05/28/2025
Why hair is often shaved for Ifa Orisa initiation
Some people before initiation have questions about the hair being shaved or cut. They may be pressured by friends or family who don’t know or understand and bullied into not initiating due to fear of public opinion and western standards of beauty being tied to hair. Here are some of the main reasons behind hair cutting. For those who have undergone the process please share your experiences and beautiful images of yourself and or options for how you addressed it afterward.
1. Initiation to any orisa is a rebirth process. As such, it strips away worldly definitions of beauty, ego, and the external self. It is a process of returning to the inner self, one’s, spiritual source, the Ori.
2. Hair carries energy and personal history. Cutting it is a cleansing of past influences, ego, and worldly attachments. You are leaving behind the old self and being rebirthed into a spiritual identity.
3. The head (Ori) is the crown and center for your divine self. It is a source of power and consciousness. Shaving hair is returning the Ori to a neutral, clean state, allowing for the new spiritual power to emerge from it. It helps the initiate to become more spiritually receptive to connect better with Ori and receive divine messages, spiritual guidance, and wisdom.
4. A shaved head marks the person as having entered into sacred knowledge and the mark of initiation. It visually distinguishes them during the initiation period (igbeyawo or igbádùbo), showing they are undergoing a spiritual process and transformation. Wisdom traditions around the world utilize this same rite of passage. But for us, this is an ancestral connection to ancestral rites since ancient times. It is an invitation to be part of global ancient priesthoods that few have the opportunity to be a part of.
There are exceptions to this rule when divination or the Orisa indicates otherwise. Each person’s destiny and requirements are different. Some allow the hair to be kept. Some initiations may only call for a portion of the hair to be removed. But doing so has to be determined by divination, not desire or out of fear.
