Alájere Shrine / Ilé Alájere

Behind the three shrines for Ọbàtálá is the house of Alájere. ‘It was constructed sometime before the Ayé Dákun Yípadà building and it constitutes Susanne Wenger’s first experiment with very free personal forms. (…) The Alájere house is conceived as a living house for the god, in which Susanne Wenger may also live for periods of time.’ (The Return of the Gods, Ulli Beier, 1975, page 73)
As Susanne Wenger describes in the book by Paola Caboara Luzzatto (“Susanne Wenger, artista e sacerdotessa” (artist and priestess), 2009, page 165ff): ‘…. Alájere, a very ancient Yorùbá cult, which had almost disappeared in Nigeria, but stayed alive outside Nigeria.’
And ‘I had arrived at a crucial point in my life: either I would lose my identity, or I would create a new cult. Thus, I created a new cult, giving new shape to a very old cult: the cult of Alájere. (….) Alájere is a representation of Ṣànpọ̀nná. A bit like the Madonna for the Catholics: there is one Madonna, but there are many representations. If Ṣànpọ̀nná is “matter”, Alájere is “matter in movement’. If Ṣànpọ̀nná is earth containing fire, Alájere is fire himself. Alájere is eternally young, emotionally fragile, free and vulnerable, the eternal vagrant. He is tied to the earth by an umbilical cord, but raises his arms towards the sky, devoted to his task of offering Ọbàtálá the energy necessary to creation. I do not mean creation in a historical sense, but in a mythical sense: the “beginning” as the ongoing evolution of our own identity.’