Rules For Ifa Divination

Orthodox perspectives of ancient African spirituality say that in order for people to communicate
with the Orisa Baba Orunmila, one must be initiated to Ifa. Traditionally speaking this is very
important in order to gain the ability to perform divination or readings for others. For many people,
the spiritual readings consist of little more than fortune telling. People will try to get a reading to
determine who they should marry or where they should live or what kind of car they should buy.
Marry the person who best reflects your goals in life. Live where you can afford and is most
convenient to your lifestyle. Buy a car you can afford. No one needs divination for such
rudimentary questions. And Orunmila, assistant to the Supreme Being Olodumare, doesn’t have
time to spoon feed people answers for things that really don’t matter.

The objective of any true reading from Orunmila is to help an individual develop his or her
spirituality. The development of spirituality is paramount to our time here on Earth. Spirituality
helps prepare us for the next phase of our existence that comes when we pass away and lose our
grip on this thing we call life. To not properly prepare means that we cannot advance. We will
flunk. And when we fail to develop, like in grade school we are held back and will have to take
another stab at this level of existence again and again until we get it right. Readings are how we get
instructions to make improvements in our character where we are lacking. Readings are important
in this day and age where there is so much pressure to conform to the materialism of the modern
day world. Divination and readings are very important.

The people who perform these readings, the diviners, have a very important role to fill. The
diviner’s main concern is supposed to be to help guide people along their path of spiritual
development. But many times the diviner can get distracted. The client that comes in for a reading
is going to pay good money for their reading. If a diviner doesn’t meet the client’s expectations they
just might take their business elsewhere. If a client wants to contact Orunmila to find out if it will be
okay to buy that Escalade with the twenty two inch chromed wheels then take the money and tell
them they have the blessing from Ifa. Obviously, in order to develop spirituality, the client must see
the folly of chasing material goods. No real divination is needed to answer that question. But there
are diviners who take their ability much more seriously. And there are clients who take the
opportunity for divination a lot more seriously as well.

Traditionally speaking the person who becomes a diviner must be initiated to Ifa. The person who
wants to be a diviner must be initiated as a child of Orunmila. There are a number of steps and
prerequisites that must be satisfied in order to reach this level of spiritual development. But it
culminates in somebody who has already been initiated getting paid handsomely to perform an
initiation ceremony for the client. The entire process can take a seriously long time and cost a good
sized fortune. Ask just about anyone who studies the old school ways of Ifa and they’ll tell you that
only people who pay for the initiation ceremony and jumps through these hoops will be able to
communicate with Orunmila and learn the secrets to divination. And the way the vast majority of
people practice divination is that they get out a special tray or some obi or some ikin or an opele
chain or some other medium where they can throw trinkets like dice on a craps table.

The problem with this line of thinking is that if Orunmila wanted to communicate with somebody
today, he may not be in the mood to wait for somebody to study all the teachings that other people
say must be studied and pay all the money that other people say must be paid in order to get some
initiation ceremony performed. If Baba Orunmila wants to communicate with you, chances are he’s
got what it takes to bypass all the human trappings that people say must be done. And if Orunmila
really wanted to bad enough he wouldn’t wait for the individual to find his dice to make a roll.
Orunmila has so many ways to at his disposal to make an appearance to an individual’s
consciousness that it boggles the mind. Orunmila is the assistant to the Supreme Being for god’s
sake (pun intended). He is the master of fate. He isn’t limited to the rules of communication that we
apply to ourselves. And to be honest, we are not limited to the rules we place on each other either.
Conversely, simply because we’ve gone through all the hoops that the community of Ifa
worshippers says are necessary in order to become a diviner doesn’t automatically make us a
diviner. A person can study odu verses and spiritual text from now until the end of time. However,
if the individual s not right in his or her relationship with Orunmila, if they do not embrace social
consciousness, if the person does not practice personal integrity, Orunmila would not trust that
individual to be his manifestation of spiritual instruction. It wouldn’t matter of the individual had
the biggest Orisa pots, the shiniest opele chain, or the biggest Orisa shrine, Orunmila would only be
wasting his time with the person who manipulates others in the name of Ifa. And while these people
think they are getting over, Orunmila is not a fool. Only people with the fortitude to maintain their
good character will have his trust to guide others. And those that are diviners for their own selfish
purposes will have to account for their actions.

Like most of the rules we’ve learned about African based spirituality, the limitations we put on
ourselves are not based on spiritual fact but on the opinions or ideas that somebody with a little
clout got in their head a long time ago and managed to push onto others until it become accepted as
law. We have been hoodwinked into thinking that we have to live by each others rules. We have
been duped into thinking that the Orisas are limited by our rules. Students of Ifa need to unlearn the
box of boundaries we have put on our selves for it is not a natural construct of our relationship with
the spiritual world.