Ifá divination · a storybook in 6 pages
Olodumare, the orisha, and Ifá's oral library of verses, as Yoruba diviners and elders in West Africa and its diaspora describe them.
As the tradition holds it, Olodumare is the supreme being, distant from daily life and rarely approached directly. Between Olodumare and the world stand the orisha — powers who carry parts of that first force into weather, rivers, iron, wisdom, and fate.
One telling holds that the orisha descended to earth on an iron chain, Oduduwa among them, arriving first at Ile-Ife. Yoruba tradition names Ile-Ife the place where the world itself was created and where humanity began.
Orunmila, the orisha of wisdom and destiny, is held to have witnessed the creation of every person's fate before birth. Ifá, the divination system, is understood as the means of consulting that knowledge after it has been forgotten.
A babalawo, a trained diviner, spends years memorizing the verses that open under each of 256 possible signs, or odu. Using sixteen palm nuts or a divining chain, the babalawo casts a sign, then recites and interprets its verses for the person asking.
Colonial rule and missionary pressure pushed the tradition down for generations, and fewer young Yoruba trained in it. Diviners, scholars, and communities have since worked to record the verses and keep the apprenticeships alive.
In 2005, UNESCO proclaimed the Ifá divination system a masterpiece of humanity's oral heritage, later folded into its wider heritage list in 2008. The honor changed nothing about who keeps the tradition alive: that work stays with the diviners and their communities.