Orunmila, the Owner of Ifá: the father who said goodbye and left sixteen palm nuts

The whole system of Ifá begins with an absence. In the first of the sixteen great poems gathered by Wande Abímbọ́lá, Orunmila, whose enemies said he would never have a child in Ifé, has eight, and every one becomes a king. At a festival the youngest refuses to bow: he wears the same clothes as his father, carries the same staff, and says a crowned head does not bow to another. Orunmila snatches the staff away and withdraws from the earth. Without him the rain stops, pregnant women no longer deliver, seeds fail to ripen, and people keep saying that when Orunmila was here the world was not like this. His children go to beg him to return, and he refuses. Instead he asks them to stretch out their hands, gives them sixteen palm nuts, and tells whoever wants money, wives or children: consult this person. In this Study you read the poem, what Abímbọ́lá says about it, and how the Tratado Enciclopédico de Ifá, a Cuban work in which he also appears as Orula, tells of the same Orunmila in patakí about white hair, yams and ungrateful disciples. To follow the road to its end, open the full Study.