They form the basis for the yoruba ifa divination system used to guide daily life, personal and societal growth. Ifa divination is the system our ancestors used to solve family, institutional, governmental, and personal problems. Inspire a love of reading with prime book box for kids discover delightful childrens books with prime book box, a subscription that delivers new books every 1. The ifa divination system, which makes use of an extensive corpus of texts and mathematical formulas, is practiced among yoruba communities and by the african diaspora in the americas. Pdf a comparative study of ifa divination and computer. Ifa divination helps provide a formula for us to use. Ways of knowing african systems of thought philip m. The ifa divination system is a set of divination acts done by a professional that has been granted authority a babalawo to create and make use of set of rules to communicate with the gods so as. He also mentions numerous famous or infamous people associated with divination. The oral tradition emphasises the parit played by orunmila is guiding the destiny of man and divinities. In traditional yoruba culture, ifa refers to a system of divination and the verses of the literary corpus known as the odu ifa. The ifa literary corpus, called odu, consists of 256 parts subdivided into verses called ese, whose exact number is unknown as they are constantly increasing there are around 800 ese per odu.
Methods of divination for magical practice learn religions. Throughout history societys leaders turned to divining. To the yoruba, divination or consultation with the supreme divinity orunmila is of crucial spiritual importance. There are some charts, illustrations and photographs. The ancient sumerobabylonian system of thought conceived of cultural texts. For example, her explanation of the obi divination system is brief and explains. The ifa divination system, which makes use of an extensive corpus of texts and mathematical formulas, is practiced among yoruba communities and by. Truly a treasure trove of ifa divination by a customer here is the best explanation of the 256 odus i have seen. Among the magical belief systems, there are many methods used for divination. Divination, politics, and ancient near eastern empires edited by alan lenzi and jonathan stokl. Ifa divination william bascom pdf read ifa divination by william w. Unlike the interpretation of signs and omens, the use of a divination system does not rely on psychic ability. The ifa divination system is applied whenever an important individual or collective decision has to be made.
And using the mist of their breath, they created rainfall, and the rain fell. Lets take a look at some of the most popular practices. Divination systems 2005 university of metaphysical sciences 2 divination methods are covered, the author attempts to give full explanations of each and how they are done. View afaifa divination system research papers on academia. Mauss, for example, argued that the science of divination was a system of classification durkheim and mauss 1963, 77. Orunmila is claimed to have brought ifa divination to the world. The encyclopedia of divination and soothsaying 2004 by raymond buckland is written by the. In some instances, the name orunmila is used interchangeably with the word ifa.
735 1651 1169 180 140 1516 1580 1066 1090 1190 809 485 49 455 1214 769 1350 667 1372 20 1344 962 406 1471 143 1305 1225 254 252