A Recitation of Ifa, Oracle of the Yoruba

Ifa, teacher of gods and men, is the oracle of the Yoruba, an important West African people. Like I Ching, Ifa is a system of divination based on the casting of sacred objects to produce a set of signs - signs (hexagrams) in I Ching, "odus" in Ifa. But unlike the codified Chinese system, Ifa is an oral tradition transmitted and revealed only by its priests in recitations, each of which is unique.