Diloggun (from the Yoruba merindilogun, "sixteen"), also called the reading of the cowries, is the cowrie-shell divination widely used in Yoruba religion and its Atlantic diaspora, and it is the everyday working oracle of Santeria (Lucumi) in Cuba and beyond. The diviner casts a set of sixteen cowrie shells, each of which can fall "open" (mouth up) or "closed," and the number that fall open on each throw yields one of sixteen figures called odu, each with its own name, its associated orishas, and its attached body of proverbs, myths, prohibitions, and prescribed offerings (ebbo). The reading proceeds through a structured series of throws that identify the governing odu and refine the message, drawing on the enormous oral corpus that a competent diviner must master. Diloggun is closely related to, but distinct from and generally regarded as less complex than, the Ifa system worked by the babalawo with palm nuts; the cowrie oracle can be performed by initiated priests and priestesses of the orishas (santeros and santeras) and is the more common form of consultation in daily religious life. It functions not as fortune-telling in a casual sense but as the central means by which the orishas communicate their guidance, diagnose spiritual difficulties, and specify what must be done to restore balance, making it a working instrument at the heart of a living tradition.
The working of the cowrie oracle described above is public and is set out in the standard literature. What is not set out here is the initiation through which a santero or santera is made, or the odu as they are transmitted within the religion; this entry records that the initiation exists and what standing it confers, and reproduces neither. The omission is deliberate. The authority to read the cowries comes from that initiation and not from a description of the throws, and a published account is not a licence.