Part 2

Ways of Knowing in Ifa?

 Chapter 5
What is Ifa?

Ọsa Otura says, “What is Truth?” I say “What is

Truth?” Ọrunmila says, “Truth is the Lord of Heaven
guiding the Earth.” Ọrunmila says, “Truth is the Unseen
One guiding the
Earth. The wisdom of Olodumare, he is using.”

Ọsa Otura says, “What is Truth?” I say, “What is

Truth?” Ọrunmila says, “Truth is the character [iwa] of
Olodumare. Truth is the word that cannot fall. Ifa is
Truth. Truth is the word that cannot spoil. Might
surpassing all. Blessing everlasting”
was the one who cast Ifa for Earth.
They said they should come and speak the
truth.

“Speak the truth, tell the facts;

Speak the truth, tell the facts;
Those who speak the truth are those whom the gods will
help.”
—oDu ỌSA-oTuRA

Yoruba ethics means: to become through

ritual, a being who knows more and
understands more, a person who lives more
and is more.
—UllI BeIeR

Of the thousands of different religious traditions of African

origin, those of the Yoru- ba-speaking peoples of
southwestern Nigeria, Benin, Togo, and the Atlantic
 diaspora have emerged as the most influential, and the
most studied. The sophistication, beauty, and power of
these traditions have impressed colonial explorers,
missionaries, scholars, and generations of adherents and
admirers on both sides of the Atlantic, ensuring their
survival and growth in the face of wars, enslavement, and
the increasingly competing claims of other religious
traditions and ways of life. Of all the various sacred
traditions of the Yoruba, Ifa has come to be regarded as
the most important and authoritative. So what is Ifa?

Like many terms in Yoruba religious discourse

(indeed in the Yoruba language itself), the term “Ifa” has
many meanings, and this polyvalence is of deep
metaphysical significance. First and foremost, the word
“Ifa” refers to the divinatory wisdom tradi- tion
associated with Ọrunmila, the oriṣa (or deity/prophet)
believed to have founded it. Second, “Ifa” refers to this
deity, who is revered by his followers as Ibikeji Olodu-
mare, “second only to Olodumare,” the transcendent,
Supreme Divinity who is also known as Ẹlẹda, the
Creator, and Ọlọrun, the Lord of Heaven.
Third, and perhaps most formally, “Ifa” is used to
refer to the religious tradition established by Ọrunmila.
The priests and leaders of the tradition of Ifa are known
as babalawo (literally, “father of secrets” or “master of
mysteries”)1 and must train for years to master this
multifaceted tradition. One of these facets, also known
as Ifa, is the vast oral corpus that babalawo (the term is
both plural and singular) spend their lives memorizing,
reciting, and contemplating.2 This living oral tradition is
organized into 256 Odu, or sections, each of which is
associated with a particular divinatory sign, and is said
to have at least 256 ẹsẹ or verses,3 which can
themselves be quite long. This vast body of orature is
regarded as the most authoritative source of traditional
Yoruba mythistory, ritual, and moral prescriptions, and
 serves as a treasury of proverbs, songs, stories,
wisdom, and philosophical meditations. Much of Yoruba
popular oral art and literature comes from the orature of
the Odu, and there is scarcely a deity, cultural practice,
town, or even plant or animal found in Yorubaland
whose myth of origin is not found in the ẹsẹ of Ifa.
But this vast orature is not the only facet of the Ifa
tradition, which also involves the knowledge and
performance of various rites, rituals, and sacrifices, and
a veritable phar- macopoeia of herbal medicine. These
other elements are often described, mentioned in, or
closely associated with particular ẹsẹ and are
sometimes also referred by the term “Ifa.” In the most
popular usage, however, “Ifa” refers to the system of
divination associated with this religious tradition and its
vast orature and bodies of knowledge. However, before
turning to Ifa divination, we must first discuss the
traditional Yoruba cosmology in which this tradition
functions.

YORubA RelIGIOn(S) AnD COSMOlOGy

Although particularly important, Ifa is but one tradition of

Yoruba spirituality.4 The traditions of sacred kingship;
the traditions of the oriṣa such as Ọbatala, Ogun, Ọṣun,
Ṣango, and Eṣu; the numerous secret societies such as
the Ogboni fraternity; as well as ancestral masquerade
societies (Egungun) and the numerous traditions of
local deities, all provide unique perspectives on this
world. Each tradition is like a planet in the religious
solar system of the Yoruba (and neighboring
ethnolinguistic groups and traditions). The view from
each of these traditions is different, but deeply intercon-
nected. What is central for one is peripheral for another;
what is terra firma for a priest of Ọbatala is but a star in
the firmament for a priest of Ọṣun or a babalawo.
 At the center of this spiritual universe is Olodumare,
the ineffable, transcen- dent deity, who is also
mysteriously immanent in aṣẹ, the divine force that
animates the cosmos.5 Olodumare is described as the
Ultimate Source (Orise), the Owner of Life/Spirit
(Ẹlẹmi), the Creator (Ẹlẹda) of everything in heaven and
earth. Seminal scholar of Yoruba religious traditions,
Bolaji Idowu, writes, “Yoruba theology empha- sises the
unique status of Olodumare. He is supreme over all on
earth and in heaven, acknowledged by all the divinities
as the Head to whom all authority belongs and all
allegiance is due His status of supremacy is absolute.
Things happen when
He approves, things do not come to pass if He
disapproves. In worship, the Yoruba holds Him
ultimately First and Last.”6 However, unlike the Supreme
Deity in Abra- hamic religions,7 Olodumare is not the
main focus of ritual worship or sacrifice. This role is
played by the oriṣa, who are described as creations of
Olodumare and have distinct personalities, histories,
functions, rituals, natural phenomena, and even days of
the week associated with their 8 worship. For example,
the oriṣa Ọṣun has been described as the goddess of
sweet waters, love, fertility, beauty and the arts, brass,
and honey (the latter two are frequently used in her
worship). Her tradition is closely connected with the
river identified with herand is centered in the towns of
Oṣogbo, home to many of her sacred groves through
which the river flows, and Ado-Ekiti, where the source
of the river is found. One myth tells us how, when
offended by the other deities, Ọṣun withdrew from the
earth, causing the rains to cease and leaving pregnant
women unable to deliver their children,9 thereby
demonstrating two of her many functions.
It is significant that the Yoruba apply the verb sin,
meaning to serve or worship,10 to Olodumare, but not
the verb bọ, meaning to offer sacrifice or venerate
through ritual offering. Both verbs are applied to the
oriṣa. The oriṣa have specialized priesthoods and
traditions of worshippers/followers, whereas Olodumare
has no specialized priest- hood and his cult is either
universal or nonexistent.
The major oriṣa, or those whose worship has
become widespread throughout vari- ous Yoruba cities
and the diaspora, include Ọbatala, the old, wise, gentle
archdeity of white cloth who fashions the bodies of
people; Eṣu, the mischievous and power- ful trickster
deity of the crossroads who delivers sacrifices to their
divine recipients and serves as a divine policeman and
messenger; Ogun, the powerful, hot-tempered, solitary
deity of iron, war, and justice; Ọṣun, the charming and
strong-willed goddess of wealth, beauty, magic, and the
river that bears her name; Ọrunmila, the wise and
patient god of Ifa divination and messenger of
Olodumare; Ọsanyin, the mysterious god of plants,
medicine, and magic; Olokun, the deity of riches, the
lagoon, and/or the deep sea; Ṣango, the fiery, proud
god of thunder, lightning, and retributive justice; and
Yemọja, the gentle, maternal goddess of the Ogun
River in Nigeria, the ocean, and its fish in the
Americas.11
Ulli Beier summarizes the perspective of Susanne
Wenger—the late, renowned Austrian-born artist,
longtime priestess of Ọbatala, and architect of the
sacred grove of Ọṣun in Oṣogbo—on the relationship
between Olodumare and the oriṣa:
Olodumare contains all the complexities of the world
within him. He is the egg from which the world
breaks out. As a creator, Olodumare is called Ẹlẹda
(ẹda = creature). With a gesture of creation
Olodumare splits himself up and becomes multiple
beings through his innumerable creatures.
 Olodumare in his pure form cannot be perceived by
the senses or understood by intelligence—that is
why he receives almost no direct worship and no
sacrifice. But as Ẹlẹda we can begin to understand
him. . . .
In Susanne Wenger’s vision, the orisha are part
representations of Olodu- mare. Each orisha is the
universe looked at from another angle. Olodumare is
the sum total of all the complexities, he is the
universe concentrated into one intelligence.
Susanne Wenger says that one could conceive God
as the force from which everything emerges—or
else one could see him as the coexistence of all the
complexities.12
Wenger herself writes, “Ọṣun can be described as the
goddess of the waters of life. As she is an Oriṣa she is
supernaturally intense, a metaphysical concentration of
a distinct force which also is contained not only in man
and in all that lives, in all that exists phys- ically, but
also in Olodumare, God himself.”13 Thus Ọbatala can
be understood as the god of creativity and as the
creativity of Olodumare; Ọṣun as the goddess of
bewitch- ing beauty and as Olodumare’s bewitching
beauty; Ọrunmila as the god of wisdom and as the
embodiment of the wisdom of God; Eṣu as the god of
transformation and communication as well as the
embodiment of the unpredictable transformative and
communicative power (aṣẹ) of the divine.
The oriṣa, however, are not just understood as
rarified divine powers, but are also believed to have
come down to the world and lived as human beings.
Moreover, the ranks of oriṣa are not closed, but can be
joined by exceptional human beings. In his seminal
essay on Ifa, Fela Sowande writes:
For the definition of Oriṣa we turn once more to . . .
Chief Ajanaku, Araba Eko, who defined Oriṣa as
 “Awọn ẹniti Ori ṣa da yatọ si awọn ẹlẹgbẹ rẹ iyoku,”
namely, “he whom Ori has created in a manner
different to that in which his contempo- raries have
been created.” Such a person has an added
something which makes him stand out among his
fellows We have the following Eji-Ogbe [the first
Odu of the Ifa corpus] stanza: “Ọrunmila said:
Human beings become Oriṣas! I responded: human
beings become Oriṣas. He said, Oduduwa, that you
hear so much of, he was a human being; because
he did good while on earth as a man, he was
remembered after his death and worshipped.
Ọrunmila said: Human beings become Oriṣas! I
responded: human beings become Oriṣas. He said,
Oriṣanla, for example, was a human being; but he
was wiser than his fellows, and did good while on
earth; therefore he was remembered and
worshipped after his death. There- fore human
beings become Oriṣas; only the wise ones are
worshipped. Human beings become Oriṣas.14

The Oriṣa in Comparative Perspective

The characters of these oriṣa and their relationship to

one another, and to people on earth, is chronicled in the
many myths, songs, dances, and rituals of their
traditions. The oriṣa, indeed Yoruba religion and
civilization as a whole, have been productively
compared to that of the ancient Greeks, and with good
reason. Both have diverse mythological and ritual
traditions, which vary significantly from one region to
the next, reflecting the diversity of the many culturally
distinct city-states that made up each civilization. Both
traditions are home to initiatic mystery cults,
priesthoods, and shrines/temples associated with
different gods, and in both traditions people commonly
worship multiple deities while usually having a
particularly strong affiliation with a particular god or
goddess. Both pantheons place some deities in heaven
(ọrun/Olym- pus) and others under the earth (ilẹ or ọrun
odo / chthon). Both sets of mythology are replete with
tales of the gods misbehaving and interacting with
mortals, as well as mortal and semi-divine heroes
becoming deified after death. Both pantheons have
inspired remarkable works of theater, sculpture, music,
dance, poetry, song, festivals, food, and crafts.
Despite these many and profound similarities, Greek
and Yoruba mythology have three fundamental
differences that are worth discussing. The Greek
pantheon contains no Supreme Deity like Olodumare;
the deeds of the Yoruba pantheon have only recently
begun to be set down in written form, whereas the
Greek gods have been bound to paper for millennia;
and, finally, the oriṣa are still actively worshipped and
sacrificed to by millions of people around the world,
while the Olympians, although revered in modern
literature, probably haven’t smelled a burnt offering in
over a thousand years (excluding certain recent
neo-pagan groups).
The significance of the first difference is seen in the
various quarrels between the divinities, as well as their
seeming flaws and faults. Although Zeus is the
arch-divin- ity of Mount Olympus, he, too, makes
mistakes and can be outwitted, overcome, or defied by
other deities. The Zeus of Homer or Hesiod is a far cry
from Olodumare; instead, he is more like a Ṣango with
the authority of Ọbatala, in that he can settle disputes
between other deities by virtue of his strength or
seniority, but he is decidedly one of them. As such,
Olympian feuds are settled, and mistakes are punished,
based on personal strength and cunning. The oriṣa, on
the other hand, are firmly under the dominion of
Olodumare, whose moral reign is as certain and natural
as physical law. The justice of Olodumare is
impersonal, and the punishment/redemptive penance a
natural result of the offense, whereas that of the
Olympians tends to be described in more personal
terms of offense.
Wọle Ṣoyinka notes, “Like the Yoruba deities, but to
a thousandfold degree, the Greek gods also commit
serious infractions against mortal well-being.
Punishments,
when they occur among the Olympians, take place only
when the offence happens to encroach on the mortal
preserves of another deity.”15 The Yoruba gods,
however, are generally held to the same natural laws of
justice that they enforce.16 In the Yoruba universe,
Olodumare’s moral dominion would have cut Socrates’s
dialogue with Euthy- phro rather short: the gods love
the good because it is good, because it is in
accordance with the nature of Olodumare, the supreme
arbiter of right and wrong.
The process of writing facilitated a standardization
and canonization of the Greek mythology. Dynamic,
different, and seemingly contradictory mythologies can
easily exist and are readily found in oral traditions,
which are often discretely conveyed via particular
speech events in particular contexts. Whereas in
writing, mythology becomes more fixed and less
dependent on context, making seeming contradictions
more appar- ent, and the need for their “resolution”
more pressing. The remarkable variation in the
mythology found in the works of Homer, Hesiod,
Aeschylus, and Plato is but a small snapshot of what
must have been an even more diverse and dynamic
body of oral Greek mythology. The diversity of Yoruba
mythology, as a tradition that is still evolving and
remains primarily oral, is much greater than can ever
 possibly be represented in our scholarly writings. The
canonization of mythical narratives in the strictly
memorized verses of Ifa is as close as the tradition
comes to an authoritative collection of myths, but even
the Ifa corpus is still a living and intentionally dynamic
body of orature. More- over, most babalawo memorize,
recite, and transmit mythological narratives of Ifa that
seem contradictory or variants of the same story without
much cognitive dissonance, in part due to the oral and
“performative” nature of the tradition.17
The living nature of the Yoruba mythological tradition
also makes it much more dynamic and diverse than the
remnants of the Greek mythological tradition that have
been preserved in writing. The myths about the oriṣa
are being told and retold, revised and reinvented every
day in Yoruba, Spanish, Portuguese, English, and other
languages. The mythology, conceptualization, and
worship of Yemọja in Brazil differs signifi- cantly from
that in Nigeria, and can even differ greatly from town to
town, or temple to temple, within one country. This
diversity is actually proof of the tradition’s vital- ity; only
dead trees produce no new branches. Moreover, for
practitioners, the oriṣa are still very much alive, acting in
the world and interacting with their devotees. When we
discuss oriṣa, it is important to remember that we are
describing living realities, not ancient, aestheticized
abstractions. These differences between Greek and
Yoruba mythology are important to keep in mind when
trying to understand the role that the oriṣa play in
traditional Yoruba religions.
The diasporic traditions, such as Santería (Cuba)
and Candomblé (Brazil), have often identified the oriṣa
with Catholic saints, and there are in fact many ritual
similar- ities.18 Catholic saints have an essentially
intercessory function, which is often eclipsed in their
veneration, just as happens with the oriṣa. Many
devotees have a particularly close relationship with one
saint while simultaneously venerating several others,
mirror- ing patterns of worship among the abọriṣa
(those who worship the oriṣa). The highly practical
nature of the veneration of Catholic saints also shares
much with that of the oriṣa. Miracles, which are required
for canonization, sustain the popularity of the cult of a
particular saint, which finds its parallel in the Yoruba
saying Oriṣa ta kẹ kẹ kẹ, ti o gbọ, ta gẹ gẹ gẹ, ti o gba,
oju popo ni ngbe, which roughly translates to “The oriṣa
that doesn’t hear you when you cry, or doesn’t help you
when you worship it, get rid of it!”19 The calendar of
Catholic saints include angels (Saint Michael, Saint
Gabriel), myth- ological heroes (Saint George the
Dragon Slayer), and exceptional spiritual men and
women, just like the pantheon of oriṣa. Those saints
who walked the earth become apotheosized into a
spiritual principle and function, guarding particular
regions and sectors of humanity, while maintaining a
distinct personality and human history, much like the
oriṣa.
Although the cults of Catholic saints bears a number
of ritual similarities to those of the oriṣa, they are
doctrinally quite distinct. The oriṣa occupy a central role
in worship, veneration, and salvation, more comparable
to that of Christ and the Virgin in the Catholic Church.
Moreover, the language used to describe the oriṣa
tends to be more mythological and less historical, more
symbolic and less factual, than the hagiographies of the
saints. Although both genres are more concerned with
describing spiritual arche- types and moral exemplars
than with prosaic facts, this feature is even more greatly
accentuated among the myths of oriṣa than with the
sanitized tales of the saints. The oriṣa lie, cheat, get
drunk, steal wives, beat people up, get jealous, and kill.
The saints never seem to behave like this, at least not
 after their conversion, and so the myths of the oriṣa
require a different kind of hermeneutic to understand
how such a seemingly rough-and-tumble crowd can
uphold and impose strict moral injunctions on their
followers.
The oriṣa can also be compared with the prophets of
the Abrahamic world, partic- ularly the esoteric Islamic
understanding of them as created spiritual realities
having a pretemporal existence.20 In many schools of
Sufism, the lives of the prophets are not confined to
their time on earth, as they occupy the heavenly
spheres above time and exert spiritual influence in the
world both before after their deaths. Similarly, the oriṣa
are simultaneously described as spiritual realities
dwelling in heaven or under the earth, and also as
earthbound people who experienced the vicissitudes of
human existence and traveled through familiar
landscapes, especially Ile-Ifẹ. The places associated
with the prophets and oriṣa are made special due to
their association and are frequently the sites of shrines
and pilgrimage (e.g., Jerusalem, Mount Sinai, Medina,
Mecca; Oṣogbo, Oke-Igẹti, Ile-Ifẹ). Like the oriṣa, the
prophets have distinct histories and personali- ties, and
they are associated with certain natural phenomena
(e.g., Moses with water, Abraham with fire, Solomon
with wind, David with iron).
But perhaps most significant, the prophets, like the
oriṣa, establish a particular way of life and mode of
sanctity that is closely imitated by their devotees, often
in minute detail. The devotees of oriṣa ritually reenact
their particular deity’s rites of passage, and take them
as moral and aesthetic exemplars in ordinary life, much
as pious Muslims do vis-à-vis the Prophet of Islam. Very
pious abọriṣa seldom make any major decision— or a
minor one for that matter—without consulting their oriṣa
through divination or by recalling a mythological
 precedent for the action. In fact, in both traditions, piety
and sanctity are each measured by the degree to which
one assimilates into the arche- type of the prophet or
the oriṣa. More than one babalawo explained that
“Ọrunmila is for us what Muḥammad is for Muslims,
what Jesus is for Christians—he is the messen- ger of
Olodumare,” and that “we are all just striving to be like
Ọrunmila—no one can ever be like him, but we are all
trying.”21
Furthermore, in certain schools of Sufism, each
saint is said to be “on the foot” of a particular prophet,
meaning that he manifests the same kind of sanctity
and wisdom as that particular prophet. For example,
some saints, like al-Ḥallāj, are said to be ʿIsawī or
Christ-like, tend to be inward-focused and ascetic, and
are often persecuted or martyred. Likewise, among the
Yoruba, every person is said to have an oriṣa who
“owns his or her head,” meaning that the he or she
manifests the characteristics of that particular divinity,
who governs his or her destiny. Unlike the oriṣa,
however, the prophets are not worshipped directly or
sacrificed to; however, the veneration of Christ in Chris-
tianity and the invocation of blessings and praises on
the Prophet of Islam in prayers and poems bear close
resemblance to similar practices among the devotes of
the oriṣa. Esoteric Islamic traditions, particularly the
school associated with Ibn ʿArabi, share another
particularly fascinating feature with Yoruba religion, one
that has caused a great deal of confusion for scholars
of both traditions. The Yoruba proverb Bi o s’eni- yan,
imale o si, or “If not for people, the gods would not be,”
reflects an important aspect of the Yoruba worshipper’s
relationship with the oriṣa. It is widely assumed, and
often explicitly stated, that the oriṣa depend on
humanity for their existence. In some ritu- als,
worshippers even threaten the oriṣa that if they do not
 answer their prayers, they will go worship another deity
and the oriṣa will be left without devotees.22 However,
Yoruba mythology, particularly that of Ifa, describes the
deities as being temporally and ontologically prior (in
myth, it amounts to the same thing) to human beings,
and much
more powerful than them. Given this fact, how are
the oriṣa dependent on people?
Wọle Ṣoyinka sees this as a kind of humanist strain
within traditional Yoruba thought,23 but this seems a bit
of a stretch in the ritual, mythical, and even historical
context. I believe Karin Barber comes closer to the
mark in her explanation of this as a West African
version of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic (the clients or
followers of a “Big Man” or patron derive their status
from him, but he, in turn derives his status from them,
because without followers he would not be a “Big Man”)
applied to relationships with the oriṣa.24 However,
Barber is careful to explain that this attitude is not one
of skepti- cism, and that to the Yoruba, the oriṣa really
are existing, powerful deities, just as the popular,
human “Big Men” and their power are real. She also
points out that this rela- tionship of mutual dependence,
or the not-so-secret “secret” that man makes the gods,
does not apply to Olodumare. Citing examples from
neighboring ethnic groups whose social structures
mirror the structure of their worship, she argues that
these social rela- tionships serve as the model for
relationships with the deities.25 She concludes, “The
Yoruba conviction that the òrìṣà need human attention
in no way questions the exis- tence of spiritual beings
as a category It is rather because of the element of
choice in the system, the survival in the human
community of any òrìṣà depends on human
collaboration.”26 The oriṣa and humanity exist in a
relationship of mutual dependence, and although
Olodumare remains independent, the forms in which
people chose to worship and relate to the Supreme
Deity are many and “made by human hands.”
Similarly, in the Islamic context, Ibn ʿArabi explains
that there can be no lord (rabb) without a vassal, or one
who is lorded over (marbūb), and that there can be no
divin- ity (ilāh) without something for whom it is a
divinity (maʾlūh), so that without the creation over which
he is lord, God could not be God. However, mirroring
the Yoruba exception of Olodumare to this rule of
reciprocity, Ibn ʿArabi insists that God’s unknow- able
Essence remains independent of all relationships. The
Andalusian mystic further explains that all objects of
worship are actually “gods created in belief,” writing,
“No individual can escape having a belief concerning
his Lord. Through it he resorts to Him and seeks Him
No believer believes in any God other than what he has
made
in himself, for the God of beliefs is made. The believers
see nothing but themselves and what they have made
within themselves.”27 In a poem whose sentiments and
meta- phors would not seem too out of place in a
Yoruba context, Ibn ʿArabi summarizes this perspective:
We are His food
since He feeds upon our existence,
just as He is the food of created things, without doubt.
He preserves us in creation
and we preserve the fact that He is a god.28
This concept of the mutual interdependence of man
and gods also find a home in the vast universe of
Hinduism, whose pantheon bears some resemblance to
that of the Yoruba, not least of all in its dizzying diversity
and regional variance. The intense personal devotion
that Hindu deities receive at shrines in households,
workplaces, and markets, as well as the elaborate
rituals of sacrifice and festivals conducted in their honor,
bear a strong resemblance to practices among the
Yoruba. The phenomenon of possession by deities,
which forms an important part of the worship and
spiritual prac- tice of many of the oriṣa (but not that of
Ọrunmila) also finds parallels in the vast world of Hindu
practice, unlike in most Abrahamic traditions. The
notion of the “avatar”—a particular divine descent or
incarnation—is also a familiar one to the world of oriṣa,
each of whom has multiple stories of birth and ascent
into heaven or disappearance into the earth. This, or a
similar notion, seems to be implicit in the many
variations in name, myth, and ritual practice for what is
considered to be a single deity. For exam- ple, Oriṣa
Funfun, Oriṣanla, and Ọbatala all have distinct but
similar myths and rites associated with them, but are
often understood to be the same deity. Barber recounts
several examples of this phenomenon, including a myth
in which Ogun and his wife Ọya (a powerful female
oriṣa) fought, breaking each other into pieces (seven
and nine, respectively), each of which inspired a distinct
cult of the god or goddess.29 The diasporic concept of
different “roads”(caminos in Spanish) or “aspects”
(qualidades in Portuguese) or incarnations of a given
oriṣa is even closer to the notion of an avatar.
The close connection and even identification of
Hindu deities with natural phenomena and
features—such as the Himalayas, the Ganges River,
and natural rock formations—finds close parallels in the
Yoruba world. The natural or “discovered” shrines of
Hinduism both look and are used in a manner very
similar to the shrines of the oriṣa. While it is difficult to
make generalizations about either tradition, both seem
to emphasize the worship of one particular deity,30
which becomes a window onto Absolute Divinity, and
consequently shares many appellations with the
Supreme Divinity. For example, the babalawo refer to
 Ọrunmila by many praise names shared with
Olodumare, such as Ọbarisa, “The King of the Oriṣa”;
Ọlọjọ-oni, “The Owner of Today”; and Ar’inu r’ode,
Olumọ ọkan, “He who sees inside and outside, the
Knower of hearts.”
However, the Yoruba tradition differs from the Hindu
in that the oriṣa, by and large, remain distinct from and
subordinate to Olodumare, whereas for their devo- tees,
Shiva and Vishnu tend to be none other than the
Absolute itself. In the Yoruba setting, the relationship
between the devotee, the oriṣa, and Olodumare is
summa- rized in the following saying: “People praise the
babalawo, the babalawo praises Ifa [the oriṣa
Ọrunmila], Ifa praises Olodumare.”31 Thus Beier
concludes:
The relationship between the Yoruba and his orisha
is essentially different from the relationship of a
Christian worshipper to his God. The Christian
demand for “faith” in God has no meaning in terms
of Yoruba religion. A Yoruba never says “I believe”
[mo gbagbọ] in orisha. One can believe or disbelieve
another man’s story or excuse. But in a religious
context, the word cannot be used. . . .
The relationship between a Yoruba and his
orisha is expressed in the complex, multivalent verb
li or ni that is contained in the word olorisha.
Olorisha is usually translated into English with the
approximation “orisha worshipper,” but strictly
speaking it could mean “One who has orisha,” “One
who is orisha,” or “One who makes orisha.”
To have orisha expresses the simplest and most
obvious relationship. Most people have simply
inherited their orisha, and a failure to serve him
would result in dangerous disorder, the symptoms of
which could be disease or death in the family, failure
in business and so on. These misfortunes are not
punishments because the orisha is angry. But the
neglect of the orisha has put things out of joint, and
life cannot function again properly unless the right
relationship is reestablished.
To be orisha is an equally correct translation of
the word olorisha. The worship- per offers his body
as a vehicle to orisha, he allows the orisha “to mount
his head,” to ride him, and he strives to become, for
brief moments, the personification of the orisha.
Only few and very powerful priests could really
represent the orisha all the time. But every olorisha
must become the orisha some time.
To make orisha is an expression that signifies the
interdependency between orisha and worshipper.
The orisha cannot exist for man without the olorisha
through whom he can manifest himself. He must be
strengthened through the ritual activ- ities of the
olorishas. In the praise names of Ogun this is very
poetically expressed:
Does the woman who spins
ever reject a spindle? Does
the woman who dyes ever
reject a cloth?
Does the eye that sees ever reject a sight?

The function of ritual is partly to increase the

orisha, to make him more orisha. The more his force
is built up, the more strength he can return to the
community of worshippers. The simplest and most
common way of strengthening the orisha is to
pronounce [ki] him. The verb ki means to greet, to
call, perhaps to evoke [or invoke]. Oriki are the
poetic formulae with which the orisha is being
addressed, greeted, identified, strengthened A
dialogue must take place every day through the
medium of divination.32
As the oriṣa and owner of the most elaborate and
trusted system of divination (Ifa) that contains oriki for
nearly every member of the vast Yoruba cosmos,
Ọrunmila and his followers (the babalawo) are the
models par excellence of this intimate, dynamic
relationship between devotee, oriṣa, and the
transcendent divinity of Olodumare.

“Theology” and Symbolism in Yoruba Religion

Further evidence of this telescoping model of divinity is

found in the etymology of the term “oriṣa” favored by
Idowu in his seminal work, Olodumare, The Concept of
God in Yoruba Belief. He writes:

I am very inclined to the view that the name Oriṣa is

a corruption of an original name Oriṣẹ
(Ori-ṣẹ)—“Head-Source” an ellipsis of
Ibiti-ori-ti-ṣẹ—“The Origin or
Source of Ori [head/essence].” Now what is this
Origin, or “Head-Source”? It is the Deity Himself, the
Great Ori from whom all ori derive, inasmuch as he
is the Source and Giver of each of them. In Yoruba,
the name Oriṣẹ (the original form), then refers to
Olodumare. This is borne out by the fact that the
name Oriṣa is applied to Him in some parts of
Yorubaland……The original Oriṣẹ is His common
name
in Ọwọ and among the Itsekiri and the Western Ijaw Thus
the divinities would be small oriṣẹ, taking their name as their
origin from Oriṣẹ, Olodumare Himself.33

In this view, the oriṣa derive their name, as well as their

divinity, from Olodumare.
 Another mythical etymology of the name “oriṣa”
reveals one more aspect of their divinity and
relationship to one another and Olodumare. According
to the myth,34 Olodumare sent Ọrunmila and Oriṣa, the
original arch-deity, into the world to keep it running
smoothly. One day, Oriṣa bought a slave at the market
named Atọwọda (or Atunda, in some other versions),
who served him well. Atọwọda asked his master for a
piece of land to farm on his own, and Oriṣa agreed,
giving him some land on a hill. Atọwọda began to till his
land, digging up the large rocks that were buried there.
However, Atọwọda harbored the desire to murder his
master, and one day, while Oriṣa was walking by the
bottom of the hill, he seized his chance. He rolled a
huge boul- der down the hill at his master, who was
subsequently smashed to bits and scattered to the four
winds. Ọrunmila came along looking for his friend,
surveyed the scene of the disaster, and began traveling
all around, collecting the pieces of Oriṣa, which he
gathered in a calabash. He deposited some of these at
the spot of the accident, and distributed the rest
throughout the world, each piece becoming a different
oriṣa, and each place where it fell, a center of worship
for that divinity. The name “Oriṣa” is then derived from
the phrase Ohun-ti-a-ri-ṣa, “the thing that was found
and scattered.” The deity formed at the spot of the
accident was called Oriṣanla, “the great or arch-deity.”
The other scattered pieces of him, the other oriṣa, are
considered his “children.”
Another version of the myth begins with a universe
peopled only by the single divinity, Oriṣa, and his slave,
Atunda. Again, Atunda rolls a boulder on top of his
master, smashing him into 401, or 601, or 1,001 pieces
that became the pantheon of the Oriṣa and all the other
living things on earth. Idowu interprets these myths as
symbolizing the necessary fragmentation that occurs
when the human mind (symbolized by Atunda) tries to
conceptualize, understand, or mentally encompass or
master the awesome unity of the Divine. Ever the ritual
dramatist, Ṣoyinka interprets the myth as the origin of
the gods’ unrest and incompleteness, which fuels their
epic and tragic labors. In both interpretations, divinity is
derived from a single, unified source, and this
fundamental unity of all divinity, and all life, is
emphasized.
Traditional sources vary in their enumeration of the
oriṣa:35 some count 1,700; the numbers 400 and 200
(and their sum, 600) are also common; as are 401 and
201. All of these are symbolic numbers indicating the
indefinite and unlimited number of divinities. In fact,
anything can become an oriṣa.36 In the traditional
Yoruba cosmos, the supernatural is not separate from
the natural (this distinction does not really exist in
Yoruba), and the physical world is inextricably linked
and identified with the meta- physical, which is nearly
always symbolized by elements of common experience.
Wọle Ṣoyinka points out that the language of Yoruba
symbolism is not one of ethereal stars and planets, but
rather “the imagery of peat, chalk, oil, kernels, blood,
heartwood and tuber, and active metaphors of human
social preoccupations.”37
The traditional Yoruba worldview is centered around
human experience and is markedly intuitive. The
experience of sky’s all-encompassing transcendence is
a natu- ral symbol for Ọlọrun (“the owner of heaven,”
another name for Olodumare), who is described as “He
Whose Being spreads out over the whole world, the
Owner of the mat that is never rolled up.” In fact, the
sky is called Oju Ọlọrun, “the face/eyes of Ọlọrun,” and
when it brightens, people say Ọlọrun nṣẹju, “Ọlọrun is
winking.”38 Feel- ings, emotions, and the unseen
aspects of human experience are described as being
“inside” (inu) where they are felt. After people die, they
are buried in the earth, and thus the depths of the earth
are also a natural symbol for the unseen realm of the
dead and other invisible beings. The vault of the sky,
the “inside” of the body/self, and the earth’s recesses
are three convergent symbols of the unseen in the
Yoruba cosmos.
Thus the traditional Yoruba worldview is highly
symbolic, in the sense that nearly everything is, or can
become, a symbol for (or identified with) a metaphysical
or spiri- tual reality. As one babalawo explained to me,
“Everything has an inu [an inner, hidden dimension],
and the inu of a thing is its heavenly or spiritual self.”39
According to this worldview, a tree is not just a physical
tree, but is also a spirit or an abode of spirits,
symbolizing or embodying certain spiritual realities. Or
rather, the tree is the spirit, and the spirit, the tree.
These symbolic relationships are enshrined and
expressed in religious orature such as myths, the
verses of Ifa, or the hunter’s chants known as Ijala; and
in rituals, which are often connected to these myths and
verses. As Ṣoyinka writes, “Ijala celebrates not only the
deity but animal and plant life, seeks to capture the
essence and relationships of growing things and the
insights of man into the secrets of the universe.”40
This rich symbolic web interweaves the physical and
the spiritual, and connects its various elements in a
particular but dynamic pattern. This pattern is the
source of the logic of ritual. For example, each oriṣa
has his or her favorite “foods” or sacrifices that are
symbolically and mythologically connected to the
character of that particular oriṣa.
Anyone with a passing familiarity with the music and
mythology of Ọṣun, the lovely oriṣa of sweet waters and
fertility, can immediately see why honey is used to
 worship her. Ọṣun is like honey: sweet, golden, and
strong. Or rather, honey simply is Ọṣun. Likewise, iron
isn’t just a symbol or manifestation of Ogun—it is Ogun.
Numerous rituals, myths, and songs connect and
identify Ogun and iron and Ọṣun and honey,
making these intuitive connections official and
explicit.
It is not unlike the connections we intuitively draw
between moods, colors, friends, characters in movies,
and so forth. The oriṣa represent a particularly
fundamental set of these archetypes, and the more one
becomes familiar with their embodiments in myth,
music, dance, sculpture, sacrifices, and devotees, the
easier it becomes to recog- nize their manifestations in
the natural world, other people, and oneself.
The Ifa corpus describes these connections with and
between the oriṣa (and the other inhabitants of the
Yoruba cosmos) as interpersonal relationships, and
thus baba- lawo and devotees of other oriṣa inhabit a
complex web of relationships within which they
constantly interact with the oriṣa in their various forms
of manifestation. This web of relationships is
remarkably dynamic and adaptable. For example,
Ogun, the strong, trailblazing deity of iron and war is
experienced in and identified with cars, trucks, and
trains; while Ṣango, who was traditionally associated
with lightning, became the demi- urge of the new
phenomenon of electricity.
However, it is important to note that although new
myths and rituals emerge all the time, and old ones are
constantly being reformulated, these symbols, myths,
and rituals are not considered mere creative inventions
of a literary or performative imag- ination. Rather, their
significance lies in the fact that they reveal, rather than
invent, the “deep” or hidden connections between the
inhabitants of the densely populated Yoruba cosmos.41
 Ultimately, everything in the world is a creation of
Olodumare and reveals or mani- fests something of the
deity; in Yoruba terms, everything has its aṣẹ.42
Moreover, nearly everything one would encounter in
Yorubaland (and by extension, many things that one
would not) has a symbolic, and therefore mythical, and
therefore ritual connection with various Oriṣa and other
spiritual beings and forces. Although everything has the
potential to be worshipped, to become an oriṣa, not
everything is actually worshipped at once, in the same
way, otherwise there would be no pattern or structure.
As a verse of Ifa from Odu Ogbe Okanran says, “Not
every palm nut drinks blood like ikin [the palm nuts used
in Ifa divination that symbolize Ọrunmila and are
therefore worshipped with sacrifices].”
All of this is strikingly similar to historian of religion
Mircea Eliade’s description of hierophanies—that is,
places, people, objects, performances, or things that
manifest the “Sacred” in the “profane,” or ordinary,
world. He writes, “The dialectic of hieroph- any implies a
more or less clear choice, a singling-out. A thing
becomes sacred in so far as it embodies (that is,
reveals) something other than [merely] itself.”43 Thus,
each hierophany is described as a “paradoxical
coming-together of being and non-being, absolute and
relative, the eternal and the becoming.”44 This seems an
apt characteriza- tion of the Yoruba religious world in
which anything can become an oriṣa at any time, but
not everything all at once, in the same way. Unlike
Eliade’s account however, the Yoruba cosmos is not
divided into domains of “sacred” and “profane”;
everything is sacred, everything has its aṣẹ, but some
things have a more intense aṣẹ. Typically these alaṣẹ
(possessors of aṣẹ and authority) are associated with
an oriṣa, verse of Ifa, or myth because to become part
of a myth or an oriṣa is to participate in eternal mythi-
cal time, in the sacred, and it is these myths and
associated rituals that give everyday objects—like palm
nuts, termite dust, honey, and chalk—their profound
meanings. From one perspective, it is what these
“everyday objects” really are. Eliade explains that
hierophanies such as these “acquire their reality, their
identity, only to the extent of their participation in a
transcendent reality.”45 In the Yoruba cosmos, this
participa- tion is mediated by ritual and myth.
Because ritual myth is what gives things their
meaning, it is important to separate the latter word from
the connotation of falsehood that it has accrued over
the years in English (as in “that’s just a myth”). In
traditional Yoruba worldviews, and for Eliade, myth has
the exact opposite connotation. From these
perspectives, the mythical (or ritual) truth is the only one
that matters, that gives things meaning. Comparing an
actual historical event (the tragic death of a young
Romanian man on the eve of his wedding) with the
myth that quickly grew up around it, Eliade writes, “It
was the myth that told the truth: the real story was
already only a falsification. Besides, was not the myth
truer by the fact that it made the real story yield a
deeper and richer meaning, revealing a tragic
destiny?”46 “The myth” is more true and of greater
consequence than “the fact” because it deals with truths
of a loftier nature, those truths that give meaning and
structure to the world. Without these mythical truths,
facts would be completely meaningless.47 The myths
and their associated rituals of the Yoruba world bind its
vari- ous elements together, giving them order,
meaning, and significance.
This is why Ifa—the tradition that, more than any
other, gives discursive structure to these structuring
myths—is so important in the Yoruba universe.48 Eliade
writes, “In such a perspective this is not a closed
 Universe, no object exists for itself in isolation;
everything is held together by a compact system of
correspondences and likenesses.”49 Ifa might very well
be described as this “compact system of
correspondences and like- ness” that holds everything
together. Since Ifa is regarded as the wisdom and
expressed will of Olodumare, devotees of other oriṣa
(and many Christians and Muslims as well) come to
consult babalawo. Ifa is understood to speak for all
oriṣa, and its indefinite number of verses, to contain the
myths of origin and relationships between the indef-
inite number of oriṣa.
The organization of the vast pantheon described in
Ifa is often depicted in the orientation shown in figure 3.
In figure 3, Olodumare stands above and beyond
good (represented by the right side) and evil
(represented by the left side), encompassing
everything. The structure

FIGURe 3 Diagram of the Yoruba cosmos

of this schema comes (among other sources) from the

following popular invocation, variants of which are often
heard at the start of rituals such as sacrifice or
divination:
 Iba
irunmal
ẹ
ojukọtu
n Iba
igbama
lẹ
ojukosi
Iba ọta-le-n-irun Irunmalẹ
Ti o ja atari ọna ọrun gbangba50

Praise to the 400 divinities of the right

hand (the “benevolent”) Praise to the
200 divinities of the left hand (the
“malevolent”) Praise to the 460 divinities
Who line the very road of heaven

The major oriṣa are usually considered benevolent

forces51 and ministers of Olodu- mare who, however,
can punish and harm those guilty of ritual and moral
transgressions. Gentle, patient Ọbatala will punish his
devotees for drinking alcohol; Ọrunmila, although
patient and understanding, can punish his devotees
who disregard his taboos by lying or committing
adultery; Ogun is swift to punish liars and
oath-breakers, as is Ṣango, but of no oriṣa is this more
true than Eṣu. Eṣu is simultaneously a mischie- vous
trickster and a strict enforcer of the will of Olodumare
and the law of sacrifice. Whenever a sacrifice is offered,
it is Eṣu who takes the sacrifice to the intended recip-
ient—thus the saying Ẹni o rubo l’Eṣu gbe, “Eṣu
supports the one who sacrifices.”52 However, if a
sacrifice is not made, or is not done correctly, Eṣu will
side with the ajogun (the malevolent powers on the left
side of the diagram) and wreak all kinds of havoc on the
offending party. Eṣu also punishes the other oriṣa for
their refusal to sacrifice, for their hubris, and sometimes
just for fun.
“No respecter of persons,” Eṣu is a notoriously
ambivalent figure and is only consis- tently allied with
Ọrunmila, the god who prescribes sacrifices (and even
this god of wisdom suffers Eṣu’s wrath on occasion),
and of course Olodumare. For this reason, he is placed
neither on the left nor on the right, but in the middle.53
Eṣu is both good and evil, a reflection, on a lower plane,
of Olodumare’s transcendence of both good and evil.
The chaos that Eṣu is so fond of creating is a shadow of
the undifferentiated “chaos” of Olodumare’s
transcendence of all categories and divisions.
Turning to the left side of the diagram, we find the
ajogun, who are the calamitous spirits and enemies of
humankind. They are legion, and led by eight
warlords:54 Iku (Death), Arun (Disease), Ofo (Loss),
Ẹgba (Paralysis), Ọran (Trouble), Epe (Curse), Ẹwọn
(Imprisonment), Eṣe (Affiiction). The ajogun are
opposed and held at bay by the oriṣa and other
benevolent spiritual forces with whom man can ally
himself through sacrifice and good conduct/character.
The ajẹ, often euphemistically called ara aye or iya mi
(literally, “the people of the world” or “my mothers”), are
sometimes added to the list of ajogun, but I believe this
is not correct. Ajẹ is often translated as “witch,” but as
numerous studies55 and my own conversations with
babalawo have demonstrated, the English word “witch”
does not map well onto the Yoruba concept of ajẹ,
unless the original Old Germanic meaning56 of “one
possessing special knowledge or uncommon skill” is
intended. Despite their name and this unfortunate
translation, the iya mi or ajẹ are not exclusively female,
 and one babalawo I interviewed even told me that they
are mostly male.57 In short, the ajẹ are people of
exceptional spiritual power who have the ability to curse
or bless those around them, and they can be propitiated
by certain sacrificial rituals.
The Yoruba cosmos is also home to various tree,
river, rock, and nature spirits, as well as a host of other
sprites, spirits, and ghosts who range from the helpful to
the mischievous to the downright wicked. Although
seldom the object of worship or vener- ation (with
certain important exceptions), certain sacrificial rites are
used to elicit their support, bind or block them, or avoid
them altogether.
The ancestral collective known as Egungun receive
sacrifice and are venerated, and are sometimes
included in the pantheon of oriṣa. The cult of Egungun
is virtually all male,58 as is the related cult of Oro, but
both men and women can, and are expected to, make
offerings to this ancestral collective. Usually one’s
deceased parents and/or grandparents are worshipped
individually, with more distant ancestors being absorbed
into the collective Egungun. However, not every dead
person becomes an ancestor. Only those who reach
adulthood, die a “good” death, receive a proper burial,
and are known for good character qualify for this
veneration. As one babalawo explained to me, “Only
people who have completed the task for which
Olodumare sent them into the world are worshipped
after death. We don’t sacrifice to [or] worship those who
die in childhood or wicked people.”59 The Egungun
occupy their own realm, which is sometimes described
as the “heaven below” (ọrun-odo)60 and other times as
the world of the unborn and the “heaven above” (ọrun)
of the oriṣa and Olodumare. In the time of myth, these
domains and the “land of the living” were traversed by
all with relative ease, and something of this porous
nature remains today. 61
The transition from the realm of the unborn, or
heaven (ọrun), into the world (aye), is one of the main
themes of Yoruba mythology. The things people and the
oriṣa do in heaven and on their way down to the world
are of the utmost consequence. It was on his way down
to earth that Ọbatala got drunk and fell asleep, denying
him the honor of being the first king on earth, and
causing his lifelong abstinence from alcohol. It was on
the way down from heaven that Ọrunmila acquired the
“calabash of wisdom,” and his important position in the
pantheon.62 But perhaps no myths illustrate the impor-
tance of heaven more than those surrounding ori, the
head.
The term ori is used to refer both to a person’s
physical or “outer” head (ori ode) and his “inner head”
(ori inu). The latter is one of the most important
elements of the Yoruba cosmos and of the traditional
Yoruba conception of personhood. The ori inu is at once
one’s destiny, fate, guardian angel, personal divinity,
and source. It is one’s ori, more than anything else, that
determines one’s outcome in life. As the myths of the
Ifa corpus tell us, each person chooses an ori in
heaven. Some are good and lead to long life and
prosperity, while others end in ruin. In one variant of the
myth, on the way out of heaven, each person stands at
the “Tree of Forgetfulness,” Igi Igbagbe,63 and declares
the fate he has chosen for himself. But after passing
under its branches, and descending into the world, all
recollection of one’s fate is lost. In all versions of the
myth, Ọrunmila alone witnesses the choice of ori and is
thus called ẹlẹri ipin, “witness of the choice [of destiny].”
For this reason, Ọrunmila can be consulted through
divi- nation to determine the content or wishes of one’s
ori. In fact, Abimbola writes, “It is important for every
individual to consult Ifa from time to time to find out the
true path of one’s destiny. By consulting Ifa, one is
merely trying to find out what has been kept in store by
one’s ori. Divination is therefore regarded as the
communication of the wishes of one’s ori to Ifa, who will
then reveal this to the client through the appro- priate
chapter and verse of the Odu system.”64
As another babalawo explained, “Everyone, even the
oriṣa, have an ori; it is only Olodumare who does not,
because He is the original source of all ori.”65 As
witness of the choice of ori, Ọrunmila stands in a unique
position to advise all of the other deities, as well as
human beings. The myths of Ifa recount that he was the
first creation of Olodumare, and as such, has eternal
knowledge of all that was and is and is to come. He
declares the will of Olodumare to man and god alike,
and serves as the mouthpiece of the other oriṣa. Since
leaving the world, Ọrunmila speaks through Ifa
divination, one of—if not the—main mode of
communication between humankind, the oriṣa, and
Olodumare, and between heaven and earth.
Babalawo often cite the proverb Aye l’ọja, ọrun n’ile,
or “The world is a market, heaven is home,”66 to explain
the relationship between life in the world and that in
heaven. The world, or aye, has a somewhat ambivalent
nature: it is the stage of action, of life, of enjoyment, but
it is also a place of death, decay, trouble, and torment.
However, as bad as life in this world may get, it is better
than life in ọrun apadi, “the heaven of broken pot
shards,” where the wicked go after death.67 However,
ọrun, or the realm of the ancestors, seems to be a
pleasant place, although many verses of Ifa, as well as
ritu- als and popular belief, point to the desirable
possibility of return to the world from this realm, through
reincarnation as a child of one’s descendants.68
Heaven (ọrun) and earth (ilẹ) are frequently depicted
as two half-sphere cala- bashes, with that of heaven
lying on top of that of the earth, with the world (aye)69
serving as the plane where the two halves meet. As
Margaret Thompson Drewal explains, “The Yoruba
conceive of the cosmos as consisting of two distinct yet
insep- arable realms—aye (the visible, tangible world of
the living) and ọrun (the invisible, spiritual realms of the
ancestors, gods, and spirits). Such a cosmic conception
is visu- alized either as a spherical gourd [calabash],
whose upper and lower hemispheres fit tightly together,
or as a divination tray with a raised figurated border
enclosing a flat central surface.”70
Like the cosmos, human beings are similarly
symbolized by calabashes, which are also used to
house or “enthrone” the physical presences of oriṣa
(such as the sacred palm nuts of Ọrunmila) in homes
and temples. As one babalawo explained, “Man is a
small world, everything in the world, all the powers of
the world exist inside him”71— so people are
understood to contain or carry the presence of the oriṣa
and the inner realities of the myriad things of the world
within themselves, just as calabashes contain the
physical presence of the oriṣa. This explains the
symbolic imagery of the posthu- mous abode of the
wicked, ọrun apadi, “the heaven of broken pot
shards”—the place of those fragmented and fractured
souls who have fallen beneath the human state. In
several verses of Odu Ofun-Ọsa, the broken or cracked
calabash also serves as a symbol of the world or life
gone awry, which only Ifa can repair, restoring the
cosmos, and the individual human, to order and
wholeness.72 Between the two halves of the cosmic
calabash, the drama and mystery of life and death, both
human and divine, unfolds according to the will of
Olodumare, under the knowing gaze of Ọrunmila. The
total- ity of this cosmic drama is summarized and
encoded in the 256 Odu of Ifa divination.
IfA DIVInATIOn

The historian of religion Joachim Wach described

divination as the “exploration and interpretation of the
will of the Godhead . . . done in the spirit of devotion
and submis- sion rather than coercion and
manipulation.”73 This definition certainly applies to Ifa
divination, with the qualification that the submission is
not a passive process, but is nearly always active,
requiring deep contemplation and interpretation, the
performance of specified rituals, and/or changes in
behavior.
Ifa divination is based on the production of 256
divinatory signatures (one for each of the 256 Odu)
through a few ritual processes. The basic structure of
Ifa divination is relatively simple, and it is shared by a
number of divinatory systems in West Africa and around
the world.74 The client or seeker presents his or her
question or problem in a ritualized manner to the
instruments of divination, not the diviner.75 After
performing an invocation, the diviner manipulates the
instruments of divination in a semi-random manner to
produce a divinatory signature or sign that corresponds
to a specific body of orature. Then further divination is
done to determine a particular verse or narrative among
those associated with this signature. These verses are
then recited and inter- preted for the seeker, often
diagnosing the seeker’s issue and advising a specific
course of action (most commonly a sacrifice). Then the
seeker confirms or rejects the diagno- sis of the
divination (which can be further clarified through
additional divination) and either performs the prescribed
ritual actions or does not.

Ifa divination is usually performed either with sixteen

 palm nuts, known as ikin, or with a chain called an
ọpẹlẹ, which is made of a metal or cotton chain or
thread link- ing eight shells of the fruit of the ọpẹlẹ tree.
Each shell is curved, creating a convex and concave
side. To perform divination with the ikin, the babalawo
takes all sixteen nuts in one hand and then tries to
snatch all of them with the other hand. If two nuts
remain in his hand, he makes one mark in the
sawdust-like camwood powder (iyẹ-irosun) on his
divination tray (ọpọn Ifa). He then repeats this process,
and if only one nut remains in his hand this time, then
he makes two marks in the iyẹ-irosun directly to the left
of the first mark. If, however, no nuts or more than two
remain in his hand, no mark is made. The babalawo
repeats this process as many times as is necessary to
make two columns of four sets of marks (or four rows of
two sets of marks). First, he marks the top row, starting
with the right, and then he continues on down, marking
each row, starting from the right, making a total of eight
sets of marks. These eight sets of marks consti- tute the
sign of the Odu. For example, figure 4 shows the sign of
the Odu Otura Meji. These eight sets of marks, each
with two possibilities (one or two marks), yields
8
2 or 256 possible signs. Taken separately, each row
4
has 2 or 16 possible signs, each of which has a name.
For example, the name of each of the rows below is
Otura. Since
 FIGURe 4 Order of markings.
FIGURe

5 Ranking of Odus

Odu Ofun Ọsẹ, the 256th Odu Odu Eji Ogbe, the 1st Odu

this row appears twice in the Odu above, the Odu is

known as Otura Meji, or “Two Oturas.” The sixteen
“twinned” Odus, like Otura Meji, are considered the
principal or primary Odus, from which the other 240
Odus, called amulu, are derived. The Odus are all
ranked in terms of seniority from Eji Ogbe (two Ogbes),
the most senior, occu- pying the first place, to Ofunsẹ,
the 256th Odu. Ofunsẹ comprises Ofun on the right and
Ọsẹ on the left (see fig. 5). This ranking of the Odu
plays an important role in the divination process, as we
will discuss shortly.
Although the ikin are used in the manner above for
public and special ritual occasions because it is
believed to be the most effective and reliable—if
time-inten- sive—method, babalawo usually use the
ọpẹlẹ to divine. Grasping the chain or thread of the
ọpẹlẹ in the middle, so that four shells hang down on
either side, the babalawo will toss it forward onto his
apo Ifa (the bag in which he normally keeps his Ifa
para- phernalia) so that the two ends of the chain point
 toward him, and the middle of the chain is pointing
away from him.76 The two sides of the chain make up
the two columns of the sign of the Odu (see fig. 6).
The concave or smooth side of the ọpẹlẹ shell is
equivalent to a single mark, and the convex or rough
side of the ọpẹlẹ shell is equivalent to two marks.
Therefore, if the ọpẹlẹ is tossed and all the shells land
with their concave sides up, the sign produced is that of
Eji Ogbe (see above). The ọpẹlẹ is quicker, easier to
use, and more portable than the ikin, which are usually
reserved for special occasions.77
Once the figure of the Odu is produced, either by the
ọpẹlẹ or ikin, the babalawo can recite one or more of
the verses (ẹsẹ) of that particular Odu.78 Most senior
baba- lawo have at least eight verses of each Odu
memorized, and many have significantly

more in their repertoire. The diviner will typi- cally then recite the
beginning, invocatory part of the chosen ẹsẹ verbatim, and then
recite the mythical narrative (itan) of the ẹsẹ in his own words.
This narrative usually takes the form of a mythological figure (a
god, animal, person, inanimate object, etc.) seeking out a
particular mythical babalawo (often with a highly evocative
name given in oriki form) to perform Ifa divi- nation because of a
particular need or problem (going on a journey, sickness,
barrenness, etc.). The Odu to which the narrative belongs is the
one that emerges, and the mythological baba- lawo tells the
seeker to make a certain sacrifice. The figure either performs or
does not perform the sacrifice, resulting in his or her success or
failure, respectively. The consequence of the performance or
neglect of the sacrifice is often connected to the way things are
in the present.79 After the story is complete, the babalawo will
recite the closing verses of the ẹsẹ, which also seldom vary.80
After this recitation, the babalawo will summarize the
story and the main message of the ẹsẹ for the client or
seeker, giving advice in the following form: “Ifa says
such- and such is happening, you must not do
such-and-such, and make a sacrifice of such-and-such
for so-and-so.” Then, and only then, will the
seeker/client explain his problem to the babalawo, who
will then help the seeker interpret the ẹsẹ of Ifa in light
of his particular situation.81 Then, if the seeker has
further questions, or if the sacrifice is not specified by
the ẹsẹ, they can ask Ifa further “yes” or “no” questions
through the use of ibo. The ibo usually consist of a
piece of bone, which stands for “no,” and two cowries
tied together, which represent “yes.” The babalawo will
ask Ọrunmila the question and then touch the ibo to
each of the shells of the ọpẹlẹ before handing them to
the seeker. The seeker cups the bone and the cowries
between his palms, shakes them, and then separates
them, taking one in each fist. Then the babalawo casts
the ọpẹlẹ twice. If the Odu that appears first is senior to
that which appears second, the seeker opens his left
hand to reveal the answer. If the junior Odu appears
first, the right hand is opened.82 In this way, the seeker
can ask Ọrunmila a number of direct, “yes-or-no”
questions and make the answer quite specific. The
babalawo can also use the ibo after the very first cast of
the ọpẹlẹ, before the baba- lawo recites verses from
that Odu, in order to select the verses from that Odu to
recite by asking Ifa if the situation is “good” or “bad” or
by asking if the situation concerns “enemies,” “children,”
“money,” and so forth. In this way, the message of Ifa
becomes ever more specific, from Odu to ẹsẹ to the
particular situation of the seeker, which could itself
become an ẹsẹ one day.
This process provides insight into the metaphysics
and cosmology assumed by Ifa divination. The Odu
themselves are considered to be deities,83 spiritual
princi- ples, and archetypes from which the world and
all of its inhabitants are created. For example, babalawo
often refer to the oriṣa Eṣu as Ọsẹtura, the Odu that
contains the story of his creation. During a babalawo’s
initiation, divination is performed to determine which
Odu the initiate is “a child of.” In fact, the babalawo call
their personal Odu Odu to bi mi, “the Odu that gave
birth to me.” The babalawo in ques- tion is understood
to be a particular manifestation of that particular Odu,
and must endeavor to learn and follow all the principles,
taboos, and lessons of the many verses of that Odu,
because in learning about that Odu he is learning about
himself.84 But this dynamic is not limited to
babalawo—everything in the world is created through
the Odu; the fundamental, organizing principles of the
universe; and Ifa. One baba- lawo explained, “Ifa is the
word from the mouth of Olodumare which he used to
create the world, which he uses to mend the world.”85
The Odu are the metaphysical archetypes or principles
that form the basis of the world. They are like the funda-
mental forces of physics or the Platonic
archetypes—once you understand them, everything
else in the universe comes down to the details of their
application. Every babalawo I interviewed said the
following in one way or another: “The whole world is in
Ifa—everything that will ever happen and everything
that has ever happened.” The Odu of Ifa are the
alphabet of existence.86
The process of divination mirrors the cosmic
process of creation: things go from a heavenly unity of
universals to an earthly multiplicity of particulars. In Ifa
divina- tion, first the Odu governing the seeker’s
situation is determined through divination, taking his or
her particular circumstance and connecting it to its
original archetype. Then, through divination, this
heavenly archetype is brought down into the realm of
 the particular and the practical. Since these particulars
were created through the Odu in the first place, it is
through the Odu that they can be “mended”—that is,
recon- nected with their origin, with their true selves. It
is because Olodumare created the world through his
word of Ifa that the world can be mended by Ifa.
HISTORIeS Of IfA

Ifa l’o ni Oni

Ifa l’o ni Ola
Ifa l’o ni Otunla
Ifa l’o ni Ireni
Orunmila l’o ni ojo merin
Orisa da si aye
Ifa is the owner of today
Ifa is the ownet of tomorrow
Ifa is the owner of the day after that
Orunmila is he who owns the four days
The Orisa created on earth
- Odu Ogunda Meji

Time and Eternity in Yoruba Cosmology

A history implies a metaphysics of time and place, a

cosmology.87 Different cosmologies will necessarily
entail different conceptions of time and space, and the
events that occur therein, and therefore produce
different histories. A child of the related scientific and
industrial revolutions, the modern concept of history has
become increasingly abstract, linear, homogenous, and
quantitative, a line of identical quantized seconds
running from the big bang off into the oblivion of the
future.88 The traditional Yoruba concept of history, itan,
however, is inseparable from myth, and the cosmology
described therein. Time in Yoruba cosmology has often
been described as cyclical or spiral. In one of his most
metaphysically insightful passages, Ṣoyinka writes:

This seeming cosmic anachronism is in fact a very

handy clue to temporal concepts in the Yoruba
world-view. Traditional thought operates, not a linear
conception of time, but a cyclic reality But the
degree of integrated acceptance of this temporal
sense in the life-rhythm, mores and social
organization of Yoruba society is certainly worth
emphasizing, being a reflection of that same reality
which denies periodicity to the existences of the
dead, the living, and the unborn The world of the
unborn, in the Yoruba world-view, is as evidently
older than the world of the living as the world of the
living is older than the ancestor-world. And, of
course, the other way around: we can insist that the
world of the ancestor is older than the world of the
unborn in the same breath as we declare that the
deities preceded humanity into the universe.89

Yoruba cosmology assumes multiple realms of

existence that often overlap and are simultaneous—that
is, they exist “on top” of one another, rather than one
after the other. Those yet to be born are above us right
now, and those who have already lived are below us in
the earth or above us in heaven (depending on the
particular mytho- logical perspective adopted). In
Yoruba thought, the afterlife is not so much “after” life
as it is above or below it; likewise, our preexistence is
not just “before” life, but also above it. Myths of
reincarnation90 equate the realm of the ancestors with
that of the unborn, so the ordinary temporal succession
we experience in everyday life is like an island
surrounded by the timeless ocean of pre- and
post-existence. Ritual brings us to the shores of this sea
 of eternity. Taking another perspective, Drewal writes:

If in Yoruba thought life on earth is merely a

temporary segment in a human spir- it’s journey,
then all time would have to be classified as cyclical,
not just ritual time. What Benjamin Ray terms
“ordinary linear time” would not exist in Yoruba
consciousness, since, conceptually, the human spirit
is always coming into the world and returning in one
unending cycle. On the other hand, since nothing
ever repeats itself, and since from this ontological
perspective there is always change and
transformation . . . then existence in time would be
more appropriately conceived in spatial terms as a
spiral—neither cyclical, nor linear. There is no
time-out-of- time, properly speaking that is, if I have
understood the concept.91

While I agree with Drewal that in Yoruba thought no

particular thing repeats itself, and that change and
transformation are a perpetual part of the world (aye), I
would refine her description slightly. This is a delicate
metaphysical point, but one that is essential to a
complete understanding of traditional Yoruba
conceptions of time. The transition from aye (the world)
to ọrun is not just an ordinary transition in time, but
rather the transition from time to “outside of time.”92 In
Yoruba, aye means at once world, space, and time.
Closely examining Drewal’s statement provides another
way of approaching this point. She writes, “The human
spirit is always coming into the world . . . there is always
change and transformation.” This “always” (lailai in
Yoruba) is the boundary between the timeless and time.
If something “happens” in eternity (outside of time), then
it always happens in time. In Yoruba myth, the human
being comes into time as she comes into the world (aye
designates both), and so she is always coming into the
world/time.93 This is why people know everything that
they will do in the world when they choose their ori in
heaven; they are above or outside of ordi- nary time
and can choose and perceive their lives “all at once.”94
If we picture time or the world as a river, then heaven
could be a cloud that extends over the entire length of
the river, sending down rain and receiving evaporating
water. Because the motion of rain is vertical, it doesn’t
participate in the horizontal motion of time until it enters
the river of the world, and can fall or evaporate up at
any point along the river—just as in the Yoruba
worldview, people enter and leave the world at every
point in time.
But this is not the whole story; there remains what
Ṣoyinka calls the “fourth stage,”95 the liminal realm of
myth and ritual. If time is a river, and heaven is a cloud,
then myth takes place at the source of the river, in the
heights of the hills, where the river meets the cloud.
What looks like a succession of reincarnations from the
perspective of aye (the world) is simultaneous and
parallel from the perspective of itan (myth), and utterly
undifferentiated from the heavenly vantage point of
Olodumare. When combined, these three
perspectives—the temporal, the mythical, and the
eternal—produce something like Drewal’s “spiral”
time.96 What is a point in eternity is spun to make a
circle in the mythical time of heaven, which the linear
time of the world stretches out into a spiral. However, it
is important to remember that this spiral is only how
things appear from the perspective of the world of living
human experience. The point is still a point; it merely
appears to be a circle or a spiral, like the patterns
produced when you wave a stick pulled from the fire.
The meaning and the etymology of the Yoruba word
for history, itan, can help shed some light on this
concept. Itan is the verbal noun of tan, a verb that
means “to light” or “to spread”—the metaphorical
implication of which is that myths and histor- ical
narratives are like lights that shine forth to illuminate the
present, or that they are like a fire that can be brought
from one “place” (or time) to another to give light and
warmth.97 The fire is the same even if the fuel is
different.
These images and metaphors are meant to convey
the epiphanic nature of itan, myth/history. In Ifa, and in
Yoruba culture in general, moments or historical events
appear as different manifestations of eternal realities or
archetypes. Myths, rituals, proverbs, and divination
connect these different manifestations and make them
intel- ligible. As the Yoruba proverb says, Ẹni ti ko mọ
itan, yoo mọ itan, “The one who doesn’t know
myth/history, won’t know his relations[hips].”98
Eliade’s characterization of the relationship between
“myth” and “history” has strong resonances with this
perspective. He writes, “though it may seem
paradoxical, what we may call the ‘history’ of primitive
societies consists solely of the mythical events which
took place in illo tempore and have been unceasingly
repeated from that day to this.”99 In Cosmos and
History, he elaborates: “An object or an act becomes
real only insofar as it imitates or repeats an archetype.
Thus, reality is acquired solely through repetition or
participation.”100
Furthermore, “to know the myths is to learn the origin of
a thing For knowing the origin of an object, an animal,
a plant, and so on is
equivalent to acquiring a magical power over them by
which they can be controlled, multiplied, or reproduced
at will.”101 Yoruba itan, like Eliade’s myth, connects a
given object or act with its origin, and with its related
iterations throughout history, imbu- ing it with meaning,
reality, and power.
Given this fact, let us consider what Ifa says about
the creation of history and the ritual calendar, in order to
get a better understanding of these abstractions. Odu
Oturupọn-Otura describes the creation of the four days
of the Yoruba ritual calen- dar. According to this myth,
originally there was only one day, which repeated over
and over. Ọrunmila asked Olodumare to make different
days, and Olodumare agreed and dedicated the four
new days to four different oriṣa. As the most senior,
Oriṣanla received the first day; Ọrunmila took the
second; Ogun had the third; and Jakuta (even- tually
Ṣango)102 took the fourth. Each deity held a big
celebration on his day with his followers.
Odu Ika-Ogbe, however, tells another story. In this
myth, Ọrunmila used to hold meetings with the other
Oriṣa every seventeen days (sixteen days in English
reckoning, as the Yoruba include the present day when
counting time). Since only he could reckon time,
Ọrunmila would call all the other deities to meet him on
the appropriate day with a special charm (like a
mythological cell phone). However, at that time, the
days were very short, and the gods didn’t have enough
time to get anything done, so Ọrunmila decided to go to
heaven to ask Olodumare for more time. He asked
Oriṣanla, Ogun, and Ṣango to accompany him, and
each rudely rebuffed him. So Ọrunmila set off to meet
Olodumare alone. Olodumare responded to his request
by giving him four days to take back to earth. When he
returned to earth, Ọrunmila gave three of the days to
the three deities who had refused him, keeping one for
himself. When Eṣu, Ori, Egun- gun, Ọṣun, and Olokun
(Ọrunmila’s close friends and wives) found out that he
had given away the days of the week to other oriṣa,
they were upset. But Ọrunmila calmed them down by
 explaining that he wanted them all to share the same
day so they could celebrate together. That is why these
deities are worshipped on Ọrunmila’s day.103
In these myths, we again find the transition from the
undifferentiated synthesis of a universal to a set of
particulars, and the myth connecting these particulars
back to their primordial origin establishes the
mythological precedent for ritual action. In particular,
these myths establish the Yoruba four-day ritual
calendar as well as the congregation of Ifa priests that
takes place every four (four-day) weeks. The myths
also emphasize the role of Ọrunmila as the mediator
between Olodumare and the other deities, and the
origin of the ritual calendar, underlining Ifa’s role as the
source of cosmic and ritual structure for the Yoruba
cosmos.
The action described in these narratives of the
differentiation of time and the creation of a ritual
calendar is like that of a prism that separates white light
out into different colors. The days of the week are not
identical; rather, they are qualitatively different, and
these differences have ritual consequences. This
“prismatic” structure is very common in Yoruba myth
(such as in the story of Atunda and Oriṣa above), as it
substantiates or organizes ritual actions in time and
space, as well as connecting them with a universal
origin, and therefore with one another.
As illustrated above, Eliade’s description of myth as
the irruption of the eternal into the temporal is
particularly apt in the case of itan. Itan always contains
a sense of the timeless in its description of events in
mythical place and time. Within Ifa, as with many other
mythological traditions, the history of a thing is not just a
factual chronicle of events, but rather the story of its
coming into being—often with the accent placed on its
coming into time rather than its becoming within time.
So when babalawo describe the myths, stories, and
narratives as being literally true, they mean something
slightly different from what a modern European or
American presumably would.
For example, when asked about the different and
seemingly inconsistent myths about the creation of the
world or the apotheosis of Ọrunmila, many of the
babalawo I interviewed had no problem explaining that
all the accounts were both different and true. The
babalawo who had little to no formal Western education
refused to make any distinction between “literal” and
mythological truth, while those who had attended
university seemed relatively uninterested in the
historicity of the myths of Ifa compared to their moral
and metaphysical content.104

History of Ifa

Given these facts, we must discuss two distinct

histories of Ifa: first, the mythological history that Ifa
ascribes to itself; and second, the nonmythological,
external history of Ifa. While several verses of Ifa refer
to the heavenly origins of the tradition, I will only
discuss two here—one that describes Ọrunmila’s
descent into the world (Oturupọn Meji), and another that
describes his departure (Iwori Meji):

Not long after the oriṣa came down to earth in Ile-Ifẹ,

things started going wrong. People fell ill and
couldn’t bear children, and no one knew what to do.
Olodumare told the oriṣa to come back to heaven so
he could give them something that would help them
solve their problems. All the oriṣa rejoiced and got
ready to travel back to heaven, except for Ọrunmila,
who wanted to do divination before they set off on
the journey. The other deities mocked and abused
him, saying that it was Olodu- mare himself who had
called them, so there was no need to perform
divination. So while Ọrunmila went to see a diviner,
they left without him. The diviner gave Ọrunmila the
mysterious advice that “when you lose something
from your hand, don’t use your hand to find it, use
your feet,” and told him to leave a meal of goat meat
at the crossroads for Eṣu as a sacrifice. Ọrunmila
did as he was told and left the sacrifice at the
crossroads.
On the way to heaven, Eṣu saw the sacrifice
Ọrunmila had left at the crossroads, and realizing
what had happened, he quickly went down and ate
it, and rejoined the other oriṣa on their way to
heaven without anyone noticing. When they reached
heaven, Olodumare asked the oriṣa where Ọrunmila
was. They replied, “He was taking too long, so we
left him behind.” Olodumare looked at them
knowingly for a while, and then handed them the
“calabash of wisdom” [Igba iwa]. The oriṣa were so
happy to finally have the solution to their problems
that they started going back to earth without asking
Olodumare how to use the calabash.
On their way down, they met Ọrunmila at bode,
the river separating heaven from earth. They began
to mock him again for wasting his time doing
divination on earth while they got the calabash from
Olodumare. One of them even taunted Ọrunmila by
waving the calabash in his face. Just then, Eṣu
knocked the calabash out of the oriṣa’s hands into
the river. The other oriṣa all started frantically
groping in the river with their hands, trying to recover
the calabash. Suddenly, Ọrunmila remembered the
advice of the diviner, and started feeling around with
 his feet under water. Sure enough, he found the
calabash and pulled it up out of the river. The other
oriṣa demanded that he give it back, but instead
Ọrunmila swallowed the calabash whole.
The oriṣa were furious and wanted to rip him
open to get the calabash back. However, Eṣu would
not let anyone touch Ọrunmila because of the
sacrifice he had made for him, and so they all went
back to ask Olodumare to settle the matter. When
Olodumare heard their case, he declared that the
oriṣa would have to treat Ọrunmila better from now
on since he possessed all the wisdom Olodumare
had sent down into the world, and that whenever
they needed anything, they would have to go to
Ọrunmila to find the answer to their problems. That
is why every- one today goes to see babalawo, the
children/disciples of Ọrunmila, to solve their
problems.105
This myth is significant for several reasons. First, the
journey of the oriṣa (and possi- bly people) to and from
heaven to see Olodumare illustrates the “bringing
together” of heaven and earth, of the eternal and the
temporal in myth and ritual, which reenacts the myth.
The ritual reenactment of this myth would be the
performance of Ifa divination that produces this Odu,
and the performance of the same sacrifice that
Ọrunmila made for Eṣu. The seeker would be advised
that although people look down on him now, he is about
to attain a very high position—but he must make
sacrifice, and continue doing things in his own unique
way, and not follow those around him. If he does this,
then he will be greatly blessed by Olodumare, and the
mockery of those around him will turn to respect.
This myth also illustrates one of the more peculiar
features of Ifa divination: the fact that Ọrunmila goes to
see babalawo to perform divination for him. Since
Ọrunmila is supposed to be the one who speaks
through Ifa divination, this seems like something of a
paradox. Why would he ask himself something through
divination? This para- doxical reflexivity is actually a
feature of many mythologies,106 and in the case of Ifa, it
serves to establish the ritual precedent of consulting Ifa.
All of the babalawo I inter- viewed also told me that for
important matters, one should not just divine for
oneself, but also consult other senior babalawo for
additional divination and insight into the result of one’s
own divination. The precedent for such a practice is
established in this and other myths where Ọrunmila
seeks out babalawo for divination. Several babalawo
also explained that when we go to have divination done,
it is Ọrunmila who answers; but when Ọrunmila goes to
have divination done, it is his heavenly double (one
baba- lawo identified him with Ọrunmila’s ori), known as
Ajagunmale, who responds through the divination.
This myth also emphasizes the “physical” integration
of Ọrunmila with the wisdom of Olodumare and their
inseparability. Ọrunmila eats the calabash of wisdom,
inte- grating it into his very being. This also serves as
the mythical precedent for a practice in the early
training of a babalawo, called “eating the Odu” or
“eating Ifa,” in which the ọpẹlẹ is put in the position of
Eji-Ogbe, the first Odu, and a ritual preparation of alco-
hol and pepper is placed on each of the shells. The
babalawo-in-training must eat this preparation off the
ọpẹlẹ. This is repeated for each of the sixteen major
Odu, so the apprentice actually “eats” all sixteen
principal Odu. This physical, ritual internaliza- tion of the
Odu is believed to assist and complement the
internalization of the Odu through memorization. Most
significantly, however, this myth establishes the origin of
Ọrunmila’s possession of the transcendent knowledge
of Olodumare, the access that Ifa divination grants to
this knowledge, and the power of this knowledge to
resolve problems through counsel and sacrifice.
Odu Iwori Meji gives a complementary account of
the origin of Ifa divination and describes how Ọrunmila
returned to heaven:

It is the apa tree that grows in the forest,

lighting the wizards’ fire It is the oruru
tree that is clothed in blood from top to
bottom
It was on the earth that I pressed the marks of Ifa
Before I used the divining tray The
slender palm tree atop the hill
Which branches this way and that in
sixteen heads Performed divination for
Ọrunmila
When they said that Baba would never
have children in the city of Ifẹ

When Ọrunmila was living in Ile-Ifẹ, people mocked

him because he had no chil- dren. But Ọrunmila
simply laughed and performed divination. He soon
gave birth to eight children, each of whom became
important kings of Yoruba city-states [most of which
still exist today; the myth explains how the titles of
the kings of these cities are contractions of the
original names of Ọrunmila’s children]. One day,
Ọrunmila called all his children to join him for a
festival. They all came to join him and paid their
respects, but the youngest child challenged
Ọrunmila’s authority by coming to the festival with
the same symbols of authority that his father wore
and refused to bow to him. Ọrunmila was incensed
by this rejection of his authority, so he withdrew to
the foot of a particular kind of palm tree and climbed
up into heaven. As a result, the earth fell into chaos,
 women couldn’t get pregnant, those who were
pregnant couldn’t deliver, the sick didn’t recover, the
rain stopped falling, the rivers dried up, the crops
failed, the animals started behaving strangely.
Every- thing was falling apart. The people begged
Ọrunmila’s children to convince him to come back,
and they went to perform divination. Ọrunmila’s
children made the prescribed sacrifice and went to
the foot of the palm tree their father had climbed and
began to implore him to return to earth, reciting a
litany of his praise names. However, Ọrunmila had
made up his mind not to return to earth. But pitying
his children, he told them to stretch out their hands
so he could give them something to ease their
distress. He gave them the sixteen ikin, the palm
nuts used in Ifa divi- nation, telling them, “All the
good that you want in this world, this is the one you
must consult.” When they returned to Ile-Ifẹ, things
started to go well again and they attained all the
good things they were seeking.

Ọrunmila, fluent-in-every-language,
Ẹla of Isode [praise name of Ọrunmila]
Ifa went to the home of Olokun and never
returned He said, “The one that you see,
call him Baba.”107

This myth is remarkable for several reasons. Most

obviously, it explains the origin of the divination with
ikin, and identifies the particular kind of palm tree from
which they must be sourced. This establishes the “Ifa
palm” as an axis mundi, because Ọrunmila climbed it to
return to heaven, and because its palm nuts connect
the people of earth with Ọrunmila in heaven.108
Furthermore, the myth establishes and explains the
meaning and origin of several important titles of rulers
in Yorubaland. In addi- tion to describing the ritual
paraphernalia of Ifa, the myth serves as a warning of
the consequences of hubris against Ifa (and one’s
elders in general). But most strikingly, this particular
narrative’s graphic description of a world without Ifa
underscores the fundamental Yoruba belief that the
order and proper functioning of the world is depen- dent
on a continual close relationship with heaven.109 The
consequences of Ọrunmila’s departure recalls what
Eliade calls the “terror of history,” the descent of
humanity into a desacralized, chaotic world of
meaningless, endless, linear time.110
The myth also establishes a number of profound
praise names of Ọrunmila, one of the most famous of
which is Afedefẹyọ, which translates to “Fluent in every
language,” referring to the universality of Ifa. This myth
is also connected to a few other narra- tives in which
Ọrunmila, instead of going to heaven by climbing a
palm tree, enters the lagoon, the domain of his wife,
Olokun, to remain there forever. Like the under- ground,
the underwater is a symbol of occultation in an unseen
realm, and babalawo do not see a contradiction in
saying that Ọrunmila is in heaven and that he is under-
water with Olokun.111 Most importantly, however, the
myth establishes the “vertical” history of Ifa divination,
the authority of his priests (“the one you see, call him
Baba”), and its power to mend the world.
The “horizontal,” or external, history of Ifa is much more
difficult to reconstruct. It seems possible that the
tradition of Ifa was a later addition to the Yoruba
religious universe, as Ọrunmila rarely appears in the
myths associated with the cults of the other oriṣa, while
they all appear in the myths of Ifa. But this evidence is
circumstantial at best. The most promising method of
dating Ifa would probably be some kind of glot-
tochronological study of the variants of particular verses
from particular Odu; however, given the special
linguistic status of verses of Ifa, such an effort would
require a great deal of work. Ifa, like Yoruba religion and
culture in general, is remarkably dynamic and easily
integrates and domesticates new and foreign elements,
customs, and ideas. Some verses of Ifa from the Odu
Otura Meji mention Islam explicitly and display a great
deal of familiarity with Muslim ritual practice and
doctrines. Therefore, we can conclude that these
verses emerged no earlier than the seventeenth
century, when Islam began to take root in Yorubaland.
Ifa is also mentioned in some of the earliest colo- nial
and missionary accounts of the mid-nineteenth century
that deal with traditional Yoruba religions.112
Archaeological evidence may also shed some light on
the history of Ifa. For example, Suzanne Blier’s Art and
Risk in Ancient Yoruba hypothesizes that some artifacts
from ancient Ifẹ (ca. thirteenth–fifteenth centuries CE)
contain symbols of the Odu and other signs of Ifa
divination. If this is correct, it could undercut Louis
Brenner’s hypothesis that the tradition of Ifa is derived
from Islamic geomancy, since the earliest known Islamic
presence in the region occurs in the seventeenth
century CE.113 Nevertheless, all we know for certain is
that the origins of Ifa as we know it today114 are situated
somewhere between the emergence of Yoruba
civilization and the mid-nine- teenth century.
Babalawo often recount an interesting myth,
illustrating Yoruba mythology’s remarkably integrative
nature, which identifies the origins of Ifa divination with
the mysterious figure of Setiu,115 the first diviner. In
some versions of the myth, Setiu was a Tapa (i.e.,
Nupe, a ethno-linguistic group bordering the Yoruba to
the north) man who was very unusual due to the fact
that he had no bones in his body. According to the
myth, it was this extraordinary figure who introduced Ifa
divination among the Yoruba.
Another version of the myth puts the boneless Setiu
in Mecca during the time of the Prophet of Islam. When
the Prophet was fleeing Mecca for Medina he hid in a
cave with his close companion, Abu Bakr, because the
people of Mecca, the Quraysh, were trying to
assassinate him. The myth tells us that the Quraysh
came to Setiu and had him perform divination to
determine Muḥammad’s whereabouts. Setiu told them
that the Prophet was hiding in a particular cave, so the
Quraysh went to check the cave, carrying Setiu with
them. When they arrived, they found that a spider had
woven a web over the entrance of the cave, so they
berated Setiu, telling him that he had obvi- ously gotten
it wrong. Setiu insisted that the Prophet was actually
inside the cave, but the Quraysh refused to listen and
left. In fact, the Prophet and Abu Bakr were in the cave,
and because the Quraysh ignored Setiu, the Prophet
and his companion were able to make it to Medina,
where they gathered an army and converted or expelled
all the idol-worshippers in Mecca. Setiu was taken with
those who fled to Africa and taught Ifa divination there.
One babalawo explained to me that the Prophet
Muḥam- mad and Ọrunmila are friends and brothers,
and that the only reason there are problems between
Muslims and babalawo today is because of what
happened between Setiu and Muḥammad back in
Mecca.116
Some scholars have speculated that Ifa emerged as
an indigenous Yoruba response to the presence of
Islam (like Islam, it has a “scripture” of sorts that is
memorized and recited); while others have explored
Ifa’s relationship to and possible origins among other
forms of divination, such as the Islamic tradition of
geomancy known as khaṭṭ al-raml, which is widespread
 in the Muslim world, and other distant but similar forms
of divination, including the I Ching and a Melanesian
form of divination also based on sixteen figures.117
William Bascom also compares Ifa with several other
divinatory systems employed in and around Yorubaland
among the Yoruba and neighboring Fon, Ewe, Yagba,
Nupe, Igbo, Itsekeri, Ijaw, Tiv, Jukun, and Hausa
peoples.118 It is likely that many of these systems of
divination have a common historical ancestor, while
some, like the khaṭṭ al-raml employed by the Hausa and
Muslim diviners among the Yoruba, may have a
different, or more distant, common origin,119 although it
may have influenced the way in which the Odu of Ifa
are marked. Some of these other divinatory tradi- tions
are acknowledged by Ifa and often mythically
connected to Ọrunmila himself, and the practitioners of
these presumably Ifa-derived divination systems often
accept these mythical accounts of the origin of their
art.120 The Fa tradition of the Fon-speak- ing people is
an adaptation of the Ifa tradition to the context of
Dahomey, beginning when the king brought several
Yoruba-speaking babalawo to his court. Despite its
differ- ences, as Maupoil, Bascom, and others have
noted, the predominantly Fon-language Fa tradition still
remains closely linked to the tradition of Ifa, with priests
exchanging knowledge and even initiations.121

COncluSIOn: IfA TODAy AnD PReSenT FOCuS

While the history of Ifa divination remains shrouded in

mystery, further studies and new methods of analyzing
oral history may lead to some progress in this arena.
However, I believe the most fascinating aspect of Ifa is
not its history, but its continued resilience in a world that
is increasingly modern, Christian, and Muslim (on the
continent) and increasingly secular and Pentecostal (in
the Americas and Europe). In Nigeria, Ifa is often
reviled as “devil worship” or “pagan idolatry,” or
regarded as an archaic holdover from a pre-“civilized”
past—a cultural curiosity, like the ruins of an old palace.
Yet despite such opposition and indifference, Ifa
continues to be practiced across south- western Nigeria
and, in some ways, to even thrive. Every single Yoruba
town still has its council of babalawo who advise the
traditional king and their communities. More- over, the
babalawo are not going out of business anytime soon.
At some point in nearly every single interview I
conducted, I was interrupted by a seeker who had come
to see the babalawo with whom I was speaking, or
called him on the phone to ask him to perform divination
for a particular issue. Many of these seekers were
affiuent, respected members of their towns, many were
highly educated, many were Muslim or Christian, and
virtually all of them seemed confident in the power of Ifa
to resolve their problems. While this, in and of itself,
was fascinating (e.g., how does an engineer with a
PhD, trained in a science based on Cartesian dualism,
reconcile his scientific training and worldview with that
of Ifa?), I was more fascinated by the babalawo
themselves. I was impressed by their rigorous honesty,
compassion, and work ethic, and their incred- ible
breadth and depth of knowledge. I wanted to
understand, philosophically, how these babalawo came
to be who they are, how they know what they know, and
how these ways of knowing, so radically different from
anything I had encountered in my academic training,
“work.” In answering these questions, I hope to provide
a compel- ling account of the epistemology of the
tradition of Ifa, and to make its worldview (and the
intellectual reasons for its continued resilience) more
understandable and accessi- ble to a general audience.
It is important to recognize that Ifa is an extremely
heterogeneous, diverse, and dynamic tradition.
Traditions, myths, and rituals can vary widely over a
small area and within a generation or two. However, the
babalawo and other practitioners of Yoruba traditions
recognize a continuity between these varying
manifestations, and I believe anyone who spends
enough time in communities of practitioners will notice it
as well. The cosmology and mythology outlined above
is largely schematic and based on the principles
extracted from my own various experiences,
impressions, research, and study.122 Other scholars and
practitioners will necessarily have different
perspectives, having been exposed to other aspects of
these traditions. My goal in this chapter was not to write
the exposition of the doctrines of Ifa (a task as
impossible as writing an exposition of the doctrines of
the contemporary academy), but rather to present an
accessible introduction to Ifa that would be acceptable
and illuminating to both schol- ars and babalawo.