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Theramenes

Theramenes (Θηραμένης; died 404/403 BC) was an Athenian military leader and statesman, prominent in the final decade of the Peloponnesian War. He was active during the two periods of oligarchic government at Athens, the 400 and later the Thirty Tyrants, as well as in the trial of the generals who had commanded at Arginusae in 406 BC. A moderate oligarch, he often found himself caught between the democrats on the one hand and the extremist oligarchs on the other. Successful in replacing a narrow oligarchy with a broader one in 411 BC, he failed to achieve the same end in 404 BC, and was executed by the extremists whose policies he had opposed.

Historical record
No ancient biographies of Theramenes are known, but his life and actions are relatively well documented, due to the extensive treatment given him in several surviving works. The Attic orator Lysias deals with him at length in several of his speeches, albeit in a very hostile manner. Theramenes also appears in several ancient narrative histories: Thucydides' account includes the beginnings of Theramenes' career, and Xenophon, picking up where Thucydides left off, gives a detailed account of several episodes from Theramenes career including a sympathetic and vivid description of his last actions and words; Diodorus Siculus, probably drawing his account from Ephorus at most points, provides another account that varies widely from Xenophon's at several points. Theramenes also appears in several other sources, which, although they do not provide as many narrative details, have been used to illuminate the political disputes which surrounded Theramenes' life and memory.

Family
Only the barest outlines of Theramenes' life outside the public sphere have been preserved in the historical record. His father, Hagnon had played a significant role in Athenian public life in the decades before Theramenes' appearance on the scene. He had commanded the group of Greek colonists who founded Amphipolis in 437–6 BC, had served as a general on several occasions before and during the Peloponnesian War, and was one of the signers of the Peace of Nicias. Hagnon's career overlapped with his son's when he served as one of the ten commissioners appointed by the government of the 400 to draft a new constitution in 411 BC.

Overthrow of the democracy

Theramenes' first appearance in the historical record comes with his involvement in the oligarchic coup of 411 BC. In the wake of the Athenian defeat in Sicily, revolts began to break out among Athens' subject states in the Aegean Sea and the Peace of Nicias fell apart; the Peloponnesian War resumed in full by 412 BC. In this context, a number of Athenian aristocrats, led by Peisander and with Theramenes prominent among their ranks, began to conspire to overthrow the city's democratic government. This intrigue was initiated by the exiled nobleman Alcibiades, who was at that time acting as an assistant to the Persian satrap Tissaphernes. Claiming that he had great influence with Tissaphernes, Alcibiades promised to return to Athens, bringing Persian support with him, if the democracy that had exiled him were replaced with an oligarchy. Accordingly, a number of trierarchs and other leaders of the Athenian army at Samos began planning the overthrow of the democracy. They eventually dispatched Peisander to Athens, where, by promising that the return of Alcibiades and an alliance with Persia would follow if the Athenians would replace their democracy with an oligarchy, he persuaded the Athenian ecclesia to send him as an emissary to Alcibiades, authorized to make whatever arrangements were necessary.

Alcibiades, however, did not succeed in persuading the satrap to ally with the Athenians, and, to hide this fact, demanded (claiming to be speaking for Tissaphernes) greater and greater concessions of them until they finally refused to comply. Disenchanted with Alcibiades but still determined to overthrow the democracy, Peisander and his companions returned to Samos, where the conspirators worked to secure their control over the army and encouraged a group of native Samian oligarchs to begin planning the overthrow of their own city's democracy. In Athens, meanwhile, a party of young oligarchic revolutionaries succeeded in gaining de facto control of the government through assassination and intimidation.

After making arrangements to their satisfaction at Samos the leaders of the conspiracy set sail for Athens. Among them was Theramenes; Thucydides refers to him as "one of the leaders of the party that put down the democracy—an able speaker and a man with ideas." Calling the assembly together, the conspirators proposed a series of measures by which the democracy was formally replaced with a government of 400 chosen men, who were to select and convene a larger body of 5,000 as time went on. Shortly afterwards, the conspirators went, under arms, to the council chamber, where they ordered the democratic council to disperse after collecting their pay; the council did as ordered, and from this point forward the mechanism of government was fully under the control of the oligarchic conspirators; they quickly changed the laws to reflect the new form of government they had imposed.

Conflict within the movement
At this point, several conflicts began to develop that threatened the future of the new government at Athens. First, the planned coup at Samos was thwarted by the efforts of Samian democrats and a group of Athenians who they entrusted with helping them. When the army at Samos heard the news of the coup at Athens, which arrived along with exaggerated reports of outrages being perpetrated by the new government, they declared their loyalty to democracy and hostility to the new government. At Athens, meanwhile, a split developed between the moderate and radical oligarchs, with Theramenes emerging alongside one Aristocrates son of Scelias as the leader of the moderate faction. The extremist faction, led by Phrynichus, containing such prominent leaders of the coup as Peisander and Antiphon, and dominant within the 400, opposed broadening the base of the oligarchy, and were willing to seek peace with Sparta on almost any terms. The moderates, on the other hand, although willing to seek peace with Sparta on terms that would preserve Athens' power, were not willing to sacrifice the empire and the fleet, and wanted to broaden the oligarchy to include the putative 5,000, presumably including all men of hoplite status or higher.

Shortly after taking power, the extremist leaders of the revolution had begun constructing fortifications on Eëtioneia, a dominant point in the entrance to the harbor of Piraeus, ostensibly to protect the harbor against an attack from the fleet at Samos. With internal dissent increasing, they joined these new fortifications to existing walls to form a redoubt defensible against attacks from land or sea, which contained a large warehouse into which the extremists moved most of the city's grain supply. Theramenes protested strongly against the building of this fortification, arguing that its purpose was not to keep the democrats out, but to be handed over to the Spartans; Thucydides testifies that his charges were not without substance, as the extremists were actually contemplating such an action. Initially cautious (as enemies of the regime had been executed before), Theramenes and his party were emboldened and galvanized into action by several events. First, a Peloponnesian fleet, ostensibly dispatched to assist anti-Athenian forces on Euboea, was moving slowly up the coast of the Peloponnese; Theramenes charged that this fleet was planning to seize the fortifications on Eetioneia, in collaboration with the extremists. Second, an Athenian militiaman, apparently acting on orders from conspirators higher in the ranks of the government, assassinated Phrynichus, the leader of the extremist faction. He escaped, but his accomplice, an Argive, was captured; the prisoner, under torture, refused to state the name of his employer. With the extremists unable to take effective action in this case, and with the Peloponnesian fleet overrunning Aegina (a logical stopping point on the approach to Piraeus), Theramenes and his party decided to act.

Aristocrates, who was commanding a regiment of hoplites in Piraeus, arrested the extremist general Alexicles; enraged, the extremist leaders of the 400 demanded action, and made a number of threats against Theramenes and his party. To their surprise, Theramenes volunteered to lead a force to rescue Alexicles; the leaders of the extremists acquiesced, and Theramenes set out to Piraeus, sharing his command with one other moderate and one extremist, Aristarchus. When Theramenes and his force arrived at Piraeus, Aristarchus, in a rage, exhorted the men to attack the hoplites who had seized Alexicles. Theramenes feigned rage as well, but when asked by the hoplites whether he thought that the fortification on Eetioneia was a good idea, he responded that if they wanted to pull it down, he thought that would be good. Calling out that everyone who wanted the 5,000 to govern instead of the 400, the hoplites set to work. Donald Kagan has suggested that this call was probably instigated by Theramenes' party, who wanted the 5,000 to govern; the hoplites tearing down the fortification might well have preferred a return to the democracy. Several days later, the Peloponnesian fleet approached Piraeus, but, finding the fortifications destroyed and the port well defended, they sailed on to Euboea. Several days later, the 400 were formally deposed and replaced by a government of the 5,000; the most extreme of the oligarchs fled the city.

In command

Under the government of the 5,000 and under the democracy that replaced it in 410 BC, Theramenes served as a general for several years, commanding fleets in the Aegean Sea and the Hellespont. Shortly after the rise of the government of the 5,000, Theramenes set sail to the Hellespont to join Thrasybulus and the generals elected by the army at Samos. After the Athenian victory at Abydos, he took thirty triremes to attack the rebels on Euboea, who were building a causeway to Boeotia to provide land access to their island. Unable to stop the construction, he plundered the territory of several rebellious cities, then travelled around the Aegean suppressing oligarchies and raising funds from various cities of the Athenian Empire. He then took his fleet to Macedon, where he assisted the Macedonian king Archelaus in his siege of Pydna, but, with that siege dragging on, he sailed on to join Thrasybulus in Thrace. The fleet soon moved on from there to challenge Mindarus' fleet, which had seized the city of Cyzicus. Theramenes commanded one wing of the Athenian fleet in the resulting Battle of Cyzicus, a decisive Athenian victory. In that battle, Alcibiades (who had been recalled from exile by the fleet at Samos shortly after the coup) led a decoy force that drew the Spartan fleet out into open water, while Thrasybulus and Theramenes, each commanding an independent squadron, cut off the Spartans' retreat. Mindarus was forced to flee to a nearby beach, and vicious fighting ensued on land as the Athenians attempted to drag off the Spartan ships. Thrasybulus and Alcibiades kept the Spartans occupied while Theramenes joined up with the nearby Athenian land forces and then hurried to the rescue; his arrival precipitated a total Athenian victory, in which all the Spartan ships were captured. In the wake of this victory, the Athenians captured Cyzicus and constructed a fort at Chrysopolis, from which they extracted a customs duty of one tenth on all ships passing through the Bosporus. Theramenes and another general remained at this fort with a garrison of thirty ships to oversee the collection of the duty. At Athens, meanwhile, the government of the 5,000 was replaced by a restored democracy within a few months of this battle; Donald Kagan has suggested that the absence of Theramenes, "the best spokesman for the moderates", paved the way for this restoration.

According to Diodorus and Plutarch, Theramenes participated under the command of Alcibiades to the siege of Byzantium (408 BC), winning the battle against the Peloponnesian army that was appointed to defend that city: Alcibiades was in command of the right wing, while Theramenes was in charge of the left one.

Arginusae
Theramenes remained a general through 407 BC, but, in that year, when the Athenian defeat at Notium led to the downfall of Alcibiades and his political allies, Theramenes was not reelected. In the next year, however, he did sail as a trierarch in the scratch Athenian relief fleet sent out to relieve Conon, who had been blockaded with 40 triremes at Mytilene by Callicratidas. That relief force won a surprising victory over the more experienced Spartan force in the Battle of Arginusae, but in the wake of that battle Theramenes found himself in the middle of a massive controversy. At the end of the battle, the generals in command of the fleet had conferred to decide on their next steps. Several pressing concerns presented themselves; 50 Peloponnesian ships under Eteonicus remained at Mytilene, blockading Conon, and decisive action by the Athenians could lead to the destruction of that force as well, but, at the same time, ships needed to be dispatched to recover the sailors of the twenty five Athenian triremes sunk or disabled in the battle. Accordingly, all eight generals, with the larger part of the fleet, set out for Mytilene, while a rescue force under Thrasybulus and Theramenes, both of whom were trierarchs in this battle but had served as generals in prior campaigns, remained behind to pick up the survivors and retrieve corpses for burial. At this point, however, a severe storm blew up, and both of these forces were driven back to shore. Eteonicus escaped, and a great number of Athenian sailors—estimates as to the precise figure have ranged from near 1,000 to as many as 5,000—drowned.

Soon after the news of this public tragedy reached Athens, a massive controversy erupted over the apportionment of blame for the botched rescue. The public was furious over the loss of so many sailors, and over the failure to recover the bodies of the dead for burial, and the generals suspected that Thrasybulus and Theramenes, who had already returned to Athens, might have been responsible for stirring up the assembly against them, and wrote letters to the people denouncing the two trierarchs as responsible for the failed rescue. Thrasybulus and Theramenes were called before the assembly to defend their behavior; in their defense, Theramenes produced a letter from the generals in which they blamed only the storm for the mishap; the trierarchs were exonerated, and public anger now turned against the generals. All eight were deposed from office, and summoned back to Athens to stand trial. Two fled, but six returned as commanded to face the charges against them.

Diodorus notes that the generals committed a critical error by attempting to shift the blame onto Theramenes. "For," he states, "although they could have had the help of Theramenes and his associates in the trial, men who both were able orators and had many friends and, most important of all, had been participants in the events relative to the battle, they had them, on the contrary, as adversaries and bitter accusers." When the trial came, Theramenes' numerous political allies were among the leaders of the faction seeking the generals' conviction. A bitter series of debates and legal maneuvers ensued as the assembly fought over what to do with the generals. At first, it appeared that they might be treated leniently, but in the end, public displays of bereavement by the families of the deceased and aggressive prosecution by a politician named Callixenus swung the opinion of the assembly; the six generals were tried as a group and executed. The Athenian public, as the grief and anger prompted by the disaster cooled, came to regret their action, and for thousands of years historians and commentators have pointed to the incident as perhaps the greatest miscarriage of justice the city's government ever perpetrated.

Negotiating a peace
In 405 BC, the Athenian navy was defeated and destroyed by the Peloponnesian fleet under Lysander at the Battle of Aegospotami in the Hellespont. Without sufficient funds to build another fleet, the Athenians could only wait as Lysander sailed westward across the Aegean towards their city. Blockaded by land and sea, with their food supplies running low, the Athenians sent ambassadors to the Spartan king Agis, whose army was camped outside their walls, offering to join the Spartan alliance if they were allowed to keep their walls and port; Agis, claiming that he had no power to negotiate, sent the ambassadors on to Sparta, but there they were told that, if they really wanted peace, they should bring the Spartans better proposals. The Athenians were initially intransigent, going so far as to imprison a man who suggested that a stretch of the long walls be torn down as the Spartans had insisted, but the reality of their situation soon compelled them to consider compromises. In this situation, Theramenes, in a speech to the assembly, requested that he be sent as an ambassador to Lysander (who was at this time besieging Samos) to determine the Spartans' intentions towards Athens; he also stated that he had discovered something that might improve the Athenians' situation, although he declined to share it with the citizenry. His request was granted, and Theramenes sailed to Samos to meet with Lysander; from there, he was sent to Sparta, perhaps stopping at Athens on the way. At Sparta, with representatives of all of Sparta's allies present, Theramenes and his colleagues negotiated the terms of the peace that ended the Peloponnesian War; the long walls and the walls of Piraeus were pulled down, the size of the Athenian fleet was sharply limited, and Athenian foreign policy was subordinated to that of Sparta; the treaty also stipulated that the Athenians were to use "the constitution of their ancestors". Theramenes returned to Athens and presented the results of the negotiations to the assembly; although some still favored holding out, the majority voted to accept the terms; the Peloponnesian War, after 28 years, was at an end.

Thirty Tyrants
In the wake of Athens' surrender, the long walls were torn down and the troops besieging the city returned to their various homes; a Spartan garrison probably remained in Athens to supervise the dismantling of the walls; Lysander sailed off to Samos to complete the siege of that city. Another clause of the treaty that had ended the war had allowed all exiles to return to Athens, and these men, many of them oligarchic agitators who had been cast out by the democracy, were hard at work in the months after the treaty. Five "overseers" were appointed by the members of the oligarchic social clubs to plan the transition to an oligarchy. In July 404 BC, they summoned Lysander back to Athens, where he supervised the change of government; an oligarchic politician, Dracontides, proposed in the council to place the government in the hands of thirty chosen men; Theramenes supported this motion, and, with Lysander threatening to punish the Athenians for failing to dismantle the walls quickly enough unless they assented, it passed the assembly. Thirty men were selected: ten appointed by the "overseers", ten chosen by Theramenes (including himself), and ten picked by Lysander.

This government, which soon came to be known as the "Thirty Tyrants" for its excesses and atrocities, rapidly set about establishing its control over the city. The oligarchs, led by Critias, one of the "overseers" and a former exile, summoned a Spartan garrison to ensure their safety and then initiated a reign of terror, executing any men who they thought might possess sufficient initiative or a large enough following to effectively challenge them. It was this campaign that first drove a wedge between Theramenes and the leaders of the Thirty; initially a supporter of Critias, Theramenes now argued that it was unnecessary to execute men who had shown no sign of wishing the oligarchy harm just because they had been popular under the democracy. This protest, however, failed to slow the pace of the executions, so Theramenes next argued that, if the oligarchy was to govern by force, it must at least expand its base; fearful that Theramenes might lead a popular movement against them, Critias and the leaders of the Thirty issued a list of 3,000 men who would be associates in the new government. When Theramenes again objected that this number was still too small, the leaders arranged for a military review to be staged after which the citizens were ordered to pile their arms; with the help of the Spartan garrison, the oligarchs then confiscated all arms except those belonging to the 3,000. This, in turn, marked the beginning of even greater excesses; to pay the Spartan garrison's wages, Critias and the leaders ordered each of the Thirty to arrest and execute a metic, or resident alien, and confiscate his property. Theramenes, protesting that this action was worse than the worst excesses of the democracy, refused to follow the order.

Critias and his compatriots, in the light of these events, decided that Theramenes had become an intolerable threat to their rule; accordingly, speaking before the assembly of the 3,000, Critias denounced Theramenes as a born traitor, always ready to shift his political allegiances with the expediencies of the moment. Famously, he branded him with the nickname "cothurnus", the name of a boot worn on the stage that could fit either foot; Theramenes, he proclaimed, was ready to serve either the democratic or oligarchic cause, seeking only to further his own personal interest. In an impassioned response, Theramenes denied that his politics had ever been inconsistent. He had always, he insisted, favored a moderate policy, neither extreme democracy nor extreme oligarchy, and held true to the ideal of a government composed of men of hoplite status or higher, who would be able to effectively serve the state. This speech had a substantial effect on the audience, and Critias saw that, if the case were brought to a vote, Theramenes would be acquitted. Accordingly, after conferring with the Thirty, Critias ordered men with daggers to line the stage in front of the audience and then struck Theramenes' name from the roster of the 3,000, denying him his right to a trial. Theramenes, springing to a nearby altar for sanctuary, admonished the assemblage not to permit his murder, but to no avail; the Eleven, keepers of the prison, entered, dragged him away, and forced him to drink a cup of hemlock. Theramenes, imitating a popular drinking game in which the drinker toasted a loved one as he finished his cup, downed the poison and then flung the dregs to the floor, exclaiming "Here's to the health of my beloved Critias!"

Historiography

Theramenes lived a controversial life, and his death did not end the struggle over how to interpret his actions. In the years after his death, his reputation became an item of contention as former associates of his defended themselves against prosecutors under the restored democracy. (The regime of the Thirty lasted only until 403 BC.) It would appear that, as they defended themselves before democratic-sympathizing Athenian jurymen, Theramenes' former comrades in the oligarchy attempted to exculpate themselves by associating their actions with those of Theramenes and portraying him as a steadfast defender of the Athenian democracy; examples of such accounts can be found in the Histories of Diodorus Siculus and in the "Theramenes papyrus", a fragmentary work discovered in the 1960s. An example of the sort of attack this portrayal was intended to defend against can be found in two orations of Lysias, Against Eratosthenes and Against Agoratus; there, Theramenes is portrayed as treasonous and self-interested, doing tremendous harm to the Athenian cause through his machinations. Xenophon adopts a similarly hostile attitude in the early parts of his work, but apparently had a change of heart during the chronological break in composition that divides the second book of the Hellenica; his portrayal of Theramenes during the reign of the Thirty Tyrants is altogether more favorable than that of his earlier years. A final portrayal is offered by Aristotle, who, in his Constitution of the Athenians, portrays Theramenes as a moderate and a model citizen; historians have disputed the origin of this account, with some treating it as a product of 4th-century BC propaganda by a moderate "Theramenean" party, while others, such as Phillip Harding, see no evidence for such a tradition and argue that Aristotle's treatment of Theramenes is entirely a product of his own reassessment of the man. Diodorus Siculus, a historian active in the time of Caesar, presents a generally favorable account of Theramenes, which appears to be drawn from the noted historian Ephorus, who studied in Athens under Isocrates who was taught by Theramenes.

Theramenes' reputation has undergone a dramatic shift since the 19th century, when Xenophon's and Lysias' unfavorable accounts were widely accepted, and Theramenes was execrated as a turncoat and blamed for instigating the execution of the generals after Arginusae. The discovery of Aristotle's Constitution of the Athenians in 1890 reversed this trend for the broad assessment of Theramenes' character, and Diodorus' account of the Arginusae trial has been preferred by scholars since Antony Andrewes undermined Xenophon's account in the 1970s; Diodorus' more melodramatic passages, such as his elaborate presentation of Theramenes' last moments, are still discounted, but he is now preferred on a number of issues, and on the Arginusae trial in particular. Aristophanes, in The Frogs, pokes fun at Theramenes' ability to extricate himself from tight spots, but delivers none of the scathing rebukes one would expect for a politician whose role in the shocking events after Arginusae had been regarded as particularly blameworthy, and modern scholars have seen in this a more accurate depiction of how Theramenes was perceived in his time; Lysias, meanwhile, who mercilessly attacks Theramenes on many counts, has nothing negative to say about the aftermath of Arginusae.

Recent works have generally accepted the image of Theramenes as a moderate, committed to the ideal of a hoplite-based broad oligarchy. Donald Kagan has said of him that "...his entire career reveals him to be a patriot and a true moderate, sincerely committed to a constitution granting power to the hoplite class, whether in the form of a limited democracy or a broadly based oligarchy", while John Fine has noted that "like many a person following a middle course, he was hated by both political extremes." The constitution of the 5,000 is recognized as his political masterpiece; his attempt to bring about a similar shift towards moderatism in 404 led directly to his death. That death, meanwhile, has become famous for its drama, and the story of Theramenes' final moments has been repeated over and over throughout classical historiography. "Because he met his death defying a tyrant," John Fine notes, "it is easy to idealize Theramenes." In the millennia since his death, Theramenes has been both idealized and reviled; his brief seven-year career in the spotlight, touching as it did on all the major points of controversy in the last years of the Peloponnesian War, has been subject to myriad different interpretations. From the polemical contemporary works which describe his career have emerged the outlines of a complex figure, charting a dangerous course through the chaos of the late 5th-century Athenian political scene; although historians from ancient times to the present have offered far more specific portraits, of one form or another, it may be that nothing more than that outline will ever be known with certainty.

Ancient sources

 * Diodorus Siculus, Library
 * Lysias, Against Agoratus
 * Lysias, Against Eratosthenes
 * Unknown author, P. Mich. 5982 De Theramene
 * Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades
 * Unknown author, P. Mich. 5982 De Theramene
 * Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades
 * Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades

Modern sources

 * Andrewes, A. "The Arginousai Trial", Phoenix, Vol. 28 No. 1 (Spring 1974) pp. 112–122
 * Fine, John V.A. The Ancient Greeks: A critical history (Harvard University Press, 1983) ISBN 0-674-03314-0
 * Harding, Phillip. "The Theramenes Myth", Phoenix, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Spring 1974), pp. 101–111
 * Hornblower, Simon. The Greek World 479–323 BC (Routledge, 1991) ISBN 0-415-06557-7
 * Kagan, Donald. The Peloponnesian War (Penguin Books, 2003). ISBN 0-670-03211-5
 * Keaney, John J. "A Source/Model of Aristotle's Portrait of Theramenes". The Classical Journal, Vol. 75, No. 1 (Oct.–Nov. 1979) pp. 40–41
 * Perrin, Bernadotte, "The Rehabilitation of Theramenes", The American Historical Review, Vol. 9 No. 4 (July 1904) pp. 649–669
 * Perrin, Bernadotte, "The Rehabilitation of Theramenes", The American Historical Review, Vol. 9 No. 4 (July 1904) pp. 649–669

title: Theramenes


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Odinala

Odinani, also known as Odinala, Omenala, Odinana, and Omenana (Ọdịnanị/Ọ̀dị̀nàlà), is the traditional cultural belief and practice of the Igbo people of south east Nigeria. These terms, as used here in the Igbo language, are synonymous with the traditional Igbo "religious system" which was not considered separate from the social norms of ancient or traditional Igbo societies. Theocratic in nature, spirituality played a huge role in their everyday lives. Although it has largely been syncretised with Catholicism, the indigenous belief system remains in strong effect among the rural, village and diaspora populations of the Igbo. Odinani can be found in Haitian Voodoo, Obeah, Santeria and even Candomblé. Odinani is a pantheistic and polytheistic faith, having a strong central deity at its head. All things spring from this deity. Although a pantheon of other gods and spirits, these being Ala, Amadiọha, Anyanwụ, Ekwensu, Ikenga, exists in the belief system, as it does in many other Traditional African religions, the lesser deities prevalent in Odinani serve as helpers or elements of Chukwu, the central deity.

Lesser spirits known as ágbàrà or árúsí operate below the other gods and higher spirits. These lesser spirits represent natural forces; agbara as a divine force manifests as separate arụsị in the Igbo pantheon. A concept of 'the eye of sun or God' (Anyanwu, Igbo: ányá ánwụ́) exists as a masculine and feminine solar deity which forms a part of the solar veneration among the Nri-Igbo in northern Igboland. Arụsị are mediated by Dibia and other priests who do not contact the high god directly. Through áfà, 'divination', the laws and demands of the arụsị are communicated to the living. Arụsị are venerated in community shrines around roadsides and forests while smaller shrines are located in the household for ancestor veneration. Deceased ancestors live in the spirit world where they can be contacted. Below the arụsị are minor and more general spirits known as mmúọ loosely defined by their perceived malevolent or benign natures. These minor spirits are not venerated and are sometimes considered the lost souls of the dead. Ancestor worship and the worship of various gods and spirits, form the main component of the traditional Igbo religion, standing in contrast with Abrahamic religions.

The number of people practicing Igbo religion decreased drastically in the 20th century with the influx of Christian missionaries under the auspices of the British colonial government in Nigeria. In some cases, Igbo traditional religion practice known as ọdịnala was syncretised with Christianity, but in many cases indigenous rites were demonised by Christian missionaries who pointed out the practice of human sacrifice and some other cultural practices that were illegal under the colonial government. Earlier missionaries referred to many indigenous religious practices as juju. Igbo religion is most present today in harvest ceremonies such as new yam festival (ị́wá jí) and masquerading traditions such as mmanwụ and Ekpe.

Remnants of Igbo religious rites spread among African descendants in the Caribbean and North America in era of the Atlantic slave trade. Igbo ọ́bị̀à was transferred to the British West Indies and Guyana as obeah and aspects of Igbo masquerading traditions can be found among the festivals of the Garifuna people and jonkonnu in the West Indies and North Carolina.

Etymology
Ọdịnala in central Igbo dialect is the compound of the words ọ̀ dị̀ ('located') + n (nà, 'within') + àla (the one god) [consisting of anu (E nu) above (the heavens) and Ala, below (the earth)]. Other dialectal variants include ọdịnanị, ọdịnana, omenala, omenana, and omenanị. The word ọdịnala and all its variations is also associated with the culture and customary laws of the Igbo people. Many of the laws and culture were counterparts with religion such as taboos and laws concerning sacred spaces like a deities sacred forest. Since customary law is recognised in Nigeria, many in Igbo society find themselves syncretising these beliefs with other beliefs and religions.

Beliefs
Ọdịnala could loosely be described as a polytheistic and panentheistic faith with a strong central spiritual force at its head from which all things are believed to spring; however, the contextual diversity of the system may encompass various theistic perspectives that derive from a variety of beliefs held within the religion. Chukwu as the central deity is classed among the ndi mmuo, 'invisible beings', an ontological category of beings which includes Ala the divine feminine earth force, chi the 'personal deity', ndichie the ancestors, and mmuo the minor spirits. The other ontological category consists of ndi mmadu, 'visible beings', which include ánụ́ animals, ósísí plants, and the final class ùrò which consists of elements, minerals and inanimate beings. While various gods, the spirit class of Arusi, and ancestors are worshiped and prayed to; no sacrifices are given to Chukwu and no shrines and altars are erected for it. If an Arusi is assigned to an individual, it becomes a chi, a personal guardian god/spirit.

Complex animism builds the core concept of most traditional African religions, including Odinala, this includes the worship of tutelary deities, nature worship, ancestor worship and the belief in an afterlife. While some religions adopted a pantheistic worldview, most follow a polytheistic system with various gods, spirits and other supernatural beings. Traditional African religions also have elements of fetishism, shamanism and veneration of relics.

Nigerian American professor of indigenous African religions at Harvard University, Jacob Olupona summarized the many traditional African religions as complex animistic religious traditions and beliefs of the African people before the Christian and Islamic "colonization" of Africa. Ancestor veneration has always played a "significant" part in the traditional African cultures and may be considered as central to the African worldview. Ancestors (ancestral ghosts/spirits) are an integral part of reality. The ancestors are generally believed to reside in an ancestral realm (spiritworld), while some believe that the ancestors became equal in power to deities. "The defining line between deities and ancestors is often contested, but overall, ancestors are believed to occupy a higher level of existence than living human beings and are believed to be able to bestow either blessings or illness upon their living descendants.

Ancestors can offer advice and bestow good fortune and honor to their living dependents, but they can also make demands, such as insisting that their shrines be properly maintained and propitiated. A belief in ancestors also testifies to the inclusive nature of traditional African spirituality by positing that deceased progenitors still play a role in the lives of their living descendants."Olupona rejects the western/Islamic definition of Monotheism and says that such concepts could not reflect the complex African traditions and are too simplistic. While some traditions have a supreme being (next to other deities), others have not. Monotheism does not reflect the multiplicity of ways that the traditional African spirituality has conceived of deities, gods, and spirit beings.

Chukwuemeka Mbaegbu from the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria, describes the Igbo religion's system as "Monopolytheism", referring to the belief in many distinct gods and spirits, but with one distant and unpersonalized supreme force, which resulted in the creation of everything, but is not a god per definition.

Chi
In Odinani, the Igbo people believe that each person has their own personal spiritual guardian called Chi (or ḿmúọ́), appointed to them before and at the time of their birth. The Chi remains with them for the rest of their lives on Earth. A person's Chi is the personification of that individual's fate, which is credited for an individual's life's successes, misfortunes and failures. The Igbo believe that their success in life is determined by their Chi, and that no man can rise past the greatness of his or her own Chi. In this respect, the concept of chi is analogous to the concept of a guardian angel in Christianity, the daemon in ancient Greek religion, and the genius in ancient Roman religion. Culturally, people are seen as the creators or makers of their own destiny. The breath of life is in the heart, óbì. Chi can be masculine and feminine. A Dibia can identify a person's chi through divination (ájà) and advise adherents of ways to placate it. Éké is one's ancestral guardian spirit but exists at the periphery of human life and remains a mystery to the people. Households usually contain a shrine for veneration of the Chi, which could be focused on a tree. In marriage a woman takes her chi shrine along with all her belongings to her matrimonial home. Around Nkarahia, in southern Igboland, there are the most elaborate chi shrines which are decorated with colourful china plates inset into the clay walls of the chi shrine building; the altars hold sacred emblems, while the polished mud benches hold offerings of china, glass, manillas, and food. As a marker of personal fortune or misfortune, good acts or ill, chi can be described as a focal point for 'personal religion'.

Cosmology
The community of visible interacting beings and the cosmos is referred to as ụ̀wà, which includes all living things íhẹ́ ndi dị́ ńdụ̀, including animals and vegetation and their mineral elements which possess a vital force and are regarded as counterparts to invisible forces in the spirit world. These living things and geomorphological features of the world therefore possess a guardian deity. Igbo cosmology presents a balance between the feminine and masculine, perhaps, with a preponderance of female representation in Igbo lore. In Igbo cosmology, the world was divided into four corners by the high god corresponding to èké órìè àfọ̀ ǹkwọ́ which are the days of the week in the Igbo calendar regarded as market days. The universe is regarded as a composite of bounded spaces in an overlapping hemispherical structure, the total spaces are referred to as élú nà àlà. In one Igbo cosmological theory reported by W.R.G. Morton in the 1950s from an elder in Ibagwa Nike in northern Igboland, Chukwu sees that the sun travels across the world in the day time and then cuts into two in order for the moon to pass on a perpendicular route, and so the world is divided into four parts and four days. The quarterly division of the earth and the days makes the number four sacred (ńsọ́) to the Igbo. The élú nà àlà space is defined by two boundaries: élú ígwé, 'sky's limit' composed of heavenly bodies under the main forces of the 'masculine' sun and 'feminine' moon, and élú àlà, 'earth or lands limit' consisting of the four material elements of fire and air (masculine), and earth and water (feminine).

The pattern of two and four reoccur in Chukwu's creations. The days correspond to the four cardinal points and are its names in Igbo, èké east, órìè west, àfọ̀ north, ǹkwọ́ south. The Nri-Igbo claim the market days to have been introduced to the Igbo by their divine progenitor and king Eri in the 9th century after encountering the days as deities. These Arusi are venerated as the primary or as a major deity under Chineke in parts of Igboland. In terms of hierarchy, some communities recognise èké as the head of these Arusi, while others prioritise órìè and ǹkwọ́ first after the high god. Market days may have local deities representing the spirits in some places, in many southern Igbo towns Agwu is the patron of Eke, Ogwugwu the patron of Orie, Amadioha the patron of Afọ and Ala for Nkwọ.

The Cosmos itself is divided into "four constituent complexes" known as Okike, Alusi, Mmuo, and Uwa. Okike is the event of "Creation", the Alusi are the lesser deities, Mmụọ are the spirits of the Ancestors and all other beings, and Uwa is the World.

Justice
Ọfọ and ogụ́ is a law of retributive justice. It vindicates anyone that is wrongly accused of a crime as long as their "hands are clean". It is only a person who is on the righteous side of Ọfọ-na-Ogụ́ that can call its name in prayer, otherwise such a person will face the wrath of Amadiọha (the god of thunder and lightning). Kola nut is used in ceremonies honour Chukwu, chi, Arusi and ancestors and is used as a method of professing innocence when coupled with libations. The Igbo often make clay altars and shrines of their deities which are sometimes anthropomorphic, the most popular example being the wooden statues of Ikenga. Typically, only men are allowed to make representational figures of supernatural forces.

Afterlife and reincarnation
The Igbo traditionally believe in an afterlife in the spirit world or dimension, where the deceased ancestors exist, and may influence the material world and their descendants. Ancestors are protectors and guardians of ones lineage, close friends and heritage, and may become to higher spirits (semi-gods), as in the case of many other traditional religions of the world. Sometimes however, ancestors may reincarnate into families that they were part of while alive. This is called ilọ-uwa. Reincarnation is seldom, but may happen occasionally, if a deceased person cannot enter the spirit world for various reasons or may be absorbed into a new-born if it would die immediately after birth. Unlike in Hinduism, humans can only be reincarnated as humans. Families hire fortune-tellers to reveal if the child harbours the soul or an aspect of an ancestor; the baby is sometimes named after this relative. The personality of the ancestor is not identical to the child's but rather the concept establishes a vital relationship with the child and characteristics of the ancestor. Other signs can be certain behaviors, physical traits, and statements by the child. A diviner can help in detecting if the child has reincarnated from an ancestor and may identify this ancestor. It is considered an insult if a male is said to have been reincarnated as a female. An ancestor (or aspects of the ancestor) may be reincarnated in multiple people, in which case the reincarnations share a mortal bond; upon the death of one person, it is believed that the others may die a sudden death if they see the corpse.

Ogbanje
An ọgbanje is a reincarnating evil or revengeful spirit, that would deliberately plague a family with misfortune. In folklore, the ọgbanje, upon being born by the mother, would deliberately die after a certain amount of time (usually before puberty) and then come back and repeat the cycle, causing the family grief. This time period varies between minutes, hours, days and years. Female circumcision was sometimes thought to get rid of the evil spirit. Finding the evil spirit's Iyi-uwa, which is buried in a secret location, would ensure that the ọgbanje would never plague the family with misfortune again. The Iyi-uwa is a stone that the ọgbanje's way of coming back to the human world and is also a way of finding its targeted family. The stone is usually buried deep enough to not have been hidden by a child. The iyi-uwa is dug out by a priest and destroyed. Female ọgbanje die during pregnancies along with the baby, male ọgbanje die before the birth of a wife's baby or the baby dies. The child is confirmed to no longer be an ọgbanje after the destruction of the stone or after the mother successfully gives birth to another baby.

Deities

The Arusi, who are also known as the Arushi, Anusi or Alusi by dialects (see Orisha, the Yoruba cognate), all spring from Ala the Earth goddess and Goddess of Fertility, who embodies the workings of the World. They are lesser deities in Odinani, each of whom are responsible for a specific aspect of nature or abstract concept. According to Igbo lore, these lesser deities as elements of Chukwu have their own specific purpose. They exist only as long their purpose does, thus many Alusi die off save for those who represent universal concepts. Some of the more notable male Alusi include: Amadioha the God of Thunder and Lightning, popular among the Southern Igbo; Ikenga the horned god of Fortune and Industry; Agwu the God of Divination and Healing; Njoku Ji the God of Yam, and Ogbunabali the God of Death. In southern Igbo dialects especially, ágbàrà is the term for these forces.

Arusi manifest in natural elements and their shrines are usually found in forests in which they are based around specific trees. At shrines, íhú mmúọ́, an object such as a hung piece of cloth or a group of statues, are placed at an Arusi's group of trees to focus worship. Deities are described as 'hot' and often capricious so that much of the public approach shrines cautiously and are advised to avoid them at most times; priests are entrusted in the maintenance of most shrines. Many of these shrines are by the roadside in rural areas. Tender palm fronds symbolize spiritual power and are objects of sacred power. Shrines are cordoned off with ọmu to caution the public of the deity's presence. Larger clay modelings in honor of an Arusi also exist around forests and rivers. Other Arusi figures may be found in and around peoples' homes and the shrines of Dibia. Much of these are related to personal chi, cults, and ancestral worship.

Ala
Ala (meaning 'earth' and 'land' in Igbo, also Ájá-ànà) is the feminine earth spirit who is responsible for morality, fertility and the dead ancestors who are stored in the underworld in her womb. Ala is at the head of the Igbo pantheon, maintaining order and carrying out justice against wrongdoers. Ala is the most prominent and worshipped Arusi, almost every Igbo village has a shrine dedicated to her called íhú Ala where large decisions are taken. Ala is believed to be involved in all aspects of human affairs including festivals and at offerings. Ala stands for fertility and things that generate life including water, stone and vegetation, colour (àgwà), beauty (mmá) which is connected to goodness in Igbo society, and uniqueness (ájà). She is a symbol of morality who sanctioned omenala Igbo customs from which these moral and ethical behaviours are upheld in Igbo society. Ala is the ground itself, and for this reason taboos and crimes are known as ńsọ́ Ala ('desecration of Ala'), all land is holy as the embodiment of Ala making her the principal legal sanctioning authority. Prohibitions include murder, suicide, theft, incest, and abnormalities of birth such as in many places the birth of twins and the killing and eating of pregnant animals, if a slaughtered animal is found to be pregnant sacrifices are made to Ala and the foetus is buried. People who commit suicides are not buried in the ground or given burial rites but cast away in order not to further offend and pollute the land, their ability to become ancestors is therefore nullified. When an individual dies a 'bad death' in the society, such as from the effects of divine retributive justice or breaking a taboo, they are not buried in the earth, but are discarded in a forest so as not to offend Ala. As in cases of most Arusi, Ala has the ability to be malevolent if perceived to be offended and can cause harm against those who offend her.

Within the earth's spherical limit, in a cosmological sense, is a designation of the 'earth's bosom' within, ímé àlà, a hemispherical base to the earth with an opening or 'mouth' at its highest point, ónụ́ àlà. This is composed of mainly deep dark sea water (ohimiri). Ime ala is considered as the underworld. Ala in addition to embodying nature, is the cosmic base on which the vault of heaven, ígwé, rests. As the foundation of all existence, children's umbilical cords are saved and symbolically buried under a tree to mark the child's first sharing of family owned lands; this tree could either be an oil palm, bread-fruit tree, raffia palm, or plantain tree depending on the cultural region. In some places, such as Nri, the royal python, éké, is considered a sacred and tame agent of Ala and a harbinger of good fortune when found in a home. The python is referred to as nne 'mother' in areas where the python is revered, it is a symbol of female beauty and gentleness. Killing of the python is expressly forbidden in these places and sanctions are taken against the killer including the funding of expensive human sized burials that are given to slain pythons.

Amadioha
Amadioha (from ámádí + ọ̀hà, 'free will of the people' in Igbo) is the Arusi of justice, thunder, lightning and the sky. He is referred to as Amadioha in southern Igboland, Kamalu, Kamanu, Kalu among the Aro and other Cross River Igbo people, Igwe among the Isuama Igbo and in northwestern Igboland, and Ofufe in certain parts of Igboland. His governing planet is the Sun. His color is red, and his symbol is a white ram. Metaphysically, Amadioha represents the collective will of the people and he is often associated with Anyanwu. He is the expression of divine justice and wrath against taboos and crimes; in oaths he is sworn by and strikes down those who swear falsely with thunder and lightning. Amadioha shrines exist around Igboland, his main shrine is located at Ozuzu in the riverine Igbo region in northern Rivers State. While Anyanwu is more prominent in northern Igboland, Amadioha is more prominent in the south. His day is Afọ, which is the second market day. In mbari houses Amadioha is depicted beside Ala as her consort.

Ikenga

Ikenga (literally 'place of strength') is an Arusi and a cult figure of the right hand and success found among the northern Igbo people. He is an icon of meditation exclusive to men and owners of the sculpture dedicate and refer to it as their 'right hand' which is considered instrumental to personal power and success. Ikenga is a source of encoded knowledge unraveled through psychological principles. The image of Ikenga comprises someone's chi ('personal god'), his ndichie (ancestors), aka Ikenga (right hand), ike (power) as well as spiritual activation through prayer and sacrifice. Igbo cultures value of resourcefulness and individualism in society utilises the concept of Ikenga to regulate the relationship between individuality and family relations and obligations, as well as free will and industriousness balanced with destiny decided persons chi. Ikenga acts as a physical medium to the consciousness and emphasises individual initiative through reflection and meditation. Success validates the Ikenga and the sculptures act as visual representation of a person's inner success, people give offerings in thanks to the Ikenga after providing energy to overcome any unwanted pre-life choices. These choices are at the hands of the persons earth bound spirit, mmuo, who chooses sex, type, and lifespan before incarnation. The successful Ikenga influenced the saying of well-being 'íkéǹgàm kwụ̀ ọ̀tọ́ ta ta' meaning that 'my Ikenga stands upright today'. During festivals of Ogbalido or oriri Ikenga ('feast of Ikenga') sculptures of him may be paraded around a village or displayed at the village centre if too monumental to transport. When a person does not become successful with hard work the Ikenga has 'fallen' and is seen as a sign of danger, if meditation and cajoling the Ikenga fails, the sculpture is 'thrown down' and broken which spiritually kills the Ikenga; a new one is carved to replace it.

Ikenga figures are common cultural artefacts ranging for six inches to 6 feet high and can be humanistic or highly stylised. There are anthropomorphic, architectonic, and abstract cylindrical Ikenga sculptures. Ikenga is a symbol of success and personal achievement. Ikenga is mostly maintained, kept or owned by men and occasionally by women of high reputation and integrity in the society. At burials, a man's Ikenga is broken into two with one piece buried with him and the other destroyed.

Ekwensu
This Arusi was adept at bargains and trade, and praying to Ekwensu was said to guarantee victory in negotiations. As a force of change and chaos, Ekwensu also represented the spirit of war among the Igbo, invoked during times of conflict and banished during peacetime to avoid his influences inciting bloodshed in the community, warriors set up shrines to Ekwensu to help war efforts. This is based upon the finding of old shrines dedicated to the worship of the spirit, as well as the recounting of old oral stories which depict the character of Ekwensu. Ekwensu was a bringer of violence and possessed people with anger. Ekwensu holds the propensity of bringing misfortune and is regarded as an evil spirit in this sense. Among the Christian Igbo Ekwensu is representative of Satan and is seen as a force which places itself opposite to that of Chukwu. Ekwensu festivals are held in some Igbo towns where military success is celebrated and wealth is flaunted.

Mmuo and minor gods
Mmụọ is a broad class of minor gods and spirits or divinities manifesting in natural elements under the class of elder divinities with major cults. Feminine mmụọ inhabit earth and water and masculine mmụọ inhabit fire and air. This class can be broken down by the Arusi, serviceable mmụọ, àgwụ are related to unusual and deranged human behaviours, these spirits interact with human in a capricious nature that often makes them dangerous. Other cult deities exist around Igboland such as Njoku Ji, yam and fire deity overseeing agriculture, Idemili, 'the pillar of water', the female Arusi based in Idemili North and South who holds up the waters, and Mbatuku the 'bringer of wealth' or 'coming in of wealth'. In addition to minor spirits there are evil wondering spirits of wrong doers called ogbonuke.

Among the Mmuo are:

 * Mbatuku: spirit of wealth
 * Ikoro: drum spirit
 * Ekwu: heart spirit or spirit of the home
 * Imo miri: river spirit
 * Okwara-afo: for Nkwerre people in Imo state is god of mercantile activities
 * Aju-mmiri: sea-goddess in Nkwerre is goddess of prosperity, fertility and general well-being.
 * Ogbuide: goddess of the water associated with the Oguta people.
 * Urashi and Enyija: god of the river
 * Ezenwaanyi/Owummiri: Female Water Spirit, Mermaid, Seductress

Dibia
Dibia are the mystic mediators between the human world and the spirit world and act as healers, scribes, teachers, diviners and advisors of people in the community. They are usually consulted at the shrine of a communities major deity. Dibia is a compound of the words di ('professional, master, husband') + ọ́bị̀à ('doctoring, sciences'). The dibia are believed to be destined for spiritual work. The dibia sees the spiritual world at any time and interprets what messages being sent and sees the spiritual problems of living people. They are given the power by the spirit world to identify any alusi by name and the possible ways of placating and negotiating with the deity. Dibia are thought to be revealed to possess the power over one of three elements namely water (and large bodies of water), fire and vegetation. Dibia whose elements are vegetation can go on to become herbalists by their supposed instinctual knowledge of the health benefits of certain plants they are instinctually drawn to, fire element dibia can handle fire unscathed during their initiation, and water element dibia do not drown. Dibia can partially enter the spirit world and communicate this by rubbing chalk on one half of their face. Dibia and obia practices were transported to the West Indies as a result of the Atlantic slave trade and became known as obeah.

Afa divination
The name of divination in Igbo derives from ígbá áfà or áhà meaning 'to name' coming from the diviner's skill in rooting out problems hence naming them. The dibia or ogba afa, 'interpreter of afa', is considered a master of esoteric knowledge and wisdom and igba afa is a way in which people can find out the cause of such things as misfortunes. The diviner interprets codes from àlà mmuọ the unseen by throwing divination seeds, cowries, and beads, or observing a divination board sometimes called osho which can be used in pronouncing curses on the evil. In this way the diviner is endowed with special sight. it is related the sciences of homeopathic medicine known as ọ́gwụ̀, a practitioner consciously picks to either of these abilities. Animals that are special in divination and sacrifice include a white he-goat, a white ram, a tortoise and male wall gecko. These animals are prized for their rarity, price and therefore the journey taken to obtain. Chameleons and rats are used for more stronger medicines and deadly poisons, and antidotes can include lambs, small chickens, eggs, and oils. Nzu is used in rites from birth to death and is used to mark sacred buildings and spaces. Agwu Nsi is the Igbo patron deity of health and divination and is related to insanity, confusion, and unusual human behaviour which is linked to possession of Agwu by the diviner. Agwu can be manifested by other alusi so that there could be images of a divination Ikenga or Ikenga Agwu for instance.

Ancestral veneration
Ndebunze, or ndichie, are the deceased ancestors who are considered to be in the spirit world, àlà mmúọ́. In Odinani, it is believed that the dead ancestors are invisible members of the community; their role in the community, in conjunction with Ala, is to protect the community from epidemics and strife such as famine and smallpox. Ancestors helped chi look after men. Shrines for the ancestors in Igbo society were made in the central house, or òbí or òbú, of the patriarch of a housing compound. The patriarchal head of the household is in charge of venerating the patriarchal ancestors through libations and offerings, through this the living maintain contact with the dead. Only a patriarch whose father is dead, and therefore in the spirit world where they await reincarnation into the community, were able to venerate ancestors. Female ancestors were called upon by matriarchs. At the funeral of a man's father there is a hierarchy in Igbo culture of animals that will be killed and eaten in his honor. Usually this depended on the rarity and price of the animal, so a goat or a sheep were common and relatively cheaper, and therefore carried less prestige, while a cow is considered a great honor, and a horse the most exceptional. Horses cannot be given for women. Horses were more common among the northeastern Igbo due to tsetse fly zone that Igboland is situated in and renders it an unsuitable climate for horses. Horse heads are traditionally decorated and kept in a reliquary and at shrines.

A number of major masking institutions exist around Igboland that honour ancestors and reflect the spirit world in the land of the living. Young women, for example, are incarnated in the society through the àgbọ́ghọ̀ mmúọ́ masking tradition in which mean represent ideal and benevolent spirits of maidens of the spirit world in the form of feminine masks. These masks are performed at festivals at agricultural cycles and at funerals of prominent individuals in the society.

Kola nut
Kola nut (ọ́jị̀, or ọ́jị̀ Ìgbò) offerings and prayers (ị́gọ́ ọ́jị̀, 'kola nut blessing', ị́wá ọ́jị̀, 'kola nut breaking') can be performed personally between one and his spirit or in a group in a form of a prayer or chant. The saluter addresses their personal god or chi as well as alusi and their ancestors. These kola nuts are held in a special round bowl called ọ́kwá with a compartment at the centre of the bowl for condiments for the kola nut such as alligator pepper (or capsicum cayenne, ósẹ̀ ọ́jị́) and ground peanuts. The bowl and kola nut rite is used to welcome visitors into a household. After the prayer, the ceremony ends with the saluter sharing pieces of the kola with the group, known as ị́ké ọ́jị̀. The kola is supposed to cut by hand, but more recently knives have become acceptable. When the cola has three cotyledons, or parts, it is considered an ọ́jị̀ ìkéǹgà in some northern communities (going by other names in communities Ikenga doesn't operate) and is considered a sign of great luck, bravery and nobility. O wetalu oji wetalu ndu — 'one who brings kola brings life' is a popular saying that points to the auspiciousness of the kola rite.

Folktales
The Igbos have been known to pass down their culture from generation to generation with the use of verbal (largely undocumented) stories. Examples include:

Mbari
Among a small area of the Urata-Igbo cultural area, near Owerri, there is a tradition of building votive monument houses called ḿbàrí primarily dedicated to the ágbàrà Àlà specific to the community and sometimes other community deities. The name joins the word ḿbà ('nation, town, society') + rí ('eat') in reference to the 'festival of life' held after its completion. These votive shrines are typically designed with four columns and a central volt, around the columns are modelled deities, spirits, and depictions of human life, the entire building built out of clay from termite mounds symbolically named jí ('yam') by the initiated spirit workers called ńdí m̀gbè. Ndi mgbe are secluded from the community for a couple of months during the rites of building the mbari to a deity. Mbari are requested by a deity who the diviner tells the community feels neglected and cannot feel pride in the face of other deities in the spirit world. A string of unusual and unfortunate events befalling the community is linked to the aggrieved deity. An mbari is commissioned and artists are chosen. After the completion of the mbari the spirit workers are reincorporated into the community and a feast is held for the opening of the mbari house where elders and the community come to exhibit the critique the expensive mbari. The mbari house is not a source of worship and is left to dilapidate, being reabsorbed by nature in symbolic sense related to Ala.

Uto pyramids
Before the twentieth century, circular stepped pyramids were built in reverence of Ala at the town of Nsude in northern Igboland. In total ten clay/mud pyramidal structures were still existing in 1935. The base section of a pyramid was 60 ft. in circumference and 3 ft. in height. The next stack was 45 ft. in circumference. Circular stacks continued, till it reached the top. The structures were temples for the god Ala/Uto who was believed to live at the top. A stick was placed at the top to represent the god's residence. The structures were laid in groups of five parallel to each other. Because it was built of clay/mud like the Deffufa of Nubia, time has taken its toll requiring periodic reconstruction.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Odinala


text:
AIM alliance

The AIM alliance, also known as the PowerPC alliance, was formed on October 2, 1991, between Apple, IBM, and Motorola. Its goal was to create an industry-wide open-standard computing platform based on the POWER instruction set architecture. It was intended to solve legacy problems, future-proof the industry, and compete with Microsoft's monopoly and the Wintel duopoly. The alliance yielded the launch of Taligent, Kaleida Labs, the PowerPC CPU family, the Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP) hardware platform standard, and Apple's Power Macintosh computer line.

Development
From the 1980s into the 1990s, the computer industry was moving from a model of just individual personal computers toward an interconnected world, where no single company could afford to be vertically isolated anymore. Infinite Loop says "most people at Apple knew the company would have to enter into ventures with some of its erstwhile enemies, license its technology, or get bought". Furthermore, Microsoft's monopoly and the Wintel duopoly threatened competition industrywide, and the Advanced Computing Environment (ACE) consortium was underway.

Phil Hester, a designer of the IBM RS/6000, convinced IBM's president Jack Kuehler of the necessity of a business alliance. Kuehler called Apple President Michael Spindler, who bought into the approach for a design that could challenge the Wintel-based PC. Apple CEO John Sculley was even more enthusiastic.

On July 3, 1991, Apple and IBM signed a non-contractual letter of intent, proposing an alliance and outlining its long-term strategic technology goals. Its main goal was creating a single unifying open-standard computing platform for the whole industry, made of a new hardware design and a next-generation operating system. IBM intended to bring the Macintosh operating system into the enterprise and Apple intended to become a prime customer for the new POWER hardware platform. Considering it to be critically poorly communicated and confusing to the outside world at this point, industry commentators nonetheless saw this partnership as an overall competitive force against Microsoft's monopoly and Intel's and Microsoft's duopoly. IBM and Motorola would have 300 engineers to codevelop chips at a joint manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas. Motorola would sell the chips to Apple or anyone else.

"Executives said the negotiations were stop and go, sometimes seeming to founder and then speeding up as impasses were resolved. The main disagreements occurred when one company or the other thought it was giving away too much technology. Executives said that the technological contributions of both sides were evaluated and that money was used to balance the terms, in what negotiators referred to as the "cosmic arithmetic." But how much money is being paid, and which company is paying, is closely guarded information."

Between the three companies, more than 400 people had been involved to define a more unified corporate culture with less top-down executive decree. They collaborated as peers and future coworkers in creating the alliance and the basis of its ongoing future dialog which promised to "change the landscape of computing in the 90s".

Launch
On October 2, 1991, the historic AIM alliance was officially formed with a contract between Apple CEO John Sculley, IBM Research and Development Chief Jack Kuehler, and IBM Vice President James Cannavino. Kuehler said "Together we announce the second decade of personal computing, and it begins today" and Sculley said this would "launch a renaissance in technological innovation", as they signed the foot-high stack of papers comprising the contract. The New York Times called it "an act that a year ago almost no one in the computer world would have imagined possible". It was so sweeping that it underwent antitrust review by the United States federal government.

In 1992, Apple and IBM created two new companies called Taligent and Kaleida Labs as had been declared in the alliance contract, with the expectation that neither would launch any products until the mid-90s. Since 1988, Apple had already created a next-generation operating system, codenamed "Pink"; and Taligent Inc. was incorporated to bring Pink to market as the ultimate crossplatform object-oriented OS and application frameworks. Kaleida was to create an object-oriented, cross-platform multimedia scripting language which would enable developers to create entirely new kinds of applications that would harness the power of the platform. IBM provided affinity between its own Workplace OS and Taligent, replacing Taligent's microkernel with the IBM Microkernel and adopting Taligent's CommonPoint application framework into Workplace OS, OS/2, and AIX.

"It's natural that many people saw Apple's alliance with former adversary IBM Corp. as an ominous portent for the independent future of the Macintosh. The sight of Apple and IBM chief executives gripping and grinning on national television wasn't nearly as confusing as their vow to bring the Mac and IBM desktop computers into the 21st century with shared technology such as PowerPC chips, PowerOpen Unix, and new operating software from Taligent Inc. and Kaleida Labs Inc. Present and future shock aside, that's a lot to digest."

CISC microprocessors, including the mainstream Intel x86 products, were considered an evolutionary dead end, and that because RISC was the future, the next few years were a period of great opportunity.

The alliance's hardware is based on the PowerPC processors—the first of which, the PowerPC 601, is a single-chip version of IBM's POWER1 CPU. Both IBM and Motorola would manufacture PowerPC integrated circuits for this new platform. The computer architecture base is called "PReP" (PowerPC Reference Platform), later complemented with OpenFirmware and renamed "CHRP" (Common Hardware Reference Platform). IBM used PReP and CHRP for the PCI version of IBM's RS/6000 platform, which was adapted from existing Micro Channel architecture models, and changed only to support the new 60x bus style of the PowerPC.

"The development of the PowerPC is centered at an Austin, Texas, facility called the Somerset Design Center. The building is named after the site in Arthurian legend where warring forces put aside their swords, and members of the three teams that staff the building say the spirit that inspired the name has been a key factor in the project's success thus far."

"Part of the culture here is not to have an IBM or Motorola or Apple culture, but to have our own."

In 1994, Apple delivered its first alliance-based hardware platform, the PowerPC-based Power Macintosh line, on schedule as predicted by the original alliance contract. Infinite Loop considered the PowerPC to be five years too late to the overall market, "no more than a welcome offering to Apple's own market base", and further hamstrung by the legacy architecture of System 7.

Downturn
In 1995, IT journalist Don Tennant asked Bill Gates to reflect upon "what trend or development over the past 20 years had really caught him by surprise". Gates responded with what Tennant described as biting, deadpan sarcasm: "Kaleida and Taligent had less impact than we expected." Tennant believed the explanation to be that "Microsoft's worst nightmare is a conjoined Apple and IBM. No other single change in the dynamics of the IT industry could possibly do as much to emasculate Windows."

Efforts by Motorola and IBM to popularize PReP and CHRP failed when Apple, IBM, and Taligent all failed to provide a single comprehensive reference operating system for server and personal markets—mainly Taligent's OS or IBM's Workplace OS. Windows NT was the only OS with mainstream consumer recognition that had been ported to PowerPC, but there was virtually no market demand for it on this non-mainstream hardware. Although PowerPC was eventually supported by several Unix variants, Windows NT, and Workplace OS (in the form of OS/2), these operating systems generally ran just as well on commodity Intel-based hardware so there was little reason to use the PReP systems. The BeBox, designed to run BeOS, uses some PReP hardware but is overall incompatible with the standard. Kaleida Labs closed in 1995. Taligent was absorbed into IBM in 1998. Some CHRP machines shipped in 1997 and 1998 without widespread reception.

Relations between Apple and Motorola further deteriorated in 1998 with the return of Steve Jobs to Apple and his contentious termination of Power Macintosh clone licensing. Reportedly, a heated telephone conversation between Jobs and Motorola CEO Christopher Galvin resulted in the long-favored Apple being demoted to "just another customer", mainly for PowerPC CPUs. In retaliation, Apple and IBM briefly expelled Motorola from the AIM alliance, and forced Motorola to stop making PowerPC CPUs, leaving IBM to design and produce all future PowerPC chips. Motorola was reinstated into the alliance in 1999.

Legacy
The PowerPC is the clearest intended success that came out of the AIM alliance. From 1994 to 2006, Apple used PowerPC chips in almost every Macintosh. PowerPC also has had success in the embedded market, and in video game consoles: GameCube, Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.

After being reinstated into the AIM alliance, Motorola helped IBM to design some laptop PowerPC chips with IBM's manufacturing. In 2004, Motorola spun off its Semiconductor production as Freescale Semiconductor, and left the AIM alliance completely, leaving IBM and Apple in the alliance. Freescale continued to help IBM design PowerPC chips until Freescale was acquired and absorbed by NXP Semiconductors in 2015.

Apple transitioned entirely to Intel CPUs in 2006, due to eventual disappointment with the direction and performance of PowerPC development as of the G5 model, especially in the fast-growing laptop market. This was seen as the end of the AIM alliance as that left IBM as the sole user of PowerPC.

Taligent was launched from the original AIM alliance, based originally on Apple's Pink operating system. From Taligent came the CommonPoint application framework and many global contributions to internationalization and compilers, in the form of Java Development Kit 1.1, VisualAge C++, and the International Components for Unicode open source project.

Power.org was founded in 2004 by IBM and fifteen partners with intent to develop, enable, and promote Power Architecture technology, such as PowerPC, POWER, and software applications.

The OpenPOWER Foundation is a collaboration around Power ISA-based products initiated by IBM and announced as the "OpenPOWER Consortium" on August 6, 2013. It has more than 250 members. In 2019, IBM announced its open-sourcing of the Power ISA.

title: AIM alliance