ORUNMILA,ODU,OPON IFA,IYANLA,OSUN,OLOKUN:RELATIONSHIPS

Orunmila, the embodiment of ultimate wisdom, whom both humans and Òrìṣà approach to gain insight from a totality of vision that even the ultimate creator, Olódúmarè, consulted in creating the universe.

Orunmila is present at the creation of every human being and so is aware of everything about the individual.He is represented by the Odù, symbols who embody the spiritual names or ontological identities of all possibilities of existence.

Orunmila used to live on the earth, but, offended by his disciples, he withdrew to Orun, where they later met him under a sixteen branched palm tree, each branch having the dimensions of a house,the tree evoking the sixteen major Odù, here visualised in terms of their scope, which in a sense houses the totality of possibilities of existence in a manner similar to the Norse mythic tree Yggdrasil which spreads into all the worlds of the universe.

Orunmila’s character as embodiment of ultimate wisdom is reinforced by the collective identity of the Odù being identified as his wife, thereby suggesting a synergistic relationship between the male figure, Orunmila, and the female figure, Odù, in generating the wisdom that emerges in the process of Ifá,divination, an image of procreative activity reinforced by the empty centre of the Ọpön Ifá,the tray where the Odù patterns form as the divinatory instruments are cast,which thereby assumes the character of a generative space. This procreative character is amplified by the association between Odù, and the calabash within which the divinatory instruments are housed, the calabash understood as symbolising the universe, the universe being visualised as the congruence of two aspects, the material and the spiritual, as the calabash is composed of two parts, one at the top, the other at the bottom. The images of the empty space of the Ọpön Ifá as well as the amplitude and circularity of the calabash, both evocative of the manifestation of the totality of the possibilities of being, further suggest the procreative associations of womb and vagina symbolism.

These visual and ideational correlations are themselves reinforced in the associations between Odù and Ìyán Nlá, Earth, with whom Odù can be associated as a female, maternal figure, on account of the primordial role of the earth as mother of mothers on whose body all life feeds, the space upon and within which life exists.She is the nourishing darkness of the earth in which plants grow as well as the terrestrial darkness where the body begins the process that leads to its dissolving into the soil after the end of its earthly journey.

Closely related to Ìyán Nlá are female Òrìṣà , particularly since along with being female, some of them embody elemental forces. Osun is associated with the Osun river which is her primary means of expression. Susanne Wenger descrbies her as the youthful beauty accessible to all and the ancient woman steeped in ancient and chthonic knowledge and power.One manifestation of her power is through the capacity of the womb to bear life.

An aspect of Iyan Nla, is Olókun, embodied by the aquatic regions of the world. The “vibrations of the deep”, as well as the enormous calm power of ocean depths, manifest her presence. In her palace under the sea, she is dressed in immaculate white, welcoming all kinds of beings in their passage from one point of existence to another, as she dances to the rhythms of drums.