What is an Odù?

Tradition described: Yorùbá / Ìṣẹ̀ṣe

What is an Odù?

An Odù is a sign of the Ifá system: a figure of eight marks arranged in two vertical columns of four, each mark either single (|) or double (||). The right column is read first and gives the first half of the name; the left column gives the second. Sixteen figures are possible for one column, so 16 × 16 = 256 Odù are possible in all.

The sixteen in which both columns are the same are the principal Odù — Ojú Odù, each called a Méjì, “twin” — and they head the corpus. The remaining 240, in which the columns differ, are the combined Odù, Àmúlù, sometimes called the children of the sixteen. Every Odù has a name, and each carries a body of verses; the sixteen carry by far the most.

Two things about an Odù are easy to confuse and are kept apart on these pages. Its identity is its pattern, and that is fixed and universal — Ogbe on the right with Oyeku on the left is the same figure in Ifẹ̀, in Ọ̀yọ́ and in Havana. Its place in the order of the corpus is a matter of lineage and region, and differs between them; the sequence used here is the southwestern one Abimbola records, and it is labelled as such.

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