Yorubaland is the region of southwestern Nigeria, Benin and Togo where the Yoruba live, and it is the source of a tradition now practised on four continents.
Its structure has a distant creator, Olodumare, who is not the object of a cult, and a large population of orisha, powers associated with rivers, iron, thunder, smallpox, the sea, wisdom and much else, each with their own priesthood, praise poetry, colours, foods, drum rhythms and prohibitions. Devotees are attached to particular orisha rather than to all of them, and possession by the orisha during ceremony is a normal and expected event. Ile-Ife is held to be where creation began and remains the tradition's ritual centre.
Ifa is the divination system, and it is the tradition's library. Sixteen basic figures combine into two hundred and fifty six, each attached to a body of verse that a diviner must memorise, containing narratives, precedents, prescriptions and proverbs. William Bascom's studies documented both Ifa and the simpler sixteen-cowrie method used more widely, recording large numbers of verses from practitioners in Nigeria and in Cuba. The system is consulted for decisions of every scale, and its verses are the principal vehicle in which the tradition's knowledge is transmitted.
The sacred grove on the Osun river at Osogbo remains an active shrine with an annual festival, and was inscribed as a World Heritage site.