ODU AS WORD,VOCATIVE CAVE,UTERUS,WOMB RECEIVER OF PHALLIC IMPULSE

[Odu] is both the word [and] the dark cave of the mouth that symbolically corresponds to the uterus from which speech is born and in whose mysterious depths the flame-like tongue delivers its phallic sacred cargo.


Adapted from Susanne Wenger and Gert Chesi, A Life with the Gods in their Yoruba Homeleand.Worgl:Perlinger Verlag,1983.81.