Traditional Yoruba religion holds Olodumare as the remote, singular supreme being, creator and ultimate authority over destiny, approached not directly but through a pantheon of orisha, each governing a domain of the world: Ogun over iron and the forge, Sango over thunder and royal authority, Oshun over rivers and fertility, Yemoja over the sea and motherhood, Obatala over creation and moral purity, and Eshu as trickster and guardian of the crossroads. Orunmila, tied to Ifa divination, is the orisha of wisdom and destiny who witnessed creation and can therefore be consulted about it. E. Bolaji Idowu's Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief remains the standard study of this supreme being.
Ifa divination is the primary way of consulting Orunmila: a trained babalawo casts a divining chain or palm nuts to identify one of two hundred and fifty six Odu, each carrying its own memorized verses and prescribed remedies, a corpus William Bascom documented in Sixteen Cowries as it traveled with enslaved Yoruba to the Americas and re-formed there as Cuban Santeria, Brazilian Candomble and related traditions that still address prayer to Yoruba-named orisha far from West Africa. At home, the Ogboni society, studied by Peter Morton-Williams among the Oyo Yoruba, historically combined religious, judicial and political authority as a council of elders bound to the earth cult.
Religious life among the Yoruba today is plural: Islam arrived from the north well before colonial rule, and the indigenous Aladura churches J. D. Y. Peel documented, combining Protestant scripture with prophecy and healing in a Yoruba idiom, have become the majority affiliation for many communities. Traditional orisha worship, Islam and Christianity coexist within extended families rather than replacing one another.