Abstract: This is an inquest into the mythological belief in the use of words for healing in the institution of Lómi among the Oǹdó Yorùbá people of Southwestern Nigeria. Lómi’s praise names are his permanent titles. They are conferred on him by his birth dispensation. A collection of them chanted or recited together resembles a loosely constructed poem. It is believed that they contain life to be transpired into the child as a means of heath reinforcement. In addition to the fact that the word logotherapy was first used by Victor Frankl in his seminal work Man’s Search For Meaning(1946) to connote man’s primacy of will as that of “the will to meaning”, this paper considers logotherapy as a binomial of “logos” and “therapy” to establish the use of words to heal. This research will be interrogated by the literary theories of mimesis, mythology and psychoanalysis. We conclude by saying that beyond the linear importance of omi (water, HO), as matter in liquid form with two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, and as a universal solvent, in chemistry, the OǹdóYorùbá belief in the healing properties of omi and its correlating values as they are chanted and recited in poetic texts explains its non-linear significance among the Oǹdó Yorùbá and ancillary traditions.
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