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The machinery Yorùbá uses to make new words, and a worked, confidence-flagged examination of the etymologies of the key religious and philosophical terms.

Guide to the eleven files covering Ifá as divination system, literary corpus, binary structure, profession, and living practice.

Ifá is a Yorùbá system for reaching a decision by casting a signature, retrieving the memorised verses filed under it, and reasoning from the precedents they contain.

Each Odù is two columns of four marks, every mark single or double, giving four bits per column, eight bits in total, and exactly 256 possible signatures.

All 256 Odù listed with signatures, the 16 principal Odù in the competing ranking orders, and an honest account of where the sources disagree.

Esu as orisa in his own right: the messenger who carries sacrifice, the keeper of the crossroads, the activator of ase, the one who tests. The Satan conflation is handled in 04-cosmology; this page is about what Esu actually is.

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.

The history and structure of Yoruba-derived religion in Cuba, from the cabildos de nación to the modern casa-templo, including initiation, Ifá, diloggún, the saint correspondences and the traditions it is wrongly conflated with.

How Fon and Ewe Vodún relates to Yoruba orisa tradition, why Vodún is its own system and not Yoruba religion renamed, what Fa and Ifa share and where they diverge, and the Ketu corridor that carried both across the Atlantic.

What Ifá is, how the divination actually works step by step, how the binary structure produces 256 addresses into a memorised corpus, and what is true and false in the claim that it is an ancient computer.

The Yoruba people who came back, from Sierra Leone and from Brazil and Cuba, and what they built in Lagos: the mosques, the Brazilian quarter, the newspapers, and a babaláwo who carried Ifá back across the Atlantic.

How Yorùbá warfare was bound up with the worship of Ògún, pre-campaign Ifá divination, herbal and spiritual war medicine, and iron oaths sealing military alliances, and how tradition, academic history and colonial missionary sources read that ritual dimension three different ways.

How divination functions as a diagnostic instrument and what kind of reasoning it supports, and Hallen and Sodipo's finding that Yoruba herbalists distinguish knowledge from belief by a criterion stricter than the English one.

Twenty-one Yorùbá proverbs about the Ifá oracle, its priests, and divination, showing how the profession, its discipline, and its authority are talked about in everyday speech.

A comprehensive scholarly examination of Èṣù across Yoruba cosmology, oral literature, ritual iconography, regional cult organization, and transatlantic diaspora traditions.

The cosmology, mythological narratives, priesthood structure, sacred geography, and Atlantic diaspora trajectories of Ọ̀rúnmìlà, the Yoruba divinity of wisdom and witness of destiny.

Scholarly assessment of Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti, covering the development of Afrobeat, anti-authoritarian politics, the 1977 Kalakuta raid, gender controversies, and documented historical records versus oral narratives.

The life, academic scholarship, spiritual office, and global cultural impact of Wande Abimbola, the pioneer of academic Ifa literary studies and Awise Awo Agbaye.

A comprehensive analysis of Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí's foundational critique of gender universality, her thesis on seniority in pre-colonial Ọ̀yọ́-Yorùbá society, and the major scholarly debates surrounding her work.

The annual Yorùbá festival of Ifá divination, renewal of cosmological covenants, communal prognostication, and royal patronage.

Systematic guide to the sixteen principal Odù of the Ifá corpus, outlining their metaphysical principles, regional seniority debates, literary structures, and suggested reading paths.

Ọ̀yẹ̀kú Méjì is the second principal Odù of the Ifá corpus, serving as the cosmic, feminine, and nocturnal complement to Èjì Ogbè while governing the mitigation of death and misfortune.

The third principal sign of the Ifá divination corpus, its geomantic structure, regional ranking variations, textual themes, and published oral literature.

The fourth principal sign of the Ifá divination corpus, its binary structure, structural and poetic analyses, thematic core of fertility and containment, and comparative placement across West African and diaspora traditions.

The fifth principal sign of the Ifá literary corpus, characterized by its binary pattern of two single marks over two double marks, associated in published scholarship with themes of spiritual foresight, character reform, sacrifice, and physical or spiritual vigilance.

A comprehensive scholarly analysis of the principal Odù Ifá Ọ̀bàrà Méjì, detailing its binary notation, regional ranking sequences, published academic transcriptions, and primary thematic motifs.

The binary signature, regional ranking disputes, published verses, and scholarly interpretations of Okanran Meji within the Ifa divination corpus.

A comprehensive scholarly analysis of the ninth principal sign of the Ifá corpus, examining its binary structure, regional rankings, mythological associations, and published verses.

A scholarly analysis of the Odù Ifá Ọ̀sá Méjì, detailing its binary sign, regional rankings, mythological covenants with the Àjẹ́, and published poetic corpus.

A comprehensive scholarly analysis of the twelfth principal Odù in the Yoruba Ifá corpus, examining its structural notation, sequence disputes, thematic corpus, and published verses.