African spirituality makes space for my divinity and queerness

When my father died in 2021, one of the most overwhelming things I felt was the loss of a spiritual anchor. My father remains one of my guides into Yoruba spirituality because with him, I could talk about spirituality and faith while decentering the colonial gaze. 

Growing up in a Christian household, I assimilated into the Christian culture. I absorbed every doctrine and held on desperately to the hope of heaven and the fear of hell. However, nothing seemed right. Not the way women were constantly dismissed in the church I attended, nor the way I feared to even look powerful or beautiful for fear of ending up in the fiercest part of hell. Even before I knew I was queer, I had been spoon-fed the ills of “lesbianism” since I was a toddler and that meant that I suppressed a lot of my feelings till I was 17 when I finally rejected the church of my birth and embraced pantheism.   

Many Africans have similar experiences. Ayodele Olofintuade, a non-binary Nigerian writer and traditionalist, was born and raised in a typical Chrisitan Yoruba home. As a result, many people told them to stay away from Isese spaces – the traditional spiritual practice of the Yoruba people in Nigeria. However, with the slow resurgence of traditional practices, Olofintuade has started to find community and joy within Isese spaces.

Colonialism demonised Isese practices, forcing people to turn to Abrahamic religions. These religions, in turn, ostracised queer people and denied them access to spiritual spaces due to their queerness. Their queerness, they were told, made them unholy and deserving of cruelty. Pre-colonial Nigeria was rooted in traditional spirituality and traditional spirituality differs from region to region, yet it is so easily rooted in similar practices and ways of living.

Olofintuade views Yoruba spirituality as an innate component of identity. They view it as a way of life rather than a religion or spirituality. “It is not some religion that you have to go and find – it is always there in you as a Yoruba person,” says Olofintuade, “it is part of your birth.”

For most traditionalists, Isese is a mode of living. You ground yourself every day in the infiniteness of the universe and the assurance of your place in it as a human being. A critical component of the practice is being initiated into the worship of an Orisha. The Orishas are portrayed as transcending the gender binary as they embody both the feminine and the masculine. 

The Orisas are not gendered as they are portrayed in artwork. Osun, even though quite feminine, also possesses very masculine energy. Orisha Oya is famously known to be a woman and a wife of Sango but is also quite masculine in the way they act. Isese practitioners believe Oya wields Sango as an instrument of destruction to balance Oya’s powers for rebirth, as they are the guardian of the portal of death. Orisha Ogun dresses in a stereotypically feminine way by wearing skirts made of palm fronds, and Esu is considered to be an ungendered Orisha.

The subversion of the gender binary is why many queer traditionalists find the Isese practice incredibly empowering and validating. “When I am in Isese spaces, I see how bodies are non-gendered, and our bodies are capable of wielding the power bestowed to us by the Orishas,” says Olofintuade.

Contrary to post-colonial ideations of traditional spirituality, nothing prevents queer people from finding spirituality in traditional spaces. Isese doesn’t have a handbook on practising spirituality or engaging in worship. Instead, the practice focuses on your journey within the context of a close-knit community that supports your journey. Due to the pervasive nature of queerphobia, you are likely to encounter discrimination in traditional spaces, but queerphobia is not the result of the tenets of the Isese practice.

Isese is a freeing experience as it acknowledges the diversity of human identity and affords people respect based on their existence alone. Queer people have often spoken about the reconciliation with their past selves through their spirit selves upon finding their way back to their spirituality. Furthermore, Isese allows queer people to escape the rigid boxes created by capitalist and patriarchal structures. Olofintuade explains that Isese will enable you to rediscover yourself outside of the criticisms of self-hatred made by anti-queer education. “It helps you reconcile with yourselves that have been buried under layers of miseducation and lies,” they say.

Being a pantheist led me to understand and embrace the universe in different cultures and settings outside the one I was brought up in. In my journey, I have the opportunity to see and accept myself in Yoruba traditional spirituality through Isese. Isese guides you through your journey to achieve a higher purpose. It is your journey at the end of the day. The Alawo (diviner/priest) can tell you that you should make appeasement to Esu or that your Ori hates it when you wear a certain colour and that  is just guidance for you. Ultimately, you know best what your Ori wants from you if you are in constant communication with your spiritual aides. 

Akwaeke Emezi, an Ogbanje and the author of The Death of Vivek Oji, described coming to terms with their spirituality as taking off masks and “trying to throw away the ones made of poor human skin, empty-eyed rotted things, puppets.”

Isese is a powerful means of empowerment for queer people. Olofintuade views it as a space where they are nurtured and protected by their spirituality. “I am treated like this baby that needs to be protected at every turn,” they say.  Isese acknowledges and affirms that their queerness is one aspect of the vastness of their humanity. Doing so imbues queer identity with unlimited amounts of power – queer people are given the space to exist as their person and enact their will upon the world. “There is nowhere I turn to that I don’t feel powerful or that I own the soil on which I step on,” explains Olofintuade.

This happens to queer people who try to find answers for themselves. They go back to indigenous practices where they are free to be themselves and free from the limitations of the cis heteropatriarchy. Nobody can say “Ifa forbids you to be in a homosexual relationship” or “you cannot be transgendered as a devotee of Oya” because these Orishas already exist outside of our binaries. They embody both the feminine and the masculine and everything in between and beyond. That is also relatable to queerness. As a queer person, my existence is already outside the boxes of a cisgender-heteronormative society and I am constantly pushed to think, live and exist without the blurry lens of society’s failed systems. 

In their memoir Dear Senthuran, Emezi explained how they once sought validation of their spirituality and looked for their god-nature in places that were home to local traditions. None of it worked out because their journey was not conventional. Instead, they found the answers in themselves. Being a traditional spiritualist is a personal journey to find god and the divine in places in ourselves.

Spirituality in indigenous practices is intentional in how it empowers people to live authentically. Emezi asks the question in Dear Senthuran, “What would it look like if we took up our own space, all of our space, planets and planets worth of it?”

Yoruba spirituality encourages people to be fully aware of their presence in the universe while acknowledging all the other elements and spirits and Orishas that make up the infiniteness of the universe. Even though indigenous spirituality has been painted in bad light through decades of colonial education, it is still fully operative. It even acts as a place of safety for queer people and people looking to free themselves from patriarchal and capitalist conditioning. You are already walking the earth with so much power and purpose, treading the lines of the divine. So, who can tell you that you cannot be queer? Who dares say you cannot exist?