An Ifa cast produces a figure of eight marks set out as two columns of four, each position holding either a single or a double stroke. A column of four such positions admits sixteen patterns, and when the two columns match, the result is one of the sixteen principal odu that the tradition treats as the parents of its whole corpus. Eji Ogbe stands first in that sequence as it is most commonly published. It is also the one principal figure whose name does not end in Meji: eji already carries the sense of two, so the doubling is spoken at the front of the name rather than appended to it, and some sources write it Ogbe Meji for consistency with its fifteen neighbours.
The sixteen principal figures are not, on their own, the working vocabulary of a consultation. Pairing any of the sixteen with any of the sixteen yields two hundred fifty six figures in all, the sixteen matched ones and the two hundred forty in which the columns differ, and it is at that level that the corpus is organised. Each of the two hundred fifty six heads a body of orally transmitted verses, the ese, which a diviner recites and applies.
Eji Ogbe holds first place by rank rather than by frequency. The apparatus does not favour it; its standing is a feature of how the tradition orders and teaches its figures. Published sequences agree on Eji Ogbe at the head far more consistently than they agree about the middle and lower reaches of the order.
What Eji Ogbe says when it falls, the verses attached to it and the work a diviner prescribes on seeing it, belongs to initiated practice and is not reproduced here.