Deities
Orunmila
Also Known As Òrúnmìlà (Yoruba) Latin script. · Orula (Lucumi) Latin script. Cuban short form (also Orunla). · Orunla (Lucumi) Latin script.
Orisha Deities
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
Orunmila, also called Orunla or Orula, is the orisha of wisdom, knowledge and divination, and the patron of the Ifa oracle. Tradition holds that he was present when each person knelt before Olodumare to choose a destiny, and so alone among the orisha he knows what every soul came into the world to accomplish. This is why he speaks through Ifa: the diviner does not read Orunmila's opinion but recovers, through the oracle, the destiny the client has forgotten. He is often called the witness of fate. His priests are the babalawo, fathers of the secret, and in Cuba his cult passed intact into Lucumi practice, where he is paired with Saint Francis of Assisi. He is a cool, deliberate orisha, associated with the palm nuts used in divination and with the colours green and yellow.
Facts
Attestation
Veneration TodayActively venerated in a living tradition 1 HistoricityNot a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 3 Cult
Principal Cult CentreIle-Ife, seat of Ifa divination 1 Attributes and IconographyOrunmila is not typically rendered in anthropomorphic images; his presence within Ifa practice is instead represented by the sixteen palm nuts, or ikin, and the divining chain, or opele, which William Bascom describes as the god's primary material form rather than any carved figure. 1 Practice
Practice StatusEntered only through an initiated priesthood 3 Sources
Textual NoteWilliam Bascom's academic study Ifa Divination, drawing on decades of ethnographic fieldwork among Yoruba diviners, documents Orunmila as the deity said to have witnessed the creation of the world and so to hold the wisdom needed to interpret the sixteen principal Ifa signatures for consultants. 1 Attributions
Mythic AssociationOrunmila is identified in Yoruba cosmology as a witness present at the creation of the world, granted by Olodumare the gift of foresight so that he alone among the orishas could see the full pattern of a person's fate, and guides the babalawo priesthood in reading it through the sixteen principal Odu of Ifa divination, a structural fact about the corpus rather than any single verse's content. 1 Life
Associated RelicSourced to the subject's own accountOnce an individual is initiated as a babalawo, the atlas records they are given a pot containing various items, including palm nuts, believed to be the literal embodiment of Orunmila. 2 Position Profile
Key TextYoruba tradition holds that Orunmila, also called Ifa, was present as witness when Olodumare created the world, an epithet rendered Eleri Ipin, meaning witness of creation, which is cited as the doctrinal basis for his standing as the deity who can reveal a person's destiny. 3 Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern Use Function
Domain / Function Domain / FunctionProphecy and divination 1 Domain DetailSourced to the subject's own accountThe atlas records that in Yorubaland, divination gives priests unreserved access to the teachings of Orunmila. 2 Belief
TheologyHenotheistic: a supreme being above served lesser divinities 3 History
Historical NoteHistorical scholarship documents Orunmila as the deity of wisdom and destiny within Yoruba religion, whose veneration was carried across the Atlantic during the era of the transatlantic slave trade and preserved in diaspora communities across Cuba, Brazil and the wider Americas. 4 Origins
Origin of the NameOrunmila's name is generally parsed as combining orun, heaven or sky, with mila, to save or to be saved, an etymology read by Yoruba scholars as reflecting his role as the deity who reveals the way to a good destiny. 3 Learn More
The Witness to Destiny
Orunmila (also Orunla or, in Cuba, Orula) is the orisha of wisdom, knowledge and divination in the Yoruba tradition and its diaspora, and the patron of the great oracle called Ifa. His authority rests on a founding story: it is said that Orunmila was present when each human being knelt before Olodumare, the supreme being, to receive and to choose a destiny before being born into the world, and that he alone witnessed and remembers what was chosen. Because he knows the destiny that each person carries, he is the one who can be consulted to learn it, to discover what a person came into the world to do, what dangers lie in their path, and what offerings and conduct will keep them in right relation with their fate. He is therefore the master of Ifa, the profound Yoruba system of divination through which his wisdom is made available to the living.
Ifa divination itself rests on a highly structured combinatorial system: a trained babalawo, priest of Orunmila, casts a set of sixteen palm nuts or a specialised divining chain called an opele to generate one of two hundred and fifty six possible signs, the odu, each associated with a large body of memorised verses that the diviner draws on to address the client's question, a system whose binary-like structure has drawn comparison from some scholars to early mathematical notation quite independently developed within Yoruba intellectual tradition. In 2005 UNESCO recognised Ifa divination as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, formal international acknowledgement of the depth and sophistication of the practice Orunmila is said to preside over.
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.
Correspondences & Relations
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Yoruba oral tradition places Orunmila at Ile-Ife from the world's beginning.
Depicted In
Disciplines That Use This
The orisha of the oracle itself.
Identified with Saint
Afro-Cuban Lucumi correspondence: Orunmila, orisha of wisdom and the Ifa oracle, honored behind San Francisco de Asis (Saint Francis of Assisi).
Member Of
Offerings
Orunmila, called Agbonniregun at Ile-Ife, is the orisha of Ifa.
Related To
An ivory or wood tapping stick used by a babalawo to invoke Orunmila and call attention before divination.
Tradition names Orunmila as the source of Ifa. He is not an author of the verses and the corpus is not attributed to him as a text.
Same Figure, Narrative Entry
Worshipped In
Orunmila, orisha of wisdom and destiny, is the source consulted through Ifa divination.
Sources
1. Ifa Divination: Communication between Gods and Men in West Africa
William Bascom, Indiana University Press, 1969On Ifa divination and the role of the babalawoView the Source 2. Ifá (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, WikipediaBabalawos sectionQuote, Babalawos section
Once an individual is initiated as a babalawo they are given a pot containing various items, including palm nuts, which is believed to be the literal embodiment of Orula
2. Ifá (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, WikipediaBelief, Theology sectionQuote, Belief, Theology section
In Yorubaland, divination gives priests unreserved access to the teachings of Ọćrúnmìlà
3. Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief
4. Mapping Yoruba Networks: Power and Agency in the Making of Transnational Communities
5. Santeria Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion
David H. Brown, University of Chicago Press, 2003
Ifa: An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus
Wande Abimbola, Oxford University Press, 1976On Orunmila and destiny
Ifa: An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus
Wande Abimbola, Oxford University Press, 1976On Orunmila, Ifa, and the Ifa literary corpus
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source Sixteen Cowries: Yoruba Divination from Africa to the New World
William Bascom, Indiana University Press, 1980
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.