Ifa, the Babalawo, and the Memory of the Tradition

Ifa is one of the great intellectual achievements of West Africa. It works through a vast body of oral literature, the Ifa corpus, organised under 256 figures called odu, each attached to a large number of verses, myths, proverbs, histories and prescriptions, that a diviner must learn by heart over many years. The priest of Ifa, the babalawo ("father of secrets"), casts sacred palm-nuts or a divining chain to arrive at the odu that speaks to the questioner's situation, then recites and interprets its verses; UNESCO has recognised Ifa as a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity.

Through this system Orunmila is, in effect, the keeper of the accumulated wisdom of the tradition, the orisha in whom its memory and its counsel are held. Carried to the Americas by enslaved Yoruba, Ifa and its patron survive strongly in Cuba, where the babalawo (there babalao) serves Orula, and in Brazil, and Ifa is also practised as a living tradition across Yorubaland today. These are living religions, and Orunmila is among their most revered orisha, the witness of each person's destiny and the master of the oracle through which that destiny may be sought and set right.