What are ìbò?

Tradition described: Yorùbá / Ìṣẹ̀ṣe

What are ìbò?

Ìbò are the “determinants”: small objects that let a diviner narrow a reading to one of two alternatives — most simply, a yes or a no, or a favourable outcome against an unfavourable one. The commonly documented pair is two cowrie shells, standing for the affirmative, and a piece of bone, standing for the negative; other pairs are used for other alternatives.

In the procedure Abimbola describes, the client takes the two objects and holds one in each hand without the diviner seeing which is where. The diviner then casts the ọ̀pẹ̀lẹ̀ twice. Which of the two resulting Odù is the senior decides which hand is chosen — the first cast's or the second's — and the object in that hand gives the answer.

That step depends on knowing, for any two of the 256 Odù, which is senior. That order is part of a lineage's transmitted knowledge; it is not the same everywhere, and it is not a calculation. This site does not implement ìbò for that reason: it has no reviewed seniority table, and it will not sort the Odù by a formula and call the result tradition. The architecture for a reviewed table exists; the feature stays off until one does.

Editorially reviewed against the sources named

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