Mo juba awo Orunmila.
Iwo ni Iko Olodumare.
Iwo ni Olupilese Awo Odu Ifa.
Iwo ni Ifa.
Iwo ni Oluwa Awo Igba Owo-Eyo.
Iwo ni Ohun Idarisi.
Iwo ni Oluwa Asiri Iwa.
Iwo ni Orisha Julo Loye.
I humble myself before the mystery of Orunmila.
You are the Messenger of Olodumare.
You are the Author of the Mysteries of Odu Ifa.
You are Ifa.
You are the Owner of the Mysteries of the Cowry Shell.
You are the Voice of Fate.
You are the Owner of the Secrets of Existence.
You are the Most Intelligent Orisha.
The Yoruba believe in Divination. They believe that Ifa
is the source of all knowledge and that the Orisha Orunmila
is the keeper of this knowledge. It is through divination that man is
told what must be done to change things that are negative to things
that are positive. Orunmila is deemed the Prophet of Yoruba religion
and culture. It was he who developed and expounded upon the system
of
esoteric worship known to this day as Ifa. Through the study of human
nature and divine nature, Orunmila saw that dual levels of potentiality
existed. Through him we understand that the study of animate and inanimate,
manifest and unmanifested, [‘chaos’ and ‘order’],
visible and invisible worlds leads to fundamental understandings of
the self-ontology, and that these fundamental understandings bring
about
the evolution of human spirit, which, in turn, encourages divine behavior,
worldly progression, and expanded cosmology.
Orisa Orunmila’s physical origins are shrouded in
ancient legend, however, it is believed that he was born of humble West
African parents. To the people of the land he was clearly recognized
as a divine child, and although poor and crippled, he expressed from
the onset divine wisdom and attributes. Orunmila grew to be known as
‘the little man with the big head.’ His great intelligence
superceded all known teachings and his divine nature was seen as a blessing
of the angelic forces. In the translation of his name is the meaning
‘only Heaven knows the way to salvation'.
It is important to understand that the ‘flesh and blood’ Orunmila,
whose influence is evidenced in ‘...ancient Khamet /Egypt’,
in the ‘...Essence community of the Judeo-pre-Christian era’,
and in the spiritual traditions of most Indigenous People’s of
this world, was not the orginator of the wisdom that he spoke. Ifa is
from the ‘Beginning’ and is a part of the Consciousness
of Olodumare. The guidelines set down by Orunmila are ‘keys’ to
closing the gap between Ori (earthly consciousness)
and Iponri (heavenly consciousness).
