To Shave the Head
I am an Iya, my initiation entailed shaving my head. I had 5 years growth of locks and did not look forward to having them cut. As the time approached, being new to the faith I attempted to rationalize why I was special and different and should probably be able to keep my locks. I had 20 years of spiritual training behind me, and had done serious work on knowing myself.
When I asked the Oloye, I was told, the head must be shaved. I did not request divination on the matter. I looked at this as an opportunity to know myself, through watching and observing the machinations of my mind. I was aware of the fears, the vanity, the wishing to be treated in a ‘special’ manner. After all this study, wasn’t I ‘above’ needing my head shaved?
When I read of persons who are ‘evolved’ and have no need to shave the head, I wonder, “what is the attachment to the hair?” Can we look at this attachment? Can we investigate its action within ourselves and see the conditioning? Can we make a choice that is free from knowing what this is about?
The experience of initiation begins where the person is, and then raises that person to another level. To assume that one knows what cutting the hair will do to us or for us is a hold over from our western worldview that thinks results can be predicted. It points to our dependence on ‘reasoning’, which all to often reveals itself as rationalizing. We always assume we KNOW! The traditional African worldview is about facing the NOT KNOWN. Initiation is about facing the aspects of self that we are unaware of, and then aiming a laser into that bedrock stuff. I think we all have some ‘stuff’. So the act of shaving the head is a physical act with physical results and reactions, and it is also acting on other subtle levels. It is also a way of being free of old records which are held in the hair; that length of hair is “dead’. It can be the beginning of a personal knowing of Ori, Ancestors and Orisa as well as other subtle levels in the natural world.
Never the less, I agree that shaving the head is a personal decision, and would not turn a person away because they did not want to do it. I simply would like to ask them to deeply question their rationale. The minds ability to rationalize anything and everything is one of the things that the path of initiation into Ifa challenges. So to choose not to have the head shaved is to choose not to enter fully into the matrix of the lineage. It is a way of coming into union with the brothers and sisters of the order. Shaving the head is a new lease on life, which connects us to our destiny. And, by the way, my locks have been growing back for three years!
Yeye Siju Osunyemi