Opele, Ikin and Cowries: The Three Tools and What Each One Is

Anyone who starts studying Ifá soon runs into three words that many people use as if they were one: opele, ikin and cowries. They are not. Two of them are instruments of Ifá, the system kept by the babalawo. The third is the oracle of the Orishas, the merindilogun, which in Brazil and Cuba took on a life of its own in the houses of the saints. This text describes what each one is, sources in hand. It does not teach how to cast and promises no reading: what is done with these objects belongs to those consecrated to do it.

Ifá in one sentence

The anthropologist William Bascom defines Ifá as a system of divination based on sixteen basic and 256 derivative figures, the Odus, obtained by manipulating sixteen palm nuts or by casting a chain (Bascom, Ifa Divination, p. 3). On the same page he notes that the system is also practised, under the name of Ifá, by descendants of enslaved Yoruba in Cuba and Brazil (p. 3). Wándé Abímbọ́lá recalls that babalawo means, roughly, "father of the secrets" (Abímbọ́lá, Sixteen Great Poems of Ifá, p. 5). The instruments of this father of secrets are two: the ikin and the opele.

The ikin: the sixteen nuts

For Bascom, the sixteen palm nuts are the most important objects in all of Ifá divination, both in consultation and in ritual (Bascom, Ifa Divination, p. 26). They come from the oil palm (Elaeis guineensis), and the tree that bears them is called "the palm of Ifá" (p. 26). Not every nut will do: only those with four or more "eyes", the small depressions in the shell; nuts with three eyes are not accepted (p. 27). Abímbọ́lá describes the same and adds that, among the instruments of the system, the ikin have become the most important (Abímbọ́lá, p. 12).

How do the ikin "speak"? Broadly, the babalawo holds the nuts in one hand and tries to take them all with the other; depending on what remains, he draws a single or a double mark. Four such marks form one of the sixteen basic signs; eight, in two columns, form one of the 256 Odus (Bascom, Ifa Divination, p. 3; Abímbọ́lá, pp. 13–14). We describe the principle, not the procedure: the gestures, the prayers and what comes before and after are the work of the initiated.

The ikin are not only a tool for consultation. In the first of the sixteen great poems collected by Abímbọ́lá, it is in the sixteen nuts that Orunmila remains present after leaving the Earth (Abímbọ́lá, p. 51). That is the story we read in the Study Orunmila, the owner of Ifá, and who the Orisha is you will find on the page of Orunmila.

The opon and the iyerosun

When the ikin are consulted, the marks are made in powder on a wooden tray (Bascom, Ifa Divination, p. 33). This tray, the opon Ifá, is flat, usually round, sometimes rectangular or semicircular, with a raised, carved rim (p. 34). Abímbọ́lá distinguishes two kinds of wooden vessel, the flat trays and the deep bowls, and says the trays carry the image of Eshu on their rim (Abímbọ́lá, p. 18).

The powder spread on the tray is iyerosun, yellowish in colour. Bascom's informants in Ifẹ explained it as the wood dust that termites make in the irosun tree (Bascom, Ifa Divination, pp. 34–35), and Abímbọ́lá says the same, noting that the powder of other trees is sometimes used (Abímbọ́lá, p. 16). José Beniste, writing from Brazil, describes the opon Ifá in the same way, made of wood and with Eshu carved on the rim (Beniste, Jogo de Búzios, p. 66). Who this Orisha guarding the rim of the tray is, you can read on the page of Eshu.

The opele: the chain

The opele is a chain with eight seed halves: held by the middle, it falls with four halves on each side (Bascom, Ifa Divination, p. 3). Each half lands with its concave face up or down, which counts as a single or a double mark; so a single cast produces one of the 256 figures at once (p. 3). The name comes from the ọ̀pẹ̀lẹ̀ tree, whose pod supplies the halves, but in Ifẹ and Ilesa the most valued seed was another one, the egbere (p. 30). Abímbọ́lá adds that the string may be of metal or cotton and that the halves are sometimes replaced by pieces of metal (Abímbọ́lá, p. 15).

There is a hierarchy between the two instruments, and Bascom records it carefully. The chain "talks more" and is the one most used day to day, but it is held to be an inferior instrument, less reliable than the ikin for important questions; it is called "the servant of Ifá" (Bascom, Ifa Divination, p. 29). Some diviners use only the chain, because it reaches the same Odus and the same verses more quickly (p. 29).

The cowries: the merindilogun

The third object belongs to another office. In Sixteen Cowries, a whole book on the subject, Bascom describes divination with sixteen cowries as a system of the Yoruba and of their descendants in the New World, simpler than Ifá and, in Nigeria, held in less esteem, but one that in the Americas became more important than Ifá (Bascom, Sixteen Cowries, p. 3). He explains the difference by two reasons: the system is tied to very popular Orishas such as Shango, Yemoja and Oshun, and it can be practised by men and women, whereas the diviner of Ifá, the babalawo, is always a man (p. 3; see also p. 21).

The casting is different too. The cowries are thrown and one counts how many land mouth up, which gives seventeen possible results, from none to sixteen (p. 5; Bascom, Ifa Divination, p. 11), against the 256 of Ifá. The names of many of these figures are cognate with the names of the Odus of Ifá (Bascom, Sixteen Cowries, p. 5); in both systems the figures are called odu and the verses ese, and the memorised verses are the core of both (pp. 21–22). The one who casts, in the Nigeria Bascom studied, is the awo olorisa, a man or a woman, not the babalawo (p. 21). Ifá, for its part, is open to worshippers of any deity, whereas the cowries are used mainly within the cult of particular Orishas (Bascom, Ifa Divination, p. 11).

In the New World the names change. In Cuba, Bascom records the system as dilogún or los caracoles, probably the most important in the Afro-Cuban cults; in Brazil, from the authors he read, as dologum, edilogum, merindilogum or simply "Exu" (Bascom, Sixteen Cowries, p. 4). In the Candomblé of Bahia described by Roger Bastide, it is the mãe or pai de santo (the mother or father of the house) who consults the obi and, at times, the cowries (Bastide, O Candomblé da Bahia, p. 66). For the background, read also the history of Candomblé.

Kinship is not identity. In the preface of Sixteen Cowries, which carries no page number, Bascom speaks of a relation between the two systems that is mythological, perhaps historical and certainly morphological. Pierre Verger goes further and speaks of divination systems "derived" from Ifá, among them one of sixteen cowries in which it is Eshu who gives the answers (Verger, Orixás, PDF p. 57). Both readings stand here side by side; we do not choose one.

Women and Ifá

To say that Ifá is "for men only" does not describe well what the sources record. What they reserve for men is the priesthood of the babalawo. Bascom writes that the worshippers of Ifá include men and women and that a woman may care for her father's ikin, but that only men become babalawo (Bascom, Ifa Divination, p. 81); he also records that no woman enters the alcove where the odu is kept (p. 82). Abímbọ́lá goes further: the cult of Ifá, he writes, is not closed, and women can be initiated as priestesses of Ifá, although they are few (Abímbọ́lá, pp. 7–8).

Women also have a place of their own beside the babalawo. Bascom describes the girl whom divination points out as a "wife of Ifá", destined to marry a babalawo (Bascom, Ifa Divination, p. 89). In the Cuban lineage, according to David H. Brown, men and women receive the mano de Orula, called awofakan for men and ikofá for women; a woman who receives the ikofá may act as apetebí, an assistant of Orula (Brown, Santería Enthroned, p. 346, note 130). On the title of Iyanifá and the debate between lineages about it, we found nothing in the works we consulted, so we claim nothing here.

And the obi?

A fourth object often comes up in this conversation: the kola nut, the obi, split in four. Bascom describes casting four kola sections, or four cowries, as a method that gives only five figures and is used within the cults (Bascom, Ifa Divination, pp. 10–11). What separates it from Ifá and from the sixteen cowries, he says, is that it has no body of verses (p. 11; Sixteen Cowries, p. 22).

Side by side

	Ikin	Opele	Cowries (merindilogun)
What it is	16 oil-palm nuts	chain with 8 seed halves	16 cowries
Results	256 Odus	256 Odus	17 figures
Who uses it, per the sources	babalawo	babalawo	awo olorisa; in Brazil, the mãe and pai de santo
Place in the system	the main instrument of Ifá	the "servant of Ifá", quicker	the oracle of the Orisha cults
Where to read	Bascom, Ifa Divination, pp. 3, 26–27	Bascom, Ifa Divination, pp. 3, 29–30	Bascom, Sixteen Cowries, pp. 3–5, 21

And Ifá Wisdom?

The site casts none of these instruments. The study tool draws on the logic of the opele to present an Odu as a theme for reading, and the Odu of the Day is a fixed rotation, not a cast. The 256 Odus are in the library, starting with Ogbe, and the principle behind the consultation is in How Ifá divination works. Real consultation belongs at the table of a babalawo.

What we do not claim

• We do not teach how to cast or consecrate any of these instruments; we describe what the sources describe.
• We do not say that the cowries "come from" Ifá. Bascom speaks of kinship, Verger of derivation, and both readings stay as they are.
• We do not say which system is older: the sources we use date neither.
• On women in Ifá, we record what Bascom, Abímbọ́lá and Brown wrote, each in his own time and place; we do not examine the practice of each house today, nor the debate about Iyanifá, which these works do not address.
• We do not say that women are seen as "greater" in Ifá: we did not find that statement in the works we consulted.
• We did not find in the Tratado Enciclopédico de Ifá, our Cuban source, a description of the instruments that we could cite with a page; so it does not enter this text.

Frequently asked questions

Do the opele and the ikin give different results?

Not in number: both reach the same 256 Odus, and Bascom records that the chain leads to the same verses more quickly (Bascom, Ifa Divination, p. 29). The difference lies in weight: the ikin are the most important instrument; the opele, "the servant of Ifá".

Is cowrie divination Ifá?

No. They are related systems, with figures bearing similar names, but with different instruments, number of figures and priesthood: 17 figures against 256, the awo olorisa (in Brazil, the mãe or pai de santo) on one side and the babalawo on the other (Bascom, Sixteen Cowries, pp. 5, 21).

Do I need an opele to study the Odus?

No. The sources describe the opele and the ikin as instruments of the babalawo, consecrated for divination. To study, the texts are enough: the verses, the patakís and the commentaries we have gathered in the library.

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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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