From Cosmology to Rationalization of Life: The Idaacha Words That Talk or Memory of an Early Yoruba Divinatory Calendar

The article examines the ldaacha traditional calendar system as a kind of incorporation of Yoruba cosmology. It shows a process where the two strands, that is to say, knowledge & belief can not be readily distinguished. The traditional calendar is indeed based on a scale of fixed number values whose definitions are drawn from the concepts early traditional people have of the universe. Furthermore the study points out the importance of words & noun phrases in the process of linguistic encoding. The ldaacha words function like terminological memories of the fixed metrological number values. Thus, the signification of the terms that designate entities such as angle, circle, center of the circle, midnight, time zone, the number of days in a week, etc., in the Yoruba dialect Idaacha, mirrors cosmological standards. These words that talk constitute a landscape of memory sheding light on early Yoruba culture & history. Hence, the article examines why ldaacha is a significant western periphery of the Yoruba region & why its divinatory calendar would preserve an older spatio-temporal logic, beyond Ife & Oyo revisionism in Yoruba history. Finally, the article points out that the translation of spatial & geometrical relations into temporal terms & vice-versa may suggest a new indexical approach to the study of cosmology in relation to the human body in day-to-day spatial navigation. As the body is in the mind, we say in relation to the human mind. Figures, References. Adapted from the source document.