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13. Ifa Divination Tray (Opon Ifa)

his divination tray (opon Ifa) entered a European collection about 1650, making it the oldest African wood sculpture to have been preserved in the West.1 It left Africa during the middle of the seventeenth century through commercial trade that existed between the Atlantic coast and Augsburg. There, it was acquired by a prosperous German merchant from Ulm, Christoph Weickmann.2 Documentation that accompanied the work indicates that it was originally owned and utilized by the king of Ardra (Allada),3 an Aja state that remained under the hegemony of the Yoruba empire of Oyo until the kingdom of Dahomey was consolidated as a power in the late seventeenth century. During the reign of King Agaja (1708–40), Ifa became recognized as an official divination ritual in Dahomey and known as Fa. The fact that this work is supposed to have been an elite possession, owned by an Aja king, suggests that it may have served as an exotic divination technique adopted by the leadership to fortify and protect the power of the state.

Fon, Ewe, and Aja peoples—who eventually became integrated within the kingdom of Dahomey—continually drew on Yoruba religious and political traditions, but, as Suzanne Blier has pointed out, their forms of visual expression reveal very different aesthetic roots.4 Other scholars have noted that although the tray's design was undoubtedly based on a Yoruba prototype, its distinctive carving style suggests that it was executed at Allada by a local carver.5 According to Ezio Bassani, the figural representations reflect a departure from the relative "humanism" of much Yoruba wood sculpture in favor of an austere rectilinear style closer to that of Ewe carving.6

Ifa divination trays are usually designed as a circular or rectangular surface circumscribed by a raised border of relief carving. (See part 4 of the Pemberton essay.) In this exceptional example, both configurations have been combined: a circular board inscribed within a rectangular one. The diviner uses the surface of the clear central depression as his work space, a perpetual tabula rasa upon which signs specific to individual petitioners may be inscribed and interpreted. Robert Farris Thompson has described the visual center of divination trays as "a screen where man views his problems with a clarity not previously obtained."7 While the abstract configurations of ODU markings made by the diviner are ephemeral, the images inscribed within the border provide a constant backdrop. Consequently, two types of visual signs converge within the framework of divination trays: an artistic exploration of the forces that govern human experience, and a succession of notations that relate to the specific and immediate concerns of the diviner's clients and require his interpretation.

The term opon means "to flatter," and the opon Ifa is a utilitarian instrument that is not only a diviner's primary tool but a work of high aesthetic quality that enhances his status and pays tribute to the essential role he plays.8 In designing such a work, a carver strives to achieve a clarity of composition to match the lucidity and clarity that the diviner brings to a consultation. To do so, the artist celebrates the spiritual forces and formative events underlying the surface of human experience, which are revealed through a diviner's insights. Mythological and everyday events, as well as the exploits of legendary diviners whose experiences provide precedents for actions and remedies in the present, serve as potential sources for appropriate subjects. The motifs that appear in the border of this particular work may reflect either the initiative of the carver who executed the commission or a design requested by the patron.9 Individual images are depicted as autonomous units, shown frontally or in profile, and are spatially distinct from one another in order to make them as "readable" as possible. Throughout the densely composed imagery, a great deal of attention to specific detail is apparent. Blier has proposed that this approach reflects an attempt on the part of the artist and patron to introduce an alien system of belief to the uninitiated.10

As noted previously (cat. no. 12), visual metaphors for Yoruba conceptions of the cosmos include a gourd divided into two halves, as well as a divination board. The formal interpretation of this particular opon Ifa is especially successful in its fulfillment of that role. Its continuous band of relief carving extends around the perimeter, framing the rectangular outer contours, and penetrates the center of the picture plane to create a distinct circular unit. The images contained within this unifying band do not form a single narrative; rather, they depict the diversity of interdependent and competing forces that populate the universe, including references to leadership, warfare, survival, fertility, protection, and sacrifice.11

The opon Ifa's horizontal orientation is established by the motif of a face in the middle of one of the tray's long sides. It is crowned with three calabashes, medicine gourds (ado oogun ase) positioned at the apex of the circle. Opon Ifa invariably feature an iconic reference to Esu (also called Elegba)—divine messenger, facilitator, transformer, trickster, and provocateur—in this position. As mediator between gods, ancestors, spirits, and humankind, Esu presides over the divination process, and this image is strategically positioned opposite the diviner during a consultation. Much of the imagery depicted around the circle clearly relates to the use of the board in Ifa: at the base of the circle, directly opposite the head, an unobstructed channel is flanked by two vertical stacks of four palm nuts each, and three divination tappers occupy most of the arc to the right of the circle. The arc to the left of the circle is filled with a free-flowing, continuous chain of intertwined animal and human protagonists. The rectangular border contains larger human figures, including a soldier (upper left), a woman preparing to make a sacrifice (top, left), and a man smoking a pipe (top, right). These last two figures—and the others in the horizontal segments of the border at the top and bottom—are oriented laterally to fit into the border, giving them a floating, weightless appearance. A visual accent of a zigzag motif on most of the images serves to unify the composition.12

In contemporary Yoruba society, individuals may seek information to help resolve specific problems or personal, medical, social, political, or religious questions through the agency of Ifa. On such occasions, the opon Ifa serves as the ritual centerpiece upon which responses are marked by the diviner.13 He performs his role as intermediary seated on the ground with the board before him. Signs of the extensive use of this opon Ifa are evident in the pocked surface of the central area of the inner circle where the diviner struck a tapper to invoke the gods.

In order to maximize the opon Ifa's efficacy, each time the diviner prepares it for use he imposes a grid on the tray's surface, referred to as the crossroads (orita meta). He does so by dusting it with powdered wood or flour in which he inscribes a configuration of intersecting lines vertically from bottom to top, center to right, and center to left. The design conveys the idea that divination rites link the spirit world with our own, and has the effect of subdividing the spatial geography of the tray into units that are conceived of both as individual paths of communication and as the personified entities of famous diviners from the past.14 At the outset of a consultation, each of these sections is invoked through praise poetry in order to alert its spiritual power and activate it.15

1. Bassani 1995, p. 80.