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694 documents across 38 sections. Filter by section, reader level, confidence or tag.
Ori as physical head, inner head, personal destiny and personal divinity, why the sources rank ori above the orisa, and the practice of ibori.
The three Yoruba terms for destiny, how destiny is received, and the sustained scholarly argument over whether Yoruba destiny is fatalistic, with the case that it is negotiable rather than fixed.
An analysis of human destiny in Yoruba metaphysics, examining the tripartite taxonomy of destiny, the role of human striving and moral character, and how self-inflicted ruin complicates fatalism.
Orunmila as orisa rather than as a divination system: who he is, why he alone witnessed the choosing of destinies, his relationship to Esu and to Olodumare, and his cult. The Ifa corpus itself is covered in 05-ifa.
Destiny, character, the inner head, what a person is, and how Yorùbá ethics works, in plain language.
Forty Yorùbá proverbs on destiny, the allotted orí, and what a person can and cannot change about their lot, each with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation it is spoken in.
Forty-two Yorùbá proverbs on the head as body part and as destiny, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.
Fifty Yorùbá proverbs on ọ̀run-àpáàdì, orí and àyànmọ́ (fate and destiny), drawn from Owomoyela's dedicated section "On fate (and reciprocity)," showing destiny as chosen before birth, unappealable, yet compatible with real human effort.
Destiny in Yoruba thought is not a script written for you by someone else; it is a portion you yourself chose, kneeling, before you were born, and then forgot. That single fact changes what the word "destiny" is allowed to mean here.
Yoruba destiny can be worked on. Sacrifice, effort and character all act on it, and the existence of an entire religious economy built to do exactly that is itself the strongest evidence against reading this tradition as fatalistic.
A clarification of the distinct constituents of personhood, destiny, and moral agency in Yoruba thought that are routinely conflated in English translations.