Odu & Divination Signs

Ofun Meji

Ifa Odu

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Ofun Meji." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://www.divinityatlas.com/odu-divination-signs/ofun-meji.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Ofun Meji. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://www.divinityatlas.com/odu-divination-signs/ofun-meji

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-ofun-meji,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Ofun Meji},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://www.divinityatlas.com/odu-divination-signs/ofun-meji},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Ofun Meji is the sixteenth and last of the sixteen principal odu (Odu Meji) of Ifa divination in the sequence most widely published from Bascom's and Wande Abimbola's academic work, closing the senior tier above a wider system of two hundred and forty further minor odu. Odu Meji, the twinned or doubled figures, are the sixteen where the opele chain or the counted ikin palm nuts produce the same four marks in both columns; where the two columns differ instead, the resulting figure belongs to the minor odu. Ofun Meji's own figure is drawn as two identical columns of four marks each, reading top to bottom as double, single, double, single, two single and two double marks in each column, the notation recorded in William Bascom's 1969 study of the system. Ofun, also called Orangun, closes the published learning order directly after Ose Meji at position fifteen, yet Yoruba oral tradition holds that Ofun, or Orangun, was the eldest of the sixteen in the account of their descent to earth, prepared first though arriving last on the day the others crossed into the world; Eji Ogbe's own first position in the published order reflects that arrival story rather than a claim to overall seniority. Like each of the sixteen, Ofun Meji heads its own body of orally transmitted verses (ese Ifa) drawn on by a babalawo or iyanifa when interpreting a divination cast. A separate sixteen sign system built on counted cowrie shells rather than the opele chain or ikin nuts, used in the Cuban Diloggun tradition, shares several of the same names under different spellings but follows its own count based order. Ifa is a living, initiatory tradition; the atlas describes its structure and does not instruct practice or reproduce what the babalawo and iyanifa initiations transmit.

Facts

Structure

Stroke Pattern

Two identical columns of four marks each, reading top to bottom double, single, double, single (II-I-II-I); two single and two double marks in each column. 1

Primary-verified: this exact stroke pattern is confirmed directly against Bascom's own Table 1, page 4, of Ifa Divination (1969), read by eye off two independent clean page images of the same edition that agree character for character, not only against convergent secondary sources.

Divination System

Ifa (babalawo opele-chain and ikin palm-nut divination) 1

Identity

Position

16 of 16 principal odu (Odu Meji) 1

Learn More

The Figure That Closes the Sixteen

Ofun Meji stands sixteenth and last in the sequence of principal odu as it is most commonly published, closing the set that Eji Ogbe opens.

Last position in an order of seniority is not a statement about importance in use. Every one of the sixteen is a full component of the system: each pairs with each to generate the two hundred fifty six figures the corpus is organised around, each appears as one half of thirty one compound figures as well as in its own matched form, and the apparatus does not weight one above another. The sequence governs teaching and comparison, not consequence.

It is also the part of the structure where published sources agree least. The head of the order is stable across the record; the tail is where regional and lineage usage diverges, and where a reader should expect to find different arrangements in different books. The atlas records the widely published position and states that it is the widely published position.

Ofun Meji is documented in the standard scholarship, chiefly Bascom in 1969 and Abimbola in 1976, as one of the sixteen, and the atlas is confident of that.

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

Where This Account Stops

These thirty two entries, two for each of the sixteen principal odu, are deliberately built to one shape, and it is worth saying at the close of the set what that shape is and why.

They describe the frame: how a figure is produced, how it is written, how sixteen become two hundred fifty six, how the sequence is ordered and how much confidence that ordering deserves, who the diviners are, how the corpus passes between them, what the published scholarship contains and what it does not. Every sentence in that account can be checked against the record.

They do not give the ese, the divinatory readings, the interpretations offered in consultation or the sacrifices prescribed. Those are the property of a living initiatory tradition, conferred on initiated practitioners through years of training, and applied to individual people in a relationship a page cannot stand in for. Their absence here is a decision, and it is the correct one.

The alternative was a fuller looking entry assembled from circulating material of unverifiable provenance, presented in the atlas's own voice. On a subject that is somebody's religion, that is not a better article; it is a worse one wearing more words.

Ofun Meji closes the sixteen. What it says when it falls belongs to the diviners who hold it.

Cross-Tradition Connections