Art and Oracle: A Scholarly Resource of African and Rituals of Divination | Explore & Learn

Divination in Sub-Saharan Africa
Part 4: Yoruba

here are between 15 million and 20 million Yoruba in southwestern Nigeria and the neighboring Republic of Benin. Their origins may be traced to the ninth century A.D.48 From the beginning, Yoruba culture has been characterized by an urban lifestyle and a political system of sacred rulers. By the twelfth to the fifteenth century, the political/cultural position of the Yoruba city of Ile-Ife had developed to a point where an artistry of extraordinary technical skill and imagination created the famous Ife bronze and terracotta sculptures, and there were other Yoruba artistic centers at Esie in the northeast and Owo in the southeast. By the seventeenth century, Oyo, a city in the north-central Yoruba region, was emerging as a significant political power that over the next century would establish itself as the center of an empire.

Ifa divination—which, as noted previously, is probably the best known of sub-Saharan African systems of divination outside the continent—is widely practiced among the Yoruba. In contrast to forms of divination in central Africa that employ spirit mediumship, Ifa divination does not rely on a person having oracular powers but rather on a system of signs that must be interpreted by a diviner, who is an Ifa priest (baba-lawo, literally "father of secrets"). Nevertheless, the concerns that a babalawo seeks to address are the same as those faced by Luba, Yaka, and other diviners of central Africa.

The Yoruba conceptualize the universe in terms of two halves of a closed calabash. These represent the realm of living beings (aye), comprising all humans, animals, and plants, and the realm of spiritual powers (orun), which includes the 401 deities (orisa)49 and the ancestors (ara orun, literally "the living dead"), but there is no metaphysical notion of a "beyond," as there is in Greek philosophy or Christian theology. Reference is made to orisa Olodumare, who is without shrine, priesthood, or followers and yet is acknowledged as the "High God." It would appear that Olodumare is an expression of the unity and integrity of their universe, despite all its diversity and the existence of malevolent powers. In this respect, Yoruba cosmology is similar to that of the peoples of central Africa, though organized quite differently. The Yoruba universe consists of numerous powers that make claims on an individual. There are not only other people in one's family, town, and region, as well as foreigners, with whom one must deal—there are powers not readily seen, such as ancestors, deities, nature spirits, and also the powers of death, disease, and witchcraft (the work of ajogun, "malevolent spirits"). The Yoruba employ the word ase to refer to the intrinsic "power" by which a person or thing is what it is—the component of a person's or thing's nature that represents its inherent authority, stemming from his, her, or its character, position, or function. Woman has her ase and man has his. Each orisa has her or his ase, and so too do the ancestors. Rulers (oba) have their ase, as do priests. Animals, forests, rivers, rain, lightning all have ase. Thus, in the Yoruba universe, ase is the ground of being, the life force, the warrant for existence in all its manifestations.

The essential concern of every individual is to make one's way prosperously through life, drawing on the ase of gods, ancestors, parents, and nature to enable one to fully realize the personal destiny (ori inu) that he or she chose before coming into the world (aye). The means of achieving this is Ifa divination, which is based on the interpretation of signs known as odu Ifa. These are related to the Odu Ifa, a vast body of oral literature in prose and poetry that contains the wisdom of the Yoruba. There are sixteen principal Odu, each with its identifying sign and name and consisting of sixteen subordinate Odu, each with its sign and name, making a total of 256 Odu. There are also 256 odu signs, each associated with one of the 256 Odu subsections and its particular story about the lives of gods, humans, and animals. The subsections are ranked in importance, a ranking said to have been determined by the order in which the Odu—which came from orun and are regarded as orisa—arrived in aye and became known among humans.

Wande Abimbola, the second-ranking priest of Ifa in Ile-Ife and former vice chancellor of the University of Ife, has written extensively on the training of Ifa priests and on the Odu Ifa.50 A youth who shows intellectual imagination at an early age will be regarded as a candidate for training to be a babalawo, especially if divination in a rite known as Imori ("knowing the head [ori]"), performed when he was a small child, revealed that he was a "child of Ifa." The youth will live with a local priest of Ifa, learning ritual procedures, memorizing passages from the Odu Ifa, observing divination sessions, as well as carrying out the daily chores of the priest's household. He may spend several years with his mentor. As he matures, refining his knowledge and skills, he will seek out babalawo in other areas for further instruction, moving from one tutor to another over a period of several years, during which time he will begin to "cast Ifa."

Ifa priests say that Orunmila, a deity present at the time of Creation, knows the prenatal destiny that every individual has chosen, and that this deity gave sixteen sacred palm nuts (ikin Ifa) to his children on earth so that they might be in communication with him. It is also believed that Orunmila's wife, orisa Odu, gave him the "secrets of Odu"—the power to guide those who seek his wisdom. A divination session begins with the priest calling on Orunmila and the ancient babalawo to witness the proceedings. He then shakes sixteen palm nuts in his cupped hands and, holding the ikin in his left hand, attempts to grab the entire group with his right hand. If one palm nut remains in his left hand, he makes two vertical marks with his fingers in the iyerosun dust on the diviner's tray (opon Ifa); if two palm nuts remain, he makes one vertical mark (fig. 5 ). When eight successful casts have been made, there will be two columns of four vertical marks, forming a configuration that represents one of the 256 possible odu signs. A shorter version of casting Ifa is possible by using a divining chain (opele Ifa). It consists of eight seed pods or small copper-alloy plates with concave/convex surfaces linked by a metal chain or strands of beads. The diviner holds the chain at its center point and casts the chain so that it falls on the cloth laid before him in a pattern that reveals the odu sign.

While waiting for Orunmila's response in the form of an odu sign, all who are present focus intently on the methodical, rhythmic ritual procedure of casting Ifa and on the carved images—such as the kneeling female figure holding a bowl, the rider surrounded by his retinue, and the struggle of the intertwined snake and bird—that adorn the diviner's tapper (iroke Ifa), the bowl (agere Ifa) containing the palm nuts, and the border of the opon Ifa. After the odu sign appears on the divination tray, the suppliant, who has whispered his or her concerns and requests to the ikin Ifa, listens to the priest chant verses from the Odu subsection indicated by the odu sign. In these verses, he/she hears of others who suffered various problems, some perhaps greater than those that brought the suppliant to Ifa, and of the joy that they knew after performing the sacrifices that Ifa had asked them to make.

He was told to offer sacrifice with irana hen.
He did as he was told
And he did not die.
He was dancing,
He was rejoicing,
He praised his Ifa priests,
While his Ifa priest praised Ifa.
As he opened his mouth a little,
The song of Ifa entered therein,
As he stretched his legs,
Dance pulled them.51

The suppliant may ask the priest about the significance of the Odu, perhaps concentrating on one set of verses, with or without acknowledging the problem that has brought him/her to consult Ifa. The Ifa verses provide a context for thinking about one's situation in terms of the values that have shaped Yoruba self-understanding, and they recommend what sacrifices must be made by the suppliant, and to what powers. The suppliant leaves the divinatory session with the confidence to take effective action for improving his/her life. Ifa divination provides knowledge; but knowledge without effective action is of little use. Therefore, every divination rite entails an appropriate offering or sacrifice, in some instances a simple gift of food, in others the ritual slaughtering of an animal. Depending on the needs and circumstances of the suppliant, the offering may be to an orisa or to one's personal destiny (ori inu), or to an ancestor or a malevolent spirit, in an acknowledgment of that entity's powers and as a means of petitioning it to bestow or withhold them. Finally, there must also be a sacrifice to orisa Esu (also called Elegba), the guardian of the ritual process, who conveys the messages of the gods and other spirits to humankind and carries their sacrifices to the realm of the spirits. Esu's ase makes life whole and meaningful.

CONTINUE

Fig. 5. Ifa priests at the palace of the Orangun-Ila cast the sixteen sacred palm nuts (ikin Ifa) to determine which subsection from the Odu Ifa they must consult, and the corresponding sign is traced in the iyerosun powder on the diviner's tray (opon Ifa).

48. See Yoruba 1989, pp. 45–75.

49. The phrase "401 orisa" is a Yoruba convention meaning "many," "an abundance," "a plethora" of deities (orisa). It is similar to the biblical use of the number forty to refer to an extended period of time ("forty days and forty nights"). There are a number of orisa that are well known throughout Yorubaland, but even this number is not fixed. Quite often orisa have different names in different towns and among people within the same town. See John Pemberton, "A Cluster of Sacred Symbols: Orisha Worship among the Igbomina Yoruba of Ila-Orangun," History of Religions 7, no. 3 (1977), pp. 1–29; and Karin Barber, "How Man Makes God in West Africa: Yoruba Attitudes Towards the Orisa," Africa 51, no. 3 (1981), pp. 723–45.

50. Abimbola 1975; Abimbola 1976; Abimbola 1977.

51. Abimbola 1977, pp. 24–25.