Ifá Divination

A Corpus Held in Memory

First attested
the 1650san Ifá divination tray (ọpọ́n) from Allada on the Slave Coast, acquired for Christoph Weickmann's Kunst- und Naturkammer at Ulm before 1659 — Museum Ulm calls it the oldest known artistically worked wooden object of Black Africa

Ifá's 256 odù are not a table of meanings but an index into a corpus of verse carried by trained memory rather than closed by any book, and whether its sixteen figures descend from Arabic ilm al-raml, or ilm al-raml from them, is still argued.

The cast does not forecast, it prescribes: the reading ends in an act, so destiny stays negotiable.

A babaláwo, 'father of secrets', casts the ọ̀pẹ̀lẹ̀ chain once, or grabs sixteen ikin palm nuts eight times, marking the figure in wood dust on the ọpọ́n tray. Sixteen principal odù pair with sixteen to give 256, and each opens verses, ẹsẹ, that years of apprenticeship fix in memory. Wándé Abímbọ́lá printed sixteen ẹsẹ in 1975; UNESCO proclaimed Ifá a Masterpiece in 2005. The tray Museum Ulm calls Black Africa's oldest worked wood arrived from Allada before 1659. Enslaved initiates carried Ifá to Cuba, where babaláwos practise still; Brazil's Candomblé kept cowrie divination and re-imported Ifá from Nigeria in the twentieth century. Its sixteen figures match Arabic ilm al-raml: René Trautmann (1940) and Bernard Maupoil (1943) read Fá as geomancy of Arabic descent, Ron Eglash (1997), on Bamana sand divination, argues the traffic ran north, and the question is open.

Light

The odù does not forecast; it prescribes. A reading ends in ẹbọ — a sacrifice or act the client performs and Èṣù, carved at the head of the ọpọ́n, carries — so the verse is an instruction, not a verdict, and destiny is negotiable.

Shadow

Who may hold it is contested. At a 2006 gathering in Venezuela, Cuban babaláwos told a woman initiate there is no such thing as a female Ifá priest, while Nigerian priests argued for her; M. Ajisebo McElwaine Abímbọ́lá records the exchange.

Sources and verification13 sources · 4 links

Primary source

  • Ifá divination tray (ọpọ́n), Museum Ulm, inv. AB 1486, 1659, Weickmann collection; recorded as from Allada, dated before 1659The physical attestation — the earliest surviving Ifá tray, and the object Museum Ulm calls the oldest artistically worked wood of Black Africa.
  • Wande Abimbola, Sixteen Great Poems of Ifá, 1975The ẹsẹ themselves, printed in Yoruba with English translation — the evidence that Ifá is a literature rather than a lookup table of meanings.

Scholarship

  • René Trautmann, La divination à la Côte des Esclaves et à Madagascar: le Vôdoû Fa — le Sikidy (Mémoires de l'Institut Français d'Afrique Noire 1), 1940One side of the origin debate: Fá and Malagasy sikidy treated together as offshoots of Arabic raml.
  • Bernard Maupoil, La géomancie à l'ancienne Côte des Esclaves (Travaux et Mémoires de l'Institut d'Ethnologie XLII), 1943The same side of the debate, and the fullest early field study of Fá; calling the practice géomancie is itself the claim.
  • William Bascom, Ifa Divination: Communication between Gods and Men in West Africa, 1969The standard ethnographic description of casting with ọ̀pẹ̀lẹ̀ and ikin, and of the 256 figures got by pairing sixteen with sixteen.
  • Wande Abimbola, Ifá: An Exposition of Ifá Literary Corpus, 1976, the chapters on the corpus and on the training of a babaláwoThe structure of the 256 odù, and the apprenticeship by which the ẹsẹ are committed to memory.
  • Adam Jones, "A Collection of African Art in Seventeenth-Century Germany: Christoph Weickmann's Kunst- und Naturkammer", African Arts 27:2, 1994, 28–43The dating of Weickmann's African objects to an acquisition window of roughly 1655–1659, which is what fixes the terminus for the Ulm tray.
  • Ron Eglash, "Bamana Sand Divination: Recursion in Ethnomathematics", American Anthropologist 99:1, 1997, 112–122The counter-position, argued on Bamana sand divination in Mali rather than on Ifá: that the binary recursion of West African divination is indigenous, and that transmission ran from Africa into Islamic geomancy rather than the reverse.
  • Wande Abimbola, "The Bag of Wisdom: Ọ̀ṣun and the Origins of the Ifá Divination", in Ọ̀ṣun across the Waters: A Yoruba Goddess in Africa and the Americas, ed. Joseph M. Murphy and Mei-Mei Sanford, 2001, 141–54; the argument at 146–50Cited within the ìyánífá debate: Abímbọ́lá's own published argument that Ọ̀ṣun, holder of the apo ìwà, stands nearer Ifá's origin than babaláwos will admit.
  • John Pemberton III, "Yoruba Religion", Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition, ed. Lindsay Jones, 2005, vol. 14, 9909–12; the Ifá passage at 9911. Pemberton's 1987 article, carried into the second edition with a revised bibliography.Ọ̀rúnmìlà as the òrìṣà of Ifá divination and Èṣù as bearer of sacrifices; the corpus 'organized into 256 collections called odu'; casting with the sixteen sacred palm nuts or the ọ̀pẹ̀lẹ̀ chain; and ẹbọ as what a reading determines.
  • M. Ajisebo McElwaine Abimbola, "The Role of Women in the Ifa Priesthood", in Ifá Divination, Knowledge, Power, and Performance, ed. Jacob K. Olupona and Rowland O. Abiodun, 2016, 247 (chapter at 246–59)The 2006 exchange in Venezuela between Cuban babaláwos and Nigerian priests over a woman's standing in Ifá.
  • Ayodeji Ogunnaike, "Mamalawo? The Controversy Over Women Practicing Ifa Divination", Journal for the Study of the Religions of Africa and its Diaspora 4.1, 2018, 15–34The ìyánífá dispute across Nigeria, Cuba and the United States, and the gloss of babaláwo as 'father of secrets'.

Further reading

  • UNESCO, Ifa Divination System (Nigeria), ref. 00146, 2005, proclaimed a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2005; incorporated into the Representative List in 2008The international listing, and UNESCO's own account of 256 odù and their ẹsẹ.

Linked entries

  • Set againstThe Gurū Granth SāhibA modern connection

    Both are treated as a living presence rather than a reference book, but the Gurū Granth Sāhib is a fixed text read from the page, where Ifá's ẹsẹ are carried by living diviners and no edition closes the corpus.

  • Attributed toỌ̀rúnmìlàTraditional

    Ifá is Ọ̀rúnmìlà's: he is Ẹlẹ́rìí ìpín, the witness present when each person chose their destiny, and the babaláwo speaks in his voice rather than his own.

  • Often confused withỌ̀rúnmìlàAttested

    English writing routinely uses 'Ifa' as the god's name: UNESCO's 2005 proclamation calls its subject 'the mystical figure Ifa or Orunmila'. Yoruba usage does hail Ọ̀rúnmìlà as Ifá, but Ifá also names the system and the corpus, which is what a babaláwo consults.

  • Set againstThe Aj Q'ij (Day-Keeper)A modern connection

    Both are living initiated systems carried in people rather than in books, but Ifá's authority is a memorised corpus a babaláwo can recite back into existence, while the aj q'ij's is a position in a count — lose a single day and nothing recovers it, which is why the question of continuity means something different in each.

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