ABOUT US

Elder Oloye "Baba" Ifa Karade is the founder and Chief Priest/Oba of Ile Tawo Lona: Temple of the Mystic Path dating back to 1991. He'd spent nearly a decade studying and traveling prior to the Temple's founding --to include his initiation into the ATR of the Ifa/Orisha Tradition in Ejibo, Nigeria, in July of 1991 and also 1992. The Temple remained vibrant for twenty-one years during which Baba initiated and assisted numerous persons into the faith with an emphasis on community building. During this epoch he sojourned to Brazil, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, The Netherlands, and throughout the US as presenter and lecturer. Prior, in 1977, he earned a scholarship via Rutgers University enabling him to sojourn to Kenya, France, and Great Britian with the Crossroads Global Foreign Exchange Agency.

He’s the renowned author of the groundbreaking go-to text The Handbook of Yoruba Religious Concepts (c) 1994, a guidebook filled with incredible amounts of information, and comparative truths on the Yoruba/Ifa/Orisha religion and spiritual practice. The Handbook has recently been named a Classic by the publisher, Red Wheel/Weiser, and is now available as an audiobook. This text, along with Baba’s other works, to include Ojise; Souls of Myrrh; Global Perspectives; and A Place of Nights: War and Resurrection, are readily available on Amazon and other online outlets. His texts have been on the bestselling list for this genre and have been utilized in colleges and other arenas of academic pursuits and ATR initiations. His teachings have reached far and wide into Africa, Australia, Europe, and Japan.

Oloye "Baba" Ifa Karade understands the importance of acquiring academic knowledge as part of one's spiritual growth in African Traditional Religious involvement. As a result, he’s devoted to teaching as an integral part of initiations and practices. He's been in contact with a number of prisons and halfway house facilities and has communicated with chaplains on behalf of inmates, and he has braided his works into the classes he teaches on the college and pre-college levels. Currently, he has turned his attention toward the forming of The Ifa Institute of Self-Development and Global Perspectives. The Institute has, as part of its Mission Statement, the dissemination of Ifa throughout our communities, schools, social media, and film. 

Oloye has spent over forty years in the Ifa/Orisha wisdom system and has lectured at various colleges (Temple University, Rutgers University, Essex County College, Denver Community College, Montclair University, New Jersey City University) and Orisha Conferences (San Francisco, U.S.; Trinidad, Caribbean) and other functions throughout the Diaspora (I-ACT in Seattle Washington, U.S.) He's been included in newspaper and magazine articles (New York Times, Washington Post). He's been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award and is referenced extensively in books and presentations. He has initiated a vast number of people and has influenced thousands, yet, as he proclaims, he's not finished yet. To note: He's also a decorated retired Secondary Teacher in the state of NJ and has been an English professor (post-retirement) for the past decade. He's also a professional percussionist having produced his own CD and works, still, with talented musicians. He also served in the military as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division from 1972-1975. He received his degree in Africana Studies/Liberal Arts from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ in 1981.

Oloye is currently working on his new publication, Reflections. The text is a comprehensive work that encourages the reader to respond as a participant in their personal/self-development. This work -- along with his others -- is required reading for members of the Institute specifically and those interested in Ifa/Orisha generally.