Yoruba Tradition

A living religion

Yoruba religion is practised today in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo, and, through the forced migration of the Atlantic slave trade, in Cuban Santería (Regla de Ocha), Brazilian Candomblé, Trinidadian Orisha worship, and communities across the Americas. It has no single scripture and no single orthodoxy: each orisha is worshipped through particular lineages, towns, and houses, and practice differs from one to the next. This page presents what published sources and practitioners share publicly, and notes where houses and tellers disagree.

Olodumare and the orisha

Olodumare (also Olorun, 'owner of the sky') is the supreme being, remote from daily worship and approached through the orisha. The orisha are many (tradition speaks of 401, or of 'countless') and include deities who were present at creation, such as Obatala, and deified ancestors and kings, such as Shango, remembered as a king of Oyo. Eshu carries sacrifice and messages between people and the orisha and must be acknowledged first; Orunmila is the witness of destiny whose wisdom speaks through Ifa.

Ile-Ife and the making of the land

Creation stories centre on Ile-Ife, regarded as the place where the land was first spread over the primordial waters. Tellings disagree on the central actor: in many, Obatala is sent down a chain from the sky with earth in a snail shell and a five-toed hen to scatter it, but falls asleep drunk on palm wine, and Oduduwa completes the task and becomes the first ruler of Ife. Samuel Johnson's The History of the Yorubas (completed 1897, published 1921) records the Oyo tradition; Ife's own traditions give Oduduwa greater weight. The disagreement is itself historical evidence of rival centres, and this site presents both.

Ifa

Ifa divination, inscribed by UNESCO on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (2008), is a vast oral literature of verses (ese) organised into 256 signs (odu). A babalawo casts palm nuts or a divining chain and recites the verses of the resulting sign, many of which contain the myths summarised on this site. Wande Abimbola's editions and translations of Ifa verses (1970s onward) are among the most important published records.

Dates

The tradition has no founding date. Ile-Ife was a major urban and artistic centre by about the 11th to 15th centuries CE, the period of its celebrated copper-alloy and terracotta heads, but those dates belong to the city and its art, not to the beginning of the religion.