What are ikin?

Tradition described: Yorùbá / Ìṣẹ̀ṣe

What are ikin?

Ikin are palm nuts — the seeds of the oil palm — of which a diviner keeps sixteen (with, in many accounts, a seventeenth kept apart). They are the most sacred of the instruments and are consulted for the weightiest matters.

To form an Odù with them, the diviner holds the sixteen in one hand and tries, with the other, to grasp all of them at once. Either one nut or two are left behind in the first hand — any other number is discounted and the attempt repeated. Bascom records the rule: if one nut remains, two marks are made; if two remain, one mark is made. The mark is drawn with a finger in the powder on the divining tray. Eight successful attempts give the eight marks of a complete Odù, filling the right column and then the left.

So the ikin and the ọ̀pẹ̀lẹ̀ arrive at the same 256 figures by different mechanics: one throw of a chain, or eight passes of the nuts. The mark-making rule for the ikin is the reverse of what a newcomer expects — fewer nuts, more marks — and is one of the details worth checking against a source rather than intuition.

Editorially reviewed against the sources named

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