Ori

In Prandi, Ori is the “divinity of each human being’s head and bearer of their individuality”, and its cult “is being reconstituted in Brazil with considerable vigor”. Beside Ori the same text places Ajala (Ajalá in Portuguese), “little remembered among us”, who makes the heads and is responsible for the existence of good and bad destinies (Prandi, Mitologia dos Orixás, introduction). Ori is not a cult Orisha like the others in every source, and this entry says what each work says. Abímbọ́lá treats Ori as one of the most basic concepts in the Ifá corpus and as each individual’s personal divinity (Abímbọ́lá, Sixteen Great Poems of Ifá, pp. 32–34). Bastide, describing Bahia in the 1950s, speaks of the ori as the spirit of the person, citing René Ribeiro (Bastide, O Candomblé da Bahia, p. 36). Abímbọ́lá calls Ajala a supernatural power who is not regarded as a divinity (p. 33); Prandi lists him among the orishas and Elbein calls him an “ancient órisá” (Elbein dos Santos, Os Nàgô e a Morte, p. 206). Spelling: by count, the pt-BR follows Prandi (Ori 82 against Orí 3; Ajalá 24). Abímbọ́lá (Ajala 69, no accent) and the Tratado (Ori 1,135; Ajala 50) give the en and es forms. Mason, Cabrera and Beniste write Orí with an acute accent; this entry adds no diacritic it has not copied from a source with a page.

In the myths gathered by Prandi, the head is chosen before birth: each person chooses their own ori, and whoever chooses badly draws a bad destiny (Prandi, myth “Ajalá modela a cabeça do homem”). Abímbọ́lá sums up the concept: success or failure, long life or early death, wealth or poverty depend on the choice of Ori, but choosing a good Ori is choosing a potential, not success itself, and each person still has to work (Abímbọ́lá, Sixteen Great Poems of Ifá, pp. 32–34). The same author says Ori acts as an intermediary between a person and the divinity they worship, and that nothing Ori has not sanctioned can be done by the divinities (p. 34). Elbein dos Santos adds, from an Odu she cites, that Ori is modeled by Ajala and Orixalá with the help of sixteen signs, and that the matter of each head (the ipori) indicates the fitting occupation and what is forbidden to eat (Os Nàgô e a Morte, pp. 206–209).

Ajala shapes the human head. Obatala made the body but forgot the head; Olodumare ordered Ajala, the potter, to complete the work. He makes heads of clay and fires them: when he is well, he makes good heads; when he is drunk, he makes badly fired, misshapen ones. Each person chooses their own (Prandi, myth “Ajalá modela a cabeça do homem”). Ajala makes the heads of three friends. Orunmila, worried about the choice of a head for his son Ofuape, learned from the babalawo that a sacrifice of a thousand cowries was needed. The friends Oriseecu and Orilemere went ahead without him and took two beautiful heads from the house of Ajala, who was away because of debts; Ofuape paid the creditor, was received by Ajala and chose the fitting head. The other two lived in difficulty (Prandi, myth “Ajalá faz as cabeças de três amigos”). The Tratado records the same story in Cuba, with Odudua sending the three to Ajala’s house and Elegba opening the way; the heads of the two hasty ones fall apart in the rain (Tratado Enciclopédico de Ifá, pp. 788–789). Ori does what the orishas do not. Orunmila asks Shango, Oya, Oxalá, Eshu, Ogun, Oshun and himself who can accompany a devotee on a journey of no return across the seas; each answers that they would go home after eating. The answer is: “Ori”. When someone dies, the tools of each cult are handled separately, but the head is never separated from the body (Prandi, myth “Ori faz o que os orixás não fazem”). Ori defeats the orishas in a dispute. A woman, advised to offer two obis to her own head, has the obis taken by Shango; Ori hurls Shango and the other orishas to distant towns. Three years later they return, and Ori shows them that each now has a cult in a town (Prandi, myth “Ori vence os orixás numa disputa”). Ori decides not to be born again. Olorum accepted Ori’s rebirth, on two conditions, among them that only Ifá could alter destiny; Ori found the conditions too harsh and decided to be born only once (Prandi, myth “Ori decide não nascer de novo”).

What the sources record depends on the tradition. In 1950s Bahia, Bastide describes the bori (from obori) as the rite of giving food to the head, linked to health and to strengthening the ori, and says that for some adherents initiation was limited to it (Bastide, O Candomblé da Bahia, pp. 36–37). Prandi, in a note to the myth “Ori livra Orunmilá de ameaças”, says the bori was preserved intact in candomblé, precedes initiation, and that the devotee’s head is praised before the orisha; in another note he says that, in the xirê, initiates touch their heads while singing for Yemoja, who in Brazil took Ajala’s place (Prandi, notes to the myths “Ori livra Orunmilá de ameaças” and “Ajalá modela a cabeça do homem”). For Cuba, the Tratado speaks of “obori eleda” as what Oriseecu and Orilemere had to do to restore their heads (Tratado, p. 789). Abímbọ́lá says only Ifá can pronounce on the choice of destiny, and that consulting him is seeking what one’s Ori holds in store (Sixteen Great Poems of Ifá, p. 33). The works consulted do not describe the bori step by step here, and this entry does not either. What each case calls for belongs to the babalawo’s table — not to a website.

The sources consulted tie Ori to the head, to destiny and to individuality, but give no object, color or number for it here. What there are, are images from myths: the clay head shaped and fired by Ajala (Prandi, myth “Ajalá modela a cabeça do homem”), the heads on shelves in the potter’s house (myth “Ajalá faz as cabeças de três amigos”) and the head that goes with the body at burial (myth “Ori faz o que os orixás não fazem”). Elbein dos Santos describes, among the Nagô of Bahia, that the vessel-seat of the individual Bara holds twenty-one cowries, which she relates to the elements of the personal destiny chosen by the ori (Os Nàgô e a Morte, p. 209). We found no explanation for that number in the works consulted, and the entry does not invent one.

Ori and Ajala appear in the sources as two ends of one idea: the head is made in one place and chosen by each person, and then goes with that person through everything. The works differ on what Ori is in each tradition (personal divinity, spirit, part of the human being), and on Ajala, whom Prandi gives as almost forgotten in Brazil. This text is a study of the cited sources, not a consultation. To go further, read Prandi’s myths in full and the pages of Abímbọ́lá, Elbein dos Santos and the Tratado indicated above.