Yoruba Ifa divination corpus

Record summary

Ifa is a highly structured Yoruba divination system using a trained babalawo, palm nuts or a divining chain, and an extensive corpus of Odu verses. Mid-century documentation and interpretation by scholars and practitioners made it a major comparative case for oral textuality, memorized ritual knowledge, diagnosis, sacrifice, and specialist authority. It is a religious and intellectual tradition, not evidence that divination predicts events supernaturally. The corpus is transmitted orally and varies between lineages, so individual published collections should not be treated as canonical in full.