How the sixteen-cowrie system, kola divination, and the Fon, Ewe, Cuban and Brazilian relatives relate to Ifá, and why formal similarity is weaker evidence than it looks.
Ifá sits inside a family of divination systems that share structure to varying degrees, and mapping the family properly requires distinguishing three quite different relationships: systems that are Ifá under another name, systems that share Ifá's formal structure but are historically separate, and systems that are structurally simpler and do a different job. Confusing these is the main source of error in popular accounts.
Bascom supplies the analytic tool that makes the mapping honest, and it is worth stating before any of the descriptions because it constrains all of them.
When two divination systems both have sixteen four-position figures, that looks like sixteen points of correspondence. Bascom shows it is three.
"The identity of the sixteen figures is a necessary and inevitable derivative from three principles: (1) the figures involve four items; (2) each of them can take two different forms; and (3) their sequence is significant. Given these rules, sixteen and only sixteen basic figures are possible. Accordingly, this identity constitutes only three points of similarity, rather than sixteen, and two of these principles are shared by forms of divination that are widespread in Africa"
This matters for every argument from formal resemblance, including the geomancy transmission question in file 07. Sixteen figures is not an improbable coincidence requiring historical explanation; it is what you automatically get from four two-state items in a fixed order. The improbable thing would be shared names, shared verses, or shared interpretations, and those are the evidence to look for.
Bascom then shows how widely the underlying principles are distributed. The first two principles alone characterise the common African methods of casting four cowries or four sections of a kola or bitter kola nut, where each piece falls face up or face down but sequence is not controlled, so only five outcomes are possible: four, three, two, one or zero facing up .
Adding the third principle, sequence, is what generates sixteen. This can be done by casting the four items one at a time, or by tying them to a string, "which is essentially what is done in the case of the Ifa divining chain" It is also what the hakata divination of the Karanga, Zezuru, Korekore and other Shona groups does, along with some San groups, the Venda, Ila, Tonga, Pedi, Leya, Rhodesian Ndebele and others in southern Africa, where four marked pieces of bone or wood are identified as man, boy, woman and girl and read heads and tails in that order, again yielding sixteen figures equatable with those marked in single and double lines .
So the sixteen-figure structure arises independently across a great deal of Africa from a simple and natural design choice.
Bascom addresses the comparison most readers arrive with, and the numbers settle it.
The I Ching involves the second and third principles and uses figures composed of single and broken lines, "however, as it is based on three items rather than four, there are only eight basic figures or 'trigrams' and sixty-four derivative figures or 'hexagrams,' whereas Ifá and the other African systems involve sixteen quadragrams and 256 derivative octagrams"
That is the essential difference and it is arithmetical rather than cultural. The I Ching is base 2 with three positions doubled to six; Ifá is base 2 with four positions doubled to eight. 2^6 = 64 against 2^8 = 256. The two systems are analogous in kind and different in size, and neither can be derived from the other by any documented route.
Bascom does note one intriguing procedural echo: the I Ching figures are obtained by tossing three coins or by manipulating forty-nine yarrow stalks "which are counted off by fours in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Islamic sand-cutting" He offers this as a resemblance, not a derivation.
He adds a genuinely surprising data point: as far away as Micronesia, a knot divination system also based on counting off by fours produces sixteen basic figures and 256 derivative figures . If a system with Ifá's exact numbers arose independently in Micronesia, then Ifá's numbers are not by themselves evidence of contact with anything.
Ẹẹ́rìndínlógún (ẹẹ́rìndínlógún, sixteen, literally four-less-than-twenty; also owó mẹ́rìndínlógún, sixteen cowries) is the second major Yorùbá divination system and the one most important in the diaspora.
Sixteen cowries are cast on the ground together and the diviner counts how many land mouth up. Bascom: "as in casting four cowries, n + 1 figures are possible because sequence is of no significance; in this case there are seventeen figures, with zero to sixteen cowries facing mouth up"
Seventeen figures, not 256. This is the crucial structural point and it is routinely misreported. Because sequence does not matter, the outcome is a count rather than a pattern, so the system is not binary in Ifá's sense at all. Ifá's third principle is absent. The result is a much smaller address space, and one whose outcomes are not uniformly probable: getting eight cowries up is far likelier than getting zero or sixteen, whereas every Ifá figure is equally likely.
The systems overlap in vocabulary. Some of the seventeen figures "are known by names of the basic Ifa figures, like Odi or Edi, Irosun, Ọ̀wọ̀nrin, Ọ̀kanran, Ogunda, Ọsa, Ọ̀ṣẹ and Ofun; and some have the names of the derivative figures, such as Eji Ogbe and Ogbeṣẹ (Ogbe Ọ̀ṣẹ)" Some of the same names are also used for the five figures from a cast of four cowries .
This is the kind of evidence that does carry weight, in Bascom's own terms: shared names are not forced by the mathematics.
Like Ifá, the seventeen figures carry memorised verses containing myths and folktales that guide interpretation . This is what separates Ẹẹ́rìndínlógún from the simpler methods and puts it in the same class as Ifá as a corpus-bearing system.
The Yorùbá account, including from Ifá diviners themselves, is that the cowrie system derives from Ifá. Bascom: "This method is regarded as a derivative from Ifa by many Yoruba, including the Ifa diviners, who cite a myth according to which the method is based on what the River Goddess Ọ̀ṣun learned about divination while she was living with Ifa"
That account comes from a system with an interest in its own seniority, and there is a serious counter-position. Wande Abimbola argues that "Ọ̀ṣun has much more to do with the origins of Ifa divination than the babalawo are ready to admit," Ọ̀ṣun having been the original possessor of the bag of wisdom (apò ìwà) from which the Ifá tradition almost certainly arose . On that reading the priority runs the other way, or at least the borrowing is not one-directional.
Confidence: contested. The tradition's own account and a leading scholar who is also an initiate disagree.
The difference in standing is documented and consequential.
Bascom: "Of all the methods of divination employed by the Yoruba, Ifa is regarded as the most important and the most reliable" And on access, the distinction is sharp: "whereas Ifa is open to the public in the sense that the babalawo are consulted by the worshipers of any deity, divination with sixteen cowries is usually performed on ritual occasions within the cults of particular deities" Ifá is a general service; the cowries belong to specific ọ̀rìṣà cults.
The gender and diaspora picture reverses the ranking. Ẹẹ́rìndínlógún "is simpler than Ifa divination and is held in less esteem in Nigeria, but in the Americas it is more important than Ifa because it is more widely known and more frequently employed," attributed to its relative simplicity, to the popularity of Ṣàngó, Yemọja, Ọ̀ṣun and the other ọ̀rìṣà associated with it, and to the fact that it can be practised by both men and women, who outnumber men in these cults, whereas only men can practise Ifá .
That last clause is Bascom's own position on gender in Ifá, which file 06 shows to be disputed.
Ogunnaike sets out the structural symmetry, which is elegant. Ẹẹ́rìndínlógún is owned by Ọ̀ṣun, the quintessential female òrìṣà, and is completely open to women, though men may practise it too . It is believed Ọ̀ṣun received it from a man, her husband Ọ̀rúnmìlà, and the tradition is gendered female to the extent that practitioners, even male ones, are understood as wives of Ọ̀ṣun . Ogunnaike's reading: the two systems are "quite reminiscent of the Chinese yin-yang symbol in that Ifa and Ẹẹrindinlogun are clearly associated with one gender, but contain a central aspect that is intimately linked to the other half of the whole" Each system is gendered and each contains something of the other gender at its core.
Bascom's Sixteen Cowries (1980) is the standard study .
The simplest of the Yorùbá methods and by far the most widely used, because it requires no specialist.
Obì àbàtà, the four-lobed kola nut, is split and the lobes cast, each falling face up or face down. Since sequence is not controlled, five outcomes are possible . The same applies to casting four cowries or four sections of bitter kola .
Bascom is direct about the consequence: these three methods "are restricted in what they can forecast, primarily because they lack the verses associated with Ifa and the casting of sixteen cowries" Without a verse corpus, a divination system can answer questions but cannot deliver content. Obì gives yes, no, and a few graded answers. It cannot give a case.
This is the clearest illustration of the argument running through this section: the corpus is what makes Ifá what it is, not the binary mechanism. Obì shares the two-state principle and is a different order of thing entirely because it has no literature attached.
Practitioner sources describe the four lobes as two male (ako méjì) and two female (abo méjì), with readings depending on the combination of open and closed lobes . The published scholarly literature on obì divination is thinner than the practitioner literature, and I have not found a peer-reviewed treatment matching Bascom's on Ifá. Confidence: medium on the detailed readings; high on the five-outcome structure, which is Bascom's.
A distinct divination system found among the Yorùbá but very unevenly. Bascom notes there are "only occasional Agbigba diviners among the Yoruba outside the Yagba area" , placing its Yorùbá stronghold in the northeast, on the Yorùbá/Ẹ̀gbọ́n frontier.
Agbigba is related to the Igbo Afá system and to divination practices across the Niger, and it is generally described as using a chain similar to the ọ̀pẹ̀lẹ̀ with a different figure set and different interpretive material. I did not find a source of Bascom's or Abimbola's standard giving its structure in detail, and I am not going to reconstruct it from practitioner material. Confidence: contested, in the sense that Agbigba is real and documented as existing but under-described in the literature available to me.
Note the name overlap with Igbo Afa (also Afá), which is a separate matter from Ewe Afa discussed below. The Nsukka Igbo Afa system has been studied in its own right and is a distinct tradition, not an Ifá dialect.
Bascom records that among the Yorùbá both sand-cutting and the manipulation of seeds occur, as at Siwah, among the Gbari and in Madagascar, "but here sand-cutting is a distinct system of divination and in all probability a very recent introduction"
This is the Islamic ʿilm al-raml practised alongside Ifá rather than merged with it, and Bascom's judgment that it is recent among the Yorùbá is relevant to the transmission debate in file 07: the sand-cutting the Yorùbá actually practise is not the ancestor of Ifá but a later, separately identifiable import.
He also notes that since the end of the nineteenth-century Yorùbá wars against Muslim neighbours the number of Muslim àlùfáà has increased, though still not comparable to the number of babaláwo .
These are the cases where the relationship is closest, and where the system is substantially Ifá under a different name.
Fa is the Fọ̀n name for both the divinity of wisdom and the divination system, practised in what is now Benin. The system was brought to the Fọ̀n by Yorùbá Ifá priests during trade and warfare between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries .
The mechanism is Dahomey's rivalry with Ọ̀yọ́, which produced heavy religious and cultural exchange, with Dahomey deliberately incorporating Yorùbá art, deities and culture including Ifá divination into its existing beliefs . Maupoil's position, as reported, is that scholars generally accept Fa was not the result of conquest .
Bascom's data support close identity at the level of names: figure names are standard "with some modifications in pronunciations and spelling" among the Fọ̀n . Order is another matter, and only 4 of his 16 Fọ̀n lists followed the dominant order .
A distinctive Fọ̀n element is the kpoli, the personal sign an initiate receives in the sacred grove of Fa, indicating his destiny, after which he builds his own Fa shrine . This corresponds to the personal Odù received at Ifá initiation.
Bernard Maupoil's La Géomancie à l'ancienne Côte des Esclaves (1943), based on fieldwork in Lower Dahomey from 1933 to 1936, is the standard study and runs to 686 pages . It remains the fullest account of any West African geomantic system in any language, and it has never been translated into English, which is a real gap for anglophone readers.
Afa is the Ewe name for the system, practised in Togo and southeastern Ghana . Bascom's finding is again that names are standard with modifications, though his Ewe sample was small, three lists, of which one followed the dominant order .
The Edo of Benin City practise the system as well , and Bascom's discussion of the Edo chain, okpelle, includes a description of the client whispering his needs to cowries which the diviner then places the chain upon, addressing it: "You, Okpelle, know what this man said to the cowries. Now tell me" The structure of concealing the question from the diviner is the same as in Yorùbá practice.
Sikidy is the Malagasy divination system, generally counted a member of the same geomantic family and reached by a quite different route, across the Indian Ocean and through Islamic contact rather than across West Africa. Bascom notes seed manipulation and sand-cutting both occur in Madagascar . Trautmann's 1939 study treated Vodou, Fa and Sikidy together . Sikidy is important to the transmission argument precisely because it is a geomantic system in a place that Yorùbá influence did not reach, which shows the family is wider than West Africa.
The Yorùbá system crossed to Cuba with enslaved people and survived in the Lucumí tradition, where Ifá is practised by babalaos and the cowrie system, diloggún, is far more widespread.
Bascom found the Cuban material strikingly conservative on names: figure names standard with orthographic modification, and 5 of his 6 Cuban lists following the dominant order, a higher rate of conformity than his Fọ̀n sample . The Lucumí names are recognisably the same through Spanish orthography, as file 03 sets out.
The reconstitution happened under specific conditions. Traditions were lost under slavery, the religion was restructured to survive, and the decisions were made by councils of priests in the cabildos . As Spanish displaced Yorùbá, the verse narratives came to be told as apatakís while Yorùbá survived in the chanted suyeres . Confidence: medium, these being practitioner-facing sources rather than peer-reviewed scholarship.
The Cuban tradition's distinctive position on women in Ifá, and its structural reason, are set out in file 06 .
Bascom had a single Brazilian list, which followed the dominant order . In Brazilian Candomblé the cowrie system, jogo de búzios, is dominant, and Ifá divination proper is much less prominent than in Cuba. Matory's Black Atlantic Religion is the standard scholarly treatment of the transatlantic religious traffic and of the way the Brazilian and Cuban traditions were shaped by continuing contact with West Africa rather than by isolation .
American ọ̀rìṣà practice entered through Cuban santeros in the 1970s and subsequently developed direct relationships with Nigeria and Benin, partly over the question of women's initiation . Hucks is the standard study .
Ranked by strength of relationship:
The same system under other names. Fọ̀n Fa, Ewe Afa, Edo, and the Cuban and Brazilian Ifá. Shared figure names, shared 256-figure structure, documented historical transmission .
A related Yorùbá system with shared names and its own structure. Ẹẹ́rìndínlógún: seventeen count-based figures, shared names, its own verse corpus, its own ownership by Ọ̀ṣun, its own gender rules .
Members of the wider geomantic family. Islamic ʿilm al-raml, European geomancy, Malagasy Sikidy. Shared four-position sixteen-figure structure, contested transmission history , file 07.
Structurally simpler Yorùbá methods. Obì, four cowries, four sections of bitter kola. Two-state pieces, no sequence, five outcomes, no verse corpus .
Independent systems with convergent structure. Southern African hakata, Micronesian knot divination. Same numbers, no plausible contact, arising from the same three design principles .
The last category is the one that should govern how the whole map is read. Bascom's three-principle analysis explains why so many unrelated peoples arrived at sixteen figures, and it is the reason formal resemblance alone proves very little.
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.
The mathematics of the system, the mnemonic architecture that makes a corpus this large holdable, and a careful separation of the documented claims from the popular ones.
The 2005 proclamation and 2008 inscription, the state of practice in Nigeria and the diaspora, commercialisation and the online problem, and what a curious outsider should and should not do.
A historical and structural analysis of Ifá divination, examining its relationship to trans-Saharan geomancy, regional adaptations across West Africa, colonial suppression, and transatlantic diaspora divergence.
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.