and unlocked a part of me that I didn't even know existed, but was so familiar. It actually took me back to some of those early childhood memories that I had in the Christian church in terms of this unlocking and this ability to connect with spirit in a very, very intimate way. And although I was just going to these classes before the love of dance, as I began to learn more about the tradition of Afro Haitian, Afro Cuban, Afro Brazilian movement, I learned that these movements were connected to seasons. They were connected to different forces of nature. They were connected to different energetics that our people wanted to bring down, that they were also connected to our lineage in West Africa as enslaved Africans. And this is the way that Africans in the Western hemisphere synthesize and syncretize their gods, their movements, their songs through the medium of dance and also through a medium that camouflaged what they were doing before their slave masters and so they were carrying on their traditions, their African traditions, but in a way that was not as threatening or apparent, if you will, to those that were holding them in chattel slavery. And so that journey eventually took me to Montanzas, Cuba to study Afro-Cuban dance. And I had the opportunity during that trip to witness to dear friends' initiations. And so they were being initiated to some of the forces of nature that I was learning the dances for. And so that was the first time that I was able to go to a black country and see black people unapologetically practicing a form of spirituality that was not Christian. And yet it brought back many of the same feelings and the same energy that I remembered growing up in the church. I saw spirit possessions in the same way that I had watched people catch the spirit in the black church. I saw the songs and the polyrhythm, not just in the voice, but also directly with the drums. And it was something that took over me. It's something that I connected with in a very intimate level and what was so powerful about it, was normal. No one called it evil. No one can said it was devil worship. It was just a normal way of life. It wasn't hidden. No one was ashamed of it. People on the contrary, very proud to be practicing their own traditions. They were very proud to I saw people wearing their elect is their necklaces openly in the world. saw Yawos in the Cuban tradition, people wear all white for the first year of their initiation. So you see people walking around with all in all white, the same way that my grandmother who was a deaconess was right. And so there were all of these connections that I was making in real time. And I had the opportunity to undergo my first initiation, which was the receiving of my warriors, which they called the guerreros,guerreros warriors in Spanish. And it was so powerful in Montanzas because they're people of African descent who were Cuban, but they actually knew where they were from in West Africa. That Montanzas Cuba was actually a slave port. So many of the slaves that were transported during the ma'afa, the port city that they arrived to was Montanzas. And so there were many people in this town that had a direct line to their ancestors in Africa. They knew what tribe they were from. They spoke their own version of Yoruba. They held on to the songs. They held on to the dances. And we have to credit our African brothers and sisters in Cuba for really maintaining the tradition of Ifa in a way that is very special and very powerful. And so I was able to go through my own process and receive my warriors, which we call, you get two, Aresha. One is Eshu, who represents the owner of the crossroads. And the other force that I received is Ogun, who represents the blacksmith, the hunter, who rules communication, who rules transportation. And so these Aresha become Hereros. They are warriors. They are warriors that are meant to protect you. And so I received two shrines and I also received a divination, which is part of the Ifa corpus, where we consult with our divine oracle. We receive messages, we receive taboos, things you should do, things you should not do. And one of the things that came up in my reading was that I was to receive another shrine and that shrine was Obatala. Obatala represents peace, represents creativity, represents character, represents calm. And the Oracle knew that I was very hot headed. I was very fast. I was very quick, high tempered. know, I was outside. I was kind of a hot mess, to be honest with y'all. And Obatala came into my life to really just add some coolness and calmness. So I took those three shrines home back to the states. And then it was my responsibility to maintain and care for those shrines. So I did not have an ele. And ele is the Yoruba word for house or home. And your ele becomes your spiritual family. Now, yes, I did have a baba and an iya in Cuba. Shout out to Peya and Zulima. They were founders of an Afro-Cuban dance company called Afro Cuba de Manzaz and they were also initiated as Osun as well as initiated in the tradition of ifah or what they would call Luku me which is the Cuban branch of ifah as practiced in that part of the world and so obviously me being thousands and thousands of miles away from them them speaking Spanish not speaking English and there was a bit of a disconnect that stunted my growth into the tradition because I didn't really have a spiritual family, a spiritual mother and father around me to guide me, to support me in caring for my shrines, to support me in maintaining my shrines. Although I still knew that they were very powerful. And so I did the best that I could to maintain them, to feed them with tobacco and with OT, which is a strong liquor. And, you know, to be honest, I was kind of hit or miss. It's not something that I always did, but it is something that I did as much as I possibly could. I also during that time, continue to receive readings, I continue to go to different Baba Lawal to go to different Ianifah. These are high priests, male and female high priests in the tradition to consult the oracle. Every single reading that I got, when you get an Ifa reading, certain Orisha come forth to guide you on your path. And so every single reading that I got, the Orisha Oya came through. Oya represents the number nine. She represents the one who opens the realm between death and life. Oya is connected deeply to our ancestors because it is said that she gave birth to the egungun. Egungun means bone bone, our ancestors. Oya is the ruler of transformation. Oya represents the tornado. She represents the thunderstorm. Oya means to rip or to tear. Her role is to come and to cleanse the earth for the transformation that is to come. And so Oya stepped forward and every reading that I got. And when I say every meeting reading, mean, I was on a 20 year journey between my first trip to Montana's us and when I eventually got initiated. So for 20 years, Oya, kept stepping forward like, yo, you need to get initiated. I'm your mother. I want to help you. I want to guide you. You need to work with me. And although I felt the calling very strong, I still was in this place of not really being part of a spiritual community. And it's not because I wasn't connected to spiritual communities, but they just didn't resonate with me. And I knew that getting initiated again, I wanted to be with a family that I trusted, that I felt close to that I was connected to, folks that spoke English, people that could train me, that I could learn from. I didn't want to go through another experience of just getting a ceremony done, but not really knowing how to care for my shrines. And so that's why it took me so long to really land into a spiritual family. And so somewhere around 2019, now remember my first trip to Cuba was in 2000 and then I got a reading in 2019 and Oya came through again and time is running out. That was the clear message that I got. So was like, okay, I need to make this happen. So it just so happened that a friend of mine at the time who was also a Babalawo, a childhood friend was preparing to go to Nigeria literally a couple months later. And so I asked my ancestors if that was the best thing for me to do. I received a strong yes. And so I immediately made preparations to travel to Oshogbo, Oshun State, Nigeria to get initiated as a priest of Oya. Now it's important to note that this represents a time in my life where I was transitioning from Lukumi, which is how IFA is practiced and synthesized through in the Cuban tradition versus what we call a she-she, which is basically how it's practiced on the continent. And so I was transitioning into the root, if you will, the root of the tradition. That trip was absolutely phenomenal. My initiation went well. It was beautiful. I was connected now to a family because the Babalao I traveled with was based in the States and I was now connected to folks that I could learn from. And so I can honestly say that from the moment that I received that initiation, my life has transformed and elevated in a way that it hadn't before. And so I know, you know, if I is not for everyone, and sometimes people say, well, what do I need to really get initiated for? You know, if you understand the word initiation, initiation means to begin and so for those of you who've listened to the episodes on Afro-Indigenous cosmologies, for those that you have listened to the episode on New Earth Currencies, I talked a lot about the power of Indigenous wisdoms. And that to me is what is so important. It gave me the opportunity to reconnect in a very deep, intimate way with the traditions of the people that came before me. So I was able to align very clearly with my purpose. Did it mean that I was not already on path for my purpose? No. Did it mean that I already wasn't powerful? Absolutely not. But it gave me a compass and a whole system. And that to me is what is so powerful about IFA and ATRs in general and really what sets them apart from maybe getting a tarot reading or going to a psychic. Ifa is an entirely complete system. And so when it is divine that there is an opportunity or even a challenge, you actually have a prescription to alchemize and bring that challenge, whether it's a challenge with giving birth, whether it's a challenge with sickness, or even whether it's a challenge with death that if that live in my community and be part of a broader community. And so over the last six years, I've continued to maintain those shrines and to receive readings. I've also gotten more shrines as they've come through. One of the differences between Luku-mi or Santaria as it's practiced in Cuba versus the Ishe-she tradition is that in Cuba, when you get initiated, you receive every Orisha. You receive a shrine for every Orisha. So at the end of it, you might have seven shrines, right? You might have a shrine for Shango, Oyai, Yemeja, Olokun. Even though that might not be what we say is the spirit on your head, the one that rules you, you will still receive all of those shrines. And it's really powerful when you think about it again, from the perspective of enslaved Africans bringing their traditions over into the new world having to synthesize them and syncretize them in order to practice these traditions that for many of them were illegal. And you can also imagine why these enslaved Africans wanted to call upon as many energies as they could, as many forces, as many orisha as they could to literally fight, protect themselves from slavery, from the death and the degradation of the system of chattel slavery. However, in Nigeria, Togo, Benin, in Ghana, you have ifa, you have afa, you have fa. All of these are different branches of the same root. That's not the case. You receive different orisha, you receive different spirits as needed. You don't get the whole thing, right? So I think it's just really important to make that distinction and also it really tells the story of the path of the African as it moved across to the quote unquote new world that originally in Africa was like, you get what you need. And as it crossed over the waters of the Atlanta, was like, actually, we're gonna give you as much as possible because you're gonna need as much as possible to fight under the conditions that you are now living and experiencing. And so through that process of six years on my journey, it became clear that I was being called yet again to go a step higher in my own spiritual journey and to become initiated as a Iyanifa. A Iyanifa is a priest of the entire tradition of IFA. It's the container that holds the whole corpus for women that is
called an Iyanifa for men that is called a Babalawo. It is also worth noting that in Cuba, as it was synthesized through Catholicism, that it became taboo or illegal, if you will, to initiate women. So in Cuba, you will not see women initiated as IANIFA. In Nigeria and in West Africa, that is not the case. And in 2023, I traveled back to Oshogbo, Nigeria, to the same compound under the direction of Agbongbong Fakayorifani and Baba Adjisafi to receive that initiation and that initiation was completely different than my first one. My foyer initiation was very intimate. And my initiation to Iyanifa, I actually went through that process with five other people. And that was just really beautiful because we all bonded. I have this whole new family and community. And we have this very unique experience that we all went through together and so what has this journey taught me? It's taught me to trust the process. As we say in Ifa, don't put anyone else's head above your own, meaning your ori, your head, your divine head. The first initiation, the first spirit that you're connected to is within yourself and to never take your own wisdom and intuition and put it below anyone else's. And so even though this journey has taken me over 20 years to get where I am, this was my journey. This was the steps and the pace that it was meant for me. And a lot of people who are interested in this tradition want to rush off and get initiated. And I actually will caution you against that. There is a lot of work that you can do with your own personal God, your Ori.

There is a lot of work that you can do with your ancestors. And I would say that if you are interested in African traditional religions and you're not doing the work on yourself and you're not working with your ancestors, don't even bother trying to work with the Orisha because there are steps, right? And we want to make sure that all of those steps are followed correctly because they enhance the journey.

It also can be very challenging to find community that you really connect with and really align with folks that are holding their character well and are representing themselves in a way that is ethical and feels aligned. And like any tradition, there are people who are wielding their power for good, and there are people who are wielding their power for their own self-interest. And so it took time for me to find a community, to find an ilay, but it didn't mean that I didn't keep praying. It didn't mean that I didn't keep getting readings. It didn't mean that I wasn't still cultivating and working towards my destiny. So understanding that your journey is your own and not comparing your journey to anyone else. And at the end of the day, what's so beautiful about my Ifa journey is it brought me closer back to my own lineage as an African in America and to Christianity. Because when it came down to wearing white, when it came down to spiritual possession, when it came down to the power of call and response, the power of prayer, when you think about going out and getting baptized at the river, when you think about, you know, folks putting anointing oil over their head, so many of the practices that we call Christian are actually completely rooted in African spirituality, that the Black church has actually synthesized and syncretized its own African traditions through the way that Christianity is practiced amongst Black people. And so often Africans in America don't get the credit as maybe our Haitian or Cuban or Brazilian brothers and sisters because you can't look into our church and see the connection in the same way that you may be confined in other parts of the world. However, the more and more I have gone down this journey, the more and more I recognize that my role and my power as an African woman goes beyond any spiritual form, and I'm able to connect and tap into those very powerful energetic forces, particularly the energetic forces of my ancestors. And so even now, Yes, I have an ancestor shrine, but I also have an altar with pictures of those who came before me, my grandparents. And when I'm saluting them, if I'm preparing them some food, if I'm playing music for them, I'm putting on gospel music, right? If I'm preparing food for them, I'm preparing cornbread with real milk, real butter. I'm honoring them in the way that they practice. And so all of these aspects. I've become part of who I am to give me pride in myself, to give me a knowing that I come from a tradition that is over 10,000 years old, to know what my destiny is, to know what my purpose is, to know what is for me and what is not for me. And I've been able to impart that into my daughter, to those around me. And even though my family, my immediate family do not practice this tradition, they see it working for me. I don't have to convert anybody because they're just like, hey, whatever you've got going on, it's working and we respect it, even if we don't understand it. And so I hope you took something from this today. I hope something about my own journey and my own path maybe inspired you to get you to see that in the end of the day, there truly is only one God. And there are many, many paths to get there and the biggest thing I want those of you who maybe are curious or interested in ATRs is to know that you don't have to be afraid of them, that I have much respect for Abrahamic traditions, but our people lived for thousands and thousands of years before Abrahamic traditions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam were ever created and yes, we can tap into the power of those traditions, but we can tap in even further. And there is additional wisdom. There is a spiritual inheritance embedded in those traditions. So don't be afraid of them. So that's what I have for you today, Shapeshifters. I hope you got something out of my journey, and I hope it inspires you in your own personal journey. Until next time, keep shifting. Much, much love and light for showing up today, Shapeshifters. You could be doing anything right now and you chose to be here and I do not take that for granted. Looking for extra support on your journey? Explore my affordable coaching programs. Whether you prefer personalized one-on-one sessions or engaging group coaching, I'm here to help you align your vision and thrive on your own terms.



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Zakiya aka Sh8peshifter

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