ORÚNMÌLÀ

God

Orunmila is the orisha of wisdom, knowledge and divination in Yoruba religion. A primordial deity present at the origins of the world, he bears the title Eleri Ipin, witness of destiny: he attends the moment when each soul chooses its destiny before Olodumare, and can therefore light the road of humans. It is in this capacity that he presides over the divinatory system of Ifa, which he transmitted to humanity. The Ifa corpus is organised into 256 signs, the odu, including 16 major signs, each associated with a vast body of oral poems, the ese Ifa, memorised by the diviner-priests, the babalawo, and in certain lineages by priestesses, the iyanifa. The Yoruba scholar Wande Abimbola devoted the reference study to this literary corpus. Orunmila works in close relation with Eshu, the messenger who carries the sacrifices and sees to the execution of the oracle's prescriptions. His cult, bound to Ile-Ife, the holy city of the Yoruba, was transmitted to the Americas with the Atlantic slave trade: Cuban Santería venerates him under the names Orula or Orunla, associated with Saint Francis of Assisi, and its babalawos perpetuate divination by Ifa, while in Brazil Candomblé honours his figure alongside the divinatory practice. The Ifa divination system is inscribed by UNESCO on the representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.