The World / Yoruba World Cycles (Ifá)
Yoruba World Cycles (Ifá)
The Ifá divination corpus carries the Yoruba account of world ages — the universe as a series of created, inhabited, and dissolved eras whose patterns the diviner reads through the sixteen odu. The end is a rhythm, not an event, and the same text that tells the beginning tells the close.
The Yoruba contribution to the archive is a divinable end: the Ifá corpus, carried in its verses by the babalawo (diviners), holds the world's ages as patterns the odu — the sixteen principal chapters of the corpus — make readable. The end is not announced by a prophet but consulted in advance, the way the beginning was. See the myth entry for the account of the ages.
Key texts
- The Ifá corpus (odu verses, oral and written collections)
- Wande Abimbola, Ifá: An Exposition of Ifá Literary Corpus (1976)
- J. Omosade Awolalu, Yoruba Beliefs and Sacrificial Rites (1979)
Key figures
Orunmila · Olodumare · the odu
The end, in order
- 01The cosmos runs in world ages (orún), each created by the high god Olodumare
- 02Each age lives out its pattern, read by the diviner in the odu
- 03The age dissolves; the next is prepared
- 04The diviner's reading keeps the community aligned with the turnover
- 05The end is cyclical and consultable — known in its signs before it arrives
What survives
The orún's continuity — the ages turn, the corpus remains, and the diviners read both.