Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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Position Thirteen and the Question of Order

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Position Thirteen and the Question of Order

Otura Meji is recorded here as the thirteenth of the sixteen principal odu, following the sequence most commonly published. That position should be read with more caution than the first few.

The sixteen are learned in an order of seniority, and the order is a real part of the tradition rather than a cataloguer's device. But agreement across the published record is strongest at the head of the sequence and weakest in its later reaches. Ifa is practised across a wide area, through many lineages, and local usage differs. Bascom treated the order of the figures as a question deserving study in its own right, separate from his 1969 monograph, which is a fair indication that it was not a settled matter he could simply report.

So a reader who finds Otura Meji in a different position in another source has probably not found an error. The atlas records the widely published sequence and says so, rather than presenting one arrangement as the arrangement.

That caution is the general policy on this type. Where the record is firm, as it is on the notation, the count of two hundred fifty six, and the instruments, the atlas states the fact. Where it varies, it says that it varies.

The verses standing under Otura Meji, and the interpretation and prescription a diviner draws from it, are held within initiated practice and are not reproduced here.

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