How did cemeteries arise in the Yoruba Religion?

The first Yorubas say that a great epidemic existed in the Aará land that caused many human and animal losses.

Disease and pests plagued the region without allowing a proper recovery.

Pataki where Orula marks ebbó to save a town from death

Its inhabitants, who were beginning to die out, decided to look for Orunmila the great fortune teller of Ifá to help them solve what was happening to them, because if the situation in the region did not improve, not a single descendant of that tribe would be left alive.

Orula felt sorry for the state of the inhabitants of the Arará land, so he looked at them and instructed them to make an ebbó in which they had to open a large ditch as far away as possible from their homes and there deposit the bodies of the deceased.

In addition, they had to add a rooster, cascarilla and other elements and once everything was inside, they had to seal the hole well.

With the holy water of the rain, Olodumare drove away the disease

The Ifá oracle added that on the day the ritual culminated there would be a great downpour ordered by Olodumare himself and that it would be essential that no one get wet in it.

To complete the ebbó the inhabitants of the town had to paint with cascarilla the doors of the houses and do not get wet with rainwater under any circumstances.

Well, if this happened, they would get sick again and there would be no way to help them, because the water in union with the earth would eradicate once and for all, the evils that plagued them.

That same night the holy water fell from the sky for Olodumare who with the rain banished the disease from the land Aará, bringing health and tranquility to the inhabitants of the town.

And little by little with work and perseverance the people managed to restore the splendor of their land.

This is how the tradition of burying in Yoruba land was born

In this way the virtue of burying the deceased was born, because through the decomposition of the bodies unhealthiness arose and with this epidemics and the presence of rats and vermin on the streets, facts that translated into deaths and discontent.