Odu Ifa

The Odu Ifa is the sacred text of the spiritual and ethical tradition of Ifa that has its origins in ancient Yorubaland, which is located in modern Nigeria. It holds a unique position among African religions as the only one that survived the enslavement holocaust and colonialism and developed on an international level. In fact, Ifa is found in modified forms and under various names in numerous countries. For example, there is Lekumi in Cuba, [Page 475]Puerto Rico, and the United States; Voudun in Haiti; Shango in Cuba; and Candomblé in Brazil. Ifa also retains its name and orthodox form in Nigeria and has begun to grow in the United States in orthodox and modified forms. Thus, the Odu Ifa remains the spiritual and ethical source for practicing an ancient living tradition for communities around the world. Moreover, Odu Ifa is one of the great sacred texts of the world and a classic of African and world literature. Like all great sacred texts, it includes a wide range of literary forms and subjects ranging from divination, art, literature, and medicine to history, spirituality, and moral instructions for daily life.

The word Odu is open to various interpretations, but in the Kawaida tradition, Odu is translated as “Baskets of Sacred Wisdom.” Thus, the name Odu Ifa can be translated as “Baskets of Sacred Wisdom of Ifa.” This name evolves from the Ifa creation narrative in which Olodumare, God, gives orisha (divine spirits who aid God) and humans baskets of sacred wisdom to make the world good. There are 256 odu (baskets, chapters) and innumerable verses called ese. Each chapter or odu is a container of sacred wisdom for use by humans to make the world and life in it good.

The name Ifa has three interrelated meanings: It is at once the name of a corpus of moral and spiritual wisdom, an intricate system of divination that is contained in that body of knowledge, and an alternate name of Orunmila, the sage, master teacher, and “divine witness to creation” who taught this sacred wisdom. Abimbola describes the structure of each ese Ifa or verse of Ifa as having a maximum of eight parts. These include

• 1.
  names of priests involved in past divinations,
• 2.
  clients named for whom the divination is performed,
• 3.
  reasons for the divination,
• 4.
  instructions from the divinations to priest and client,
• 5.
  compliance or noncompliance by the client,
• 6.
  consequences to the client based on compliance or noncompliance,
• 7.
  reactions of joy or sorrow by the client, and
• 8.
  a moral lesson drawn from the narrative.