Orunmila (also Orunla or, in Cuba, Orula) is the orisha of wisdom, knowledge and divination in the Yoruba tradition and its diaspora, and the patron of the great oracle called Ifa. His authority rests on a founding story: it is said that Orunmila was present when each human being knelt before Olodumare, the supreme being, to receive and to choose a destiny before being born into the world, and that he alone witnessed and remembers what was chosen. Because he knows the destiny that each person carries, he is the one who can be consulted to learn it, to discover what a person came into the world to do, what dangers lie in their path, and what offerings and conduct will keep them in right relation with their fate. He is therefore the master of Ifa, the profound Yoruba system of divination through which his wisdom is made available to the living.
Ifa divination itself rests on a highly structured combinatorial system: a trained babalawo, priest of Orunmila, casts a set of sixteen palm nuts or a specialised divining chain called an opele to generate one of two hundred and fifty six possible signs, the odu, each associated with a large body of memorised verses that the diviner draws on to address the client's question, a system whose binary-like structure has drawn comparison from some scholars to early mathematical notation quite independently developed within Yoruba intellectual tradition. In 2005 UNESCO recognised Ifa divination as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, formal international acknowledgement of the depth and sophistication of the practice Orunmila is said to preside over.