Babalawo and iyalorixá: two priesthoods, not a couple

One sentence comes up often when people talk about Yoruba religion: "the babalawo is the priest, and the iyalorixá is the priestess." It sounds generous, as if the two titles were the male and female forms of a single office. The sources we use say something else. These are two priesthoods, with different deities, different instruments, different training and different rules about who may hold them. This text sets the two side by side, with page numbers, in the Bahia that Roger Bastide studied, in the Yoruba country William Bascom described and in David H. Brown's Havana.

What the names say

José Beniste's dictionary defines bàbáláwo as a priest of Ifá, with the literal translation "the one who knows the hidden mysteries" (Beniste, Dicionário Yorubá-Português, p. 148). On the same page is bàbálórìṣà, priest of the cult of the deities called Orishas. And ìyálórìṣà appears as priestess of the cult of the Orishas, literally "mother who has knowledge of orisha" (p. 413).

The names already show the division. The counterpart of the iyalorixá is the babalorixá, not the babalawo: the first two serve the Orishas; the third serves Ifá. Bascom records the common meaning of babalawo as "father has secrets," and says that Ifá diviners are also called simply awo, secret or mystery (Bascom, Ifa Divination, p. 81).

The babalawo: the priest of Ifá

Bascom writes about Ifá diviners in Yoruba country from fieldwork in Ife, Igana and Meko. He records that only men can become babalawo; that the babalawo are also the priests of Ifá and serve both Ifá worshipers and those who worship other deities; and that all of them go through two expensive initiations, in which they receive two sets of sixteen palm nuts. Training in divination often begins before the first ceremony and continues after it, until the teacher releases the pupil to work on his own (Bascom, Ifa Divination, p. 81). On the same page, Bascom notes that women who worship Ifá may be charged with caring for their father's palm nuts, but can never become babalawo.

In Bahia, Bastide finds the same trait. As priest of Ifá, he says, the babalaô (the spelling he uses) is the only one entitled to touch the opelê and the palm nuts (Bastide, O Candomblé da Bahia, p. 141). Using the Ifá chain requires a special initiation and apprenticeship, and this instrument is the privilege of the babalaô and no one else (p. 145). Bastide also describes how he works: the babalaô operates in closed rooms, with no drum, no song and no dance, surrounded by a few people (p. 135). It is a discreet office, which helps explain why it appears so little in descriptions of Candomblé.

The iyalorixá: the priestess of the Orishas

Bastide describes the top of a terreiro's hierarchy this way: above everyone stands the babalorixá, the pai de santo, if the house is led by a man, or the ialorixá, the mãe de santo, if it is led by a woman. This is the head of the cult: the one who prepares the sacred objects, directs the festivals, identifies the deities who manifest, oversees the sacrifices and initiations, and consults the obi, sometimes also the cowries, to learn the will of the Orishas (Bastide, p. 66).

Two of Bastide's observations matter for this post. First: in the Yoruba-rite candomblés he studied in Bahia, it is the ialorixás who preside over the life of the terreiro; the babalorixás, although more numerous in the city, predominated in houses of the Bantu nation (p. 67). Second: the ialorixá's functions are the same as the babalorixá's, with one caveat, that certain ritual acts are reserved to men, and so she keeps a male assistant at her side (p. 67).

The training is different too. Babalorixá and ialorixá are chosen from among the ebômin, the filhos de santo with at least seven years since initiation. They receive the Orishas and go into trance, which sets them apart from other offices in the house. And the post does not pass from parent to child: the successor is named by the deities, through Ifá, or by the dead priest, who returns as an Egun seven years later (p. 67). Their prestige grows with years of service and with knowledge of the myths and rites (p. 68).

Four priesthoods in Bahia, not one

Bastide's strongest point comes in the chapter where he lays out what he calls the structure of the world. Rites of entry require consulting the Ifá chain or the cowries; initiation requires washing the head with leaves; after death, the Egun must be fixed in a place of its own. All of this, he says, lies outside the babalorixá and the ialorixá and belongs to special priests, who serve several terreiros at once (Bastide, p. 77).

One informant summed up the scheme for him: before initiation one must consult Ifá to learn which saint the person belongs to, and that is the babalaô's function; the one who "makes" the filha de santo is the babalorixá; the one who gathers the leaves is the babalosaim; and the one who asks the ancestors' leave is the babaogê (p. 137). Bastide concludes that, functionally, there are four priesthoods in Bahia: babalorixá or ialorixá, for the cult of the Orishas; babalaô, for the cult of Ifá; babalosaim, for that of Osanyin; and babaogê, for that of the Eguns (p. 138).

Read this way, the question "which one matters more?" loses its point. Each presides over one part of the world, and the terreiro depends on more than one of them.

The babalaô nearly vanished from Bahia. What that does not mean

Bastide also records a dispute. In Africa, he says, the babalaô hold first place among priests; in Bahia they lost that place in public opinion, and there was a real war between babalorixás and babalaô over the highest status, which history settled in favor of the former (Bastide, pp. 134–135). The babalaô he interviewed still considered themselves superior, because they served several candomblés, while the babalorixá looked after only one (p. 136).

But Bastide insists on a more precise reading: what happened was not one priest defeating the other, but one form of divination taking the place of another. In his formula, "the cowrie defeated the Ifá chain" (p. 135). That is why, in Brazil today, the system seen in the terreiros is the merindilogun, not the opelê. We have explained the difference between the instruments in Opele, ikin and cowries: three tools.

And women in Ifá?

The sources we have treat the question in three ways.

In Bahia, Bastide describes the apetebi: each babalaô keeps near him a woman who is a daughter of Oshun and who may cast the cowries. He insists that she is a priestess, a kind of female babalaô, and not the babalaô's wife (Bastide, p. 142). In a note, he disagrees with Edison Carneiro, who had cited women babalaô in Bahia: for Bastide, the post is exclusively male, and the names Carneiro gave were those of apetebis (p. 142, note 13). He also retells a myth collected in Bahia that explains why the daughters of Oshun may cast the cowries: Oshun, Ifá's apetebi, insisted until he prepared sixteen palm nuts and asked Elegba to answer her questions through them, and Elegba agreed reluctantly (pp. 141–142).

In Cuba, Brown records that women who receive the Hand of Orunmila (kofá or ikofafún) are authorized to act as apetebi, the assistants of Orula and of the drum Añá (Brown, Santería Enthroned, p. 357, note 8).

And Bascom, in his book on the sixteen cowries, compares the two Yoruba systems: in Ifá the diviners are babalawo and must be men; in the cowrie divination of the priest he studied, the diviners may be men or women (Bascom, Sixteen Cowries, p. 21). According to the myths he records, cowrie divination was introduced by Oshun, who learned it from Orunmila (p. 18); in the version told by the priest he studied, Oshun would not let Orunmila rest until she learned, and it was from her that the others learned to divine (p. 20).

The works we use do not deal with a title for a woman initiated into Ifá itself. We have no source on that subject and will not address it here.

In Havana: two reglas and a third figure

Brown describes the rebuilding of Lucumí religion in Cuba as the building of two "reglas": the Regla de Ocha, the pantheon of the Orishas and their priests, and the Regla de Ifá, of Orunmila and the babalawos, with more or less strong ties between them (Brown, p. 143). And he adds a figure that Bastide's Bahia did not have under that name: the oriaté, master of ceremonies of Ocha and diviner of the dilogún, who, according to Brown, has no precise African antecedent (p. 150). Many tasks of initiation were long shared and contested among babalawos, Ocha padrinos and madrinas, and male and female oriatés; several of the early oriatés of Havana were women (p. 151).

Brown shows that, in the twentieth century, Cuban houses spread out between two poles. In a house centered on Ifá, the babalawo is the main godfather, and the person receives from him the Warriors and the Hand of Orula. In a house centered on Ocha, the one in charge is the oriaté, together with the padrinos and madrinas, and the babalawo may not appear at all (pp. 152–153). The two sides disagree even about who identifies the Orisha who owns the head: Ifá-centered houses give that word to Ifá; the others rely on the dilogún (pp. 153–154). Brown also notes that this debate is gendered: Ifá-centered rhetoric presents Orula and the babalawos as a male fraternity, and Ocha as the plural side, of men and women (p. 154).

How to read without confusing them

• Babalawo is a priest of Ifá. In the sources we use, the post is male (Bascom, p. 81; Bastide, p. 142).
• Iyalorixá and babalorixá are priestess and priest of the Orishas, and lead a house (Bastide, pp. 66–67).
• The instrument of one is the opelê and the ikin; that of the others, the obi and the cowries (Bastide, pp. 66, 141 and 145).
• In Bastide's Bahia there were four priesthoods, not two (p. 138). In Cuba, Brown describes two reglas and the oriaté between them (pp. 143 and 150).

The relationship between Ifá and Candomblé, seen from another angle, is in Ifá and Candomblé: differences and points of contact. Saying that babalawo and iyalorixá are distinct offices takes nothing away from either: it only describes what the sources describe.

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What you have read here is rooted in the 256 Odus of Ifá — the corpus we study verse by verse. Read them as contemplation: real divination belongs at the table of a consecrated babalawo.

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