Odinani arranges its beings in tiers, and almost all religious work happens below the top one. Chukwu, the great chi, is the source of everything and the guarantor of the moral order, but receives no temple, no priesthood and no regular cult of his own. He is invoked in oaths, in personal names such as Chukwuemeka, meaning God has done much, and at the end of prayers that begin elsewhere. Below him stand the alusi, sometimes rendered arusi or agbara, deities each bound to a domain and usually to a place: Ala, the earth, who is the most important of them; Amadioha, thunder and lightning and the swift punisher of concealed wrongdoing; Anyanwu, the sun; Idemili, associated with water and with the python; Agwu, the force behind divination and, when it seizes a person unasked, behind madness. An alusi has a shrine, an attendant priest, a set of prohibitions and a temper. It can be neglected, offended, appeased and, in the recorded practice of more than one community, abandoned outright when it stopped delivering.
Between the living person and all of this stands the chi. Each person is understood to have one, a personal spirit portion that is theirs alone and that shares the credit and blame for how their life goes. A person of unusual good fortune is said to have a strong chi, and a person who works hard and gets nowhere is said to be arguing with one. Because the chi is personal, Odinani never resolves into a single doctrine of destiny; it holds two things at once, that a life is given a shape and that a person is answerable for what they make of it.
The dead form the last tier. The ndichie, the ancestors who died well and were buried with the proper rites, remain members of their lineage rather than departing it.