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The Core of Fire: A Path to Yoruba Spiritual Activism

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This book comes to us from a powerful alternate Black epistemology through the view point of a woman who is a powerhouse of cultural wisdom. The Iyalosha Aina Olomo has many things to teach us, particularly to reorient us to the views of a transnational community that has maintained its consciousness despite attempts to undermine, misrepresent, and belittle non-European forms of thought.
Olomo's discussion of the "Walls" addreses the struggles and realities of an ancestral tradition that has guided its adherents to recreate themselves into a conscientious and collective transnational community. Her work flies in the face of four-hundred years of disdain for ancestral traditions that evolved from attempts to control Black knowledges for the purpose of colonialism and the disorientation of displaced diasporic people. The text battles fearlessly with the ideologies of colonizing belief systems.

Olomo offers an insightful discussion of the disentanglement of colonized sprituality and everyday life through a liberation theology that has little time for the poor representation of her tradition in the mainstream. Why should it? Ifa Orisa traditions are exquisite, powerful, and have shown their ability to sustain the physical, social, economic, political, and spiritual needs of communities as far afield as Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, South America, and North America. At the same time, the book is pragmatic and displays an intense focus on the production of community in this alienating age.Olomo notes strategies of Black regeneration created through cultural memories of the knowledges of their ancestors. Her work is enhanced by analysis that goes beyond afro-centricity. Olomo is not preaching about the importance of Black cultures--that is a given. Hers is not an argument for an ideological standpoint, instead, she narrates an understanding of praxis, a life lived in full commitment to the liberation of humanity through the traditions of her ancestors, from their relationship to the pracitical concerns of humankind to the divine energies of this planet. Hers is a contribution not just to philosophy, but also to the preservation of the planet, and the liberation of humanity from colonized knowledges. We are fortunate to have this intellect share such a brilliant view of a lifeway born in Africa, bred in the Americas, and now more than ever aware of its significance to world history. In its very framework and approach, this book is a form of liberation. An important read for the practioners of these traditions, the scholar of African Diaspora theology, and the student of human consciousness.

As a Wicca practitioner, I found Ms. Olomo's views to have resonance to my practice and understanding of nature based spiritual study. Her views on our relationship to Divinity and Nature are at once both elegant and electrifyingly groundbreaking; going far beyond the explanations and understanding of many authorities. Even though I do not study a Yoruban tradition, I found many analogies and parallels that have made my own personal studies much richer and my rituals (even as a solitary Wiccan) much more moving and fulfilling. This book is a gem to any Pagan study and is sure to become a modern classic.