The patakís: the head that was a divinity

The head crowned at the shrine

The patakí that opens the Baba Ejiogbe entry in the Tratado (pp. 558–559) says that, in the beginning, the divinities had no heads — because the head, the Orí, was a divinity of its own, rolling through the world. Orunmila, wanting a complete form, received from the awo Amure a strange instruction: to sacrifice four kola nuts and keep them unsplit. The nuts defied all of heaven — divinity after divinity tried to split them and failed. Orí was the only one who did not try: he would not break what he could not even buy. He came rolling to Orunmila's house — and Orunmila went out to meet him, carried him inside, washed him and offered him the nuts, which had been his from the start. Orí split them with a crash heard across heaven, and the members of the body lifted him above themselves: there he was crowned king of the body. It is for having performed, in heaven, the sacrifice of that crowning that Ejiogbe is the patron divinity of the Orí (p. 559).