Obara is cast when six of the sixteen cowries land mouth up. Its priesthood illustrates a distinction that runs through the whole Diloggun system: initiation to an orisha, the deities of the Lucumi pantheon such as Yemaya, Shango, Obatala or Ogun, qualifies a santero or santera to read Diloggun once they reach the appropriate rank, while Ifa remains the separate province of babalawos initiated specifically to Orunmila, the orisha of wisdom and destiny. Both priesthoods descend from the same Yoruba religious world, carried to Cuba through the transatlantic slave trade and reconstituted there under Spanish colonial Catholicism, which is why Lucumi religious practice developed alongside, and in visible dialogue with, the veneration of Catholic saints.
Obara's name, consistent with most of the sixteen parent signs, is shared with the corresponding figure in the Ifa corpus, a mark of the common source underlying both oracles even where their casting methods and their priesthoods diverge. As with every parent Odu, the proverbs, myths and prescribed remedies specifically attached to Obara are the working knowledge of initiated diviners, transmitted through the casa de santo rather than published, and are not given in this structural entry.