IFA DIVINATION

The tray and tapper are used in Ifa divination, a central ritual within Yoruba religion. A person seeking guidance in making a decision goes to a diviner, who is known as a babalawo (‘father of ancient wisdom’). Like the Chinese I Ching, Ifa combines a large body of wisdom literature with a system for selecting the appropriate passages from it. Unlike the I Ching, Ifa poetry is not written down but passed down orally from one babalawo to another.

The divination process establishes contact between the human world and the world of the spirit. To begin the ritual the babalawo places the tray in front of him and taps rhythmically on it with the pointed end of the tapper, invoking the presence of past diviners and of Ifa (also called Orun-mila) the god of divination. He 'casts Ifa' -- a system of drawing lots by transferring sixteen palm nuts from one hand to the other -- and records the results in a series of lines drawn in wood powder spread on the tray.

The combination of these lines selects one of 256 possible choices, and the babalawo recites a series of proverbs and stories from the Ifa poetry that go with that choice. The final interpretation is made by the person seeking guidance, who decides how the verses that the babalawo has recited should be applied to the problem at hand.