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What is an Ọpọ́n Ifá?

The carved divination tray on which the marks of the ikin are drawn.

Ifá is a living Yorùbá religious, philosophical and divinatory tradition. What follows is for education and exploration: the structure of the sign system, and what scholars have recorded about how it is used. A traditional Ifá consultation involves trained practitioners and a transmitted body of knowledge that software cannot reproduce, and nothing on these pages stands in for one.

Tradition described: Yorùbá / Ìṣẹ̀ṣe

What is an Ọpọ́n Ifá?

The Ọpọ́n Ifá is the divining tray: a flat wooden board, round or rectangular, with a raised carved border and a plain centre. Its surface is dusted with divining powder, and it is in that powder that the diviner draws the marks the ikin produce.

The border is carved, and its carving is not merely decorative. A face on the border — commonly identified in the scholarship as Èṣù, the divinity of the crossroads and of communication between the human and the divine — marks the head of the tray, which is oriented away from the diviner; the rest of the border may carry figures and patterns that vary by carver and region. Trays are among the best-known objects of Yorùbá art in museum collections, and are studied as art in their own right.

A tray is not used with the ọ̀pẹ̀lẹ̀, whose pattern is read from the chain itself. It belongs to the ikin.

Sources for this article

  • William Bascom, Ifa Divination: Communication Between Gods and Men in West Africa (1969), chapter 3 — page reference not yet checked

Editorially reviewed against the sources named

Next on the path: What is ìyẹ̀rọ̀sùn?All articlesThe House of Ifá

The House of Ifá is an educational section. Satin Cradle is not a babaláwo, an ìyánífá, a priest, an initiated practitioner or an oracle, and does not offer consultations. Nothing here is needed for any practice.

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