A Conceptual Map

These are the twenty concepts that most of the rest of the corpus is built on. Each entry gives the term with full diacritics, a literal gloss where the etymology is documented, a short definition, and a pointer to the section that treats it properly. The definitions here are deliberately compressed and every one of them is an oversimplification; they exist so that a reader encountering the term in a longer file already has a place to put it.

The order runs from the individual outward: personhood first, then the structure of the world, then the divinities, then the systems of knowledge, then the forms of speech, then social institutions.

Personhood and destiny

Orí (literally: head). The inner head, a person's individual destiny and the personal spiritual principle that carries it, distinguished from orí òde, the physical head. In Yorùbá thought orí is chosen before birth and is the single most important factor in a person's life, which is why a common formulation holds that a person's orí is their own personal divinity and that no òrìṣà can help a person against their orí 1. Full treatment: cosmology.

Àyànmọ́ (literally: that which is chosen and affixed, from yàn, to choose, and mọ́, to fasten). What was allotted or chosen for a person before birth, usually translated as destiny or fate. It is not simple determinism, because the tradition holds that àyànmọ́ can be improved, damaged or partly forfeited by conduct, character and the correct performance of ẹbọ, which is what makes divination worth doing 1. Full treatment: cosmology.

Ìwà (character). A person's character or moral quality, and the central concept in Yorùbá ethics. The Ifá corpus repeatedly holds ìwà to be more decisive than wealth, than sacrifice and even than a favourable destiny, and the compound ìwà pẹ̀lẹ́, gentle or good character, names the ethical ideal 2. Full treatment: cosmology.

Ọmọlúàbí (commonly analysed as ọmọ tí Olú-ìwà bí, the child begotten by the chief of character, though the etymology is contested). The person of full moral standing, the Yorùbá ideal of a well-formed human being. The virtues associated with it in the literature include ọ̀rọ̀ sísọ, competent and truthful speech, ìtẹríba, respect, òtító, truth, ìwà rere, good character, ìwà ìrẹ̀lẹ̀, humility, akínkanjú, courage, iṣẹ́ àṣekára, diligent work, and ọpọlọ pípé, soundness of mind 2. Full treatment: cosmology and social.

Àṣẹ (commonly glossed as power, authority, or the capacity to bring about). The force by which things are brought into effect, present in speech, in persons, in objects and in the òrìṣà, and derived ultimately from Ọlọ́dùmarè. It is also the word said at the end of a prayer, in the sense of let it be so, which is the same concept applied to the utterance itself: a word with àṣẹ is a word that takes effect 1. Full treatment: cosmology.

The structure of the world

Ọ̀run (the beyond, the sky-world). The invisible domain, home of Ọlọ́dùmarè, the òrìṣà and the ancestors, and the place from which a person comes at birth and to which they return at death. It is not heaven in the Christian sense: it is not a reward, it is not opposed to a place of punishment, and traffic between it and the visible world is continuous rather than final 1. Full treatment: cosmology.

Ayé (the world, the earth). The visible world of the living, understood as continuous with ọ̀run rather than separated from it. The pair ọ̀run and ayé is the basic Yorùbá cosmological structure, often figured as a closed calabash whose two halves meet, and the traffic between them, of persons at birth and death, of ẹbọ carried up, of àṣẹ coming down, is what most Yorùbá religious practice is concerned with managing 1. Full treatment: cosmology.

Ọlọ́dùmarè (etymology contested; commonly analysed as containing olú, chief or owner, with the remainder variously explained). The supreme being, source of existence and of àṣẹ. Ọlọ́dùmarè has no images, no temples, no dedicated priesthood and receives no sacrifice, and whether the resulting structure is properly called monotheism is actively contested among scholars, with Ìdòwú's 1962 term "diffused monotheism" the most influential proposal and also the most criticised 3. Also called Ọlọ́run (owner of the sky). Full treatment: cosmology.

The divinities

Òrìṣà. The powers through whom the world is dealt with in practice, standing between Ọlọ́dùmarè and human beings. Some are understood as having lived as human beings whose àṣẹ persists, notably Ṣàngó, remembered as a ruler of Ọ̀yọ́, and others as never having been human; the tradition does not resolve these into one category, and the boundary between an ancestor of great standing and an òrìṣà is not sharply drawn 1. Full treatment: òrìṣà.

Èṣù (also Ẹlẹ́gbára, Ẹlẹ́gbáa). The messenger and enforcer: the one who carries ẹbọ from ayé to ọ̀run, who stands at the crossroads and the threshold, who tests, disrupts and enforces reciprocity, and whose participation is structurally required for Ifá divination to work. Èṣù is not the devil and Yorùbá cosmology has no devil; the identification was made by Bible translators in the mid-nineteenth century and is the single most consequential mistranslation in Yorùbá religious history 4. Full treatment: òrìṣà, and the file on the demonization in this section.

Knowledge and divination

Ifá. The Yorùbá divination system and the body of knowledge it indexes, associated with the òrìṣà Ọ̀rúnmìlà, who in the tradition witnessed the choosing of destinies and therefore knows what was chosen. UNESCO, which inscribed it in 2005 and 2008, describes it as making use of "an extensive corpus of texts and mathematical formulas" and notes that it "does not rely on a person having oracular powers but rather on a system of signs that are interpreted by a diviner" 5 Full treatment: Ifá.

Odù. The 256 signs of the Ifá system, each a distinct binary figure and each the address of a body of verse. Sixteen principal Odù, generated by four binary positions each, combine in pairs to give 256, and the Odù are ranked in a fixed order of seniority that the diviner must know 56. Full treatment: Ifá.

Ẹsẹ (literally: leg, foot; here, a verse). The individual verses of the Ifá corpus, each attached to an Odù, each typically narrating a precedent case: someone consulted Ifá, was told to do something, did or did not do it, and this was the outcome. UNESCO gives roughly eight hundred ẹsẹ per Odù and notes that the total is unknown and constantly increasing, which makes the corpus open rather than closed 5. Full treatment: Ifá.

Babaláwo (literally: father of the secret, from bàbá, father, ní, having, and awo, secret or mystery). The Ifá priest and diviner, trained over years in the memorisation and interpretation of the corpus. UNESCO renders the title as "the priest's father" and identifies the ageing of the priesthood and the modest means available for training successors as the principal threat to the tradition's survival 5. The corresponding title for women in Ifá is ìyánífá. Full treatment: Ifá.

Ẹbọ (offering, sacrifice). What is given in response to what a divination prescribes: ordinarily kola nut, palm oil, water, cooked food, cloth or money, and in larger cases a fowl or a goat. The logic is reciprocity and the maintenance of relationship rather than the appeasement of a hostile power, and the same logic governs dealings with elders, lineages and hosts 1. Full treatment: cosmology and òrìṣà.

Forms of speech

Oríkì (commonly analysed as orí, head, plus kì, to praise or salute). Praise poetry attached to a person, a lineage, a town, an òrìṣà or an animal, naming its attributes and its history in a dense allusive form. Oríkì is a primary historical source and a primary literary genre at once, and it is performed rather than recited, most often by women in the case of lineage oríkì 7. Full treatment: language.

Ìtàn (narrative, account, history). The narrative genre covering what would in English be split between history, myth and story, without that split being marked in the Yorùbá term. Ìtàn carries dynastic claims, town origins, òrìṣà accounts and the narrative content of the Ifá verses, and it is performed by people with positions to defend, which is why this corpus treats it as evidence of a particular kind rather than as either fact or fiction 7. Full treatment: history and language.

Òwe (proverb). The Yorùbá proverb corpus, deployed in argument, judgment, teaching and negotiation as a compressed body of reasoning rather than as decorative wisdom. The best-known proverb about proverbs states their function: òwe lẹṣin ọ̀rọ̀, the proverb is the horse of speech, meaning that when speech is lost the proverb is used to find it 7. Full treatment: language.

Social and institutional

Egúngún (commonly analysed as related to egun, bone, and in its ordinary sense the masquerade). The ancestral masquerade: the ancestors returning in visible, costumed and danced form, at festival and at funerals, under the control of a masquerade society. Egúngún is simultaneously a religious institution, a judicial one in some of its forms, and a performance genre, and the film convention of the masquerade as a demon has no relation to what it is 1. Full treatment: òrìṣà and arts.

Ilé (house, home, land, ground, lineage). One of the most load-bearing words in the language, covering the physical compound, the family that occupies it, the lineage that owns it, and by extension the ground itself and the town. Yorùbá social organisation is built on the ilé as the unit of belonging, property, obligation and identity, which is why displacement from an ilé is a religious problem as well as a social one 8. Full treatment: social.

Ọba (king, ruler). The sacred ruler of a Yorùbá town, holding an office understood as descending from Odùduwà through a recognised line, installed by rites that make him more than an administrator. Yorùbá kingship was constitutionally constrained, with councils that could refuse, remove and in the Ọ̀yọ́ case compel a king's death, and colonial indirect rule removed most of those checks while increasing the ọba's power, which is the origin of much of the office's modern shape 9. Full treatment: social and history.

How these fit together

A rough sketch, offered as scaffolding and not as doctrine. A person comes from ọ̀run into ayé bringing an orí chosen there, which sets their àyànmọ́. What they make of it depends on ìwà, character, which they are responsible for, and on àṣẹ, which they can accumulate and expend. When something goes wrong, or a decision matters, they consult Ifá, whose babaláwo casts to find the Odù that addresses their case and recites the ẹsẹ that gives the precedent, which usually prescribes an ẹbọ. Èṣù carries it. The òrìṣà of their lineage and their town, the egúngún of their ancestors, and the ọba of their ilé are the standing relationships within which all of this happens.

That description leaves out most of what matters and every element of it is contested in some way by someone. Its purpose is to give the terms a shape relative to each other, so that the fuller treatments have somewhere to land.