The scale of what an Ifa diviner learns is the fact most often understated. The system has 256 principal signs, and each carries a body of verses, narratives, prescriptions and precedents. A fully trained babalawo is expected to command a substantial part of that corpus from memory, and the training is measured in years under a teacher rather than in courses. The divination itself identifies the sign; the skill lies in knowing which of its verses speaks to the case in front of him and what it requires.
The corpus is transmitted orally and it is enormous, which makes it one of the largest bodies of memorised literature anywhere. Written collections exist and are useful, and practitioners are generally clear that they are aids rather than the thing itself.
The Atlantic slave trade carried the system to Cuba and Brazil, where it was rebuilt in new conditions and continues under its own names and lineages. Those branches have their own authorities and their own developments, and the relationship between them and practitioners in Nigeria and Benin is a live matter within the tradition rather than a settled one.
UNESCO added Ifa to its lists of intangible cultural heritage in the first decade of this century, which brought recognition and also the questions that follow recognition: who speaks for a tradition, and what happens to a practice when a state undertakes to safeguard it.
It is a living tradition with living authorities, and this atlas describes rather than instructs.