USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Value of a Personal Shrine or Altar Insights from My Iroko Roots and Other Trees Shrine

The Value of a Personal Shrine or Altar 

Insights from My Iroko Roots and Other Trees Shrine

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju 

A shrine is a place where you relax from the stresses of the world and open yourself to inspiration.

The shrine should be composed of things that inspire you.

My own shrine, pictured here, takes my mind to the inspirational power of nature as embodying divine power, at times expressed in the form of intelligences in nature, also known as nature spirits, the presence of which might account for some of my most uplifting experiences in nature's presence.

The twisting forms of the brown tree branch's tendrils, the muscular robustness of the large iroko root, its structural potency accentuated by the combination of red bark patterned with gold spots, grown underground for perhaps a century  before the tree fell, all testify to the mysterious power of life, in nature and in myself.

"Ike di na awaja, na awaja, power moves in many channels" Chinua Achebe quotes and translates an Igbo expression in "The Igbo World and its Art".

"The immortal force that is the life of trees, the immortal force animating the human being, are one and the same, that is immortality, that is life, that is all," as a line from the Indian Upanishads may be adapted.

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