Two instruments produce the figures of Ifa, and they are not interchangeable in practice even though they yield the same set of results. The opele is a divining chain carrying eight half seed shells, four to a side, which is thrown so that all eight land at once and the figure is read off in a single motion. The ikin are sacred palm nuts, worked by hand in a procedure repeated eight times, each pass marking one position of the figure. The chain is quick and is used for the ordinary run of consultation; the palm nuts are slower, more formal and reserved for weightier occasions.
Either way the result is a figure of eight marks in two columns, and either way the figure is one of the two hundred fifty six. Irosun Meji, fifth of the sixteen principal figures in the published sequence, is one of the outcomes both instruments can produce.
The apparatus is the part of Ifa most often illustrated and most easily described, which makes it a useful thing for a reference page to be precise about. It is also the part that carries the least of the tradition. A chain and eight shells generate a figure; they do not generate a reading. The reading comes from a diviner who has spent years acquiring the corpus.
That corpus, and the interpretation and prescription that a diviner draws from Irosun Meji, are not reproduced here.