Daily
Throwing the kola.
Four lobes of kola nut thrown on the ground, read by how many land face up. It is a simple oracle giving yes, no and shades of both, and anyone can use it without a priest. Ifa is for the difficult questions; obi is for asking whether the offering you just made was accepted.
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Oriki.
The string of praise names belonging to a person, a family, a town or an orisha — compressed history, epithets, boasts and warnings, delivered at speed. It is how an orisha is properly addressed, and it is also how a grandmother greets a grandchild. Not knowing your own lineage's oriki is a genuine gap.
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Weekly
The four-day week.
The traditional Yoruba week has four days, the market rotates on it, and each day belongs to an orisha — so when you make an offering is part of the offering. The four-day cycle still governs rural market life alongside the imported seven-day week, and people keep both.
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Yearly
When the egungun comes out.
Before dawn, covered entirely, moving strangely, speaking in a voice that is not a human voice, attended by young men with switches who keep people at a distance. The tradition does not treat this as a man in a costume representing an ancestor. Women traditionally may not approach, which is itself a live argument.
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Osun Osogbo.
Two weeks in August, ending with the Arugba — a virgin of the royal house — carrying the covered calabash of offerings on her head through the crowd to the river, in silence, untouchable. Hundreds of thousands attend, including Nigerians who are Christian or Muslim, and the sacred grove is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
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Olojo.
The Ooni of Ife emerges wearing the Are crown, said to be Oduduwa's own and worn once a year, and the town stays awake. The festival marks the day the tradition says the world was made — at Ife, which is why Ife holds that it is the place where the world was made.
held by most
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Once in a life
Initiation.
The head is shaved and painted, the orisha is seated on it, and the initiate spends days in seclusion in white, is fed like an infant, learns their prohibitions and emerges with a new name. In Cuba the year that follows requires white clothing every day. It costs a great deal and people save for years.
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The naming, on the seventh day.
Water, salt, honey, palm oil, kola, bitter kola, pepper, sugar cane and dried fish are touched to the newborn's lips one at a time, each with a spoken wish about the life ahead. Then the names — and a Yoruba child will have several, one recording the circumstances of the birth and one often saying which ancestor has come back.
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The funeral of someone old.
Drumming, dancing, a great deal of money spent, and a second burial to complete the passage some time later — because an elder with surviving children has finished the journey and is joining the ancestors. The funeral of a child has none of this, and the difference between the two is the clearest statement the tradition makes about what a good life is.
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Ongoing
Ebo — the offering.
Divination names what is required and where it goes: a specific food at a crossroads, cloth in a river, an animal at a shrine, a number of cowries at the roots of a tree. Much of what is offered is then cooked and eaten by everyone present, which is the part outsiders miss — a great deal of ebo is a meal.
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Ifá divination.
The chain is cast, the odu falls, the verses are chanted — and the question is placed inside a story older than the asking.
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The drums, and being mounted.
Bata drums play the rhythm that belongs to one orisha and no other, the praise names are sung, and at some point a devotee is taken — the orisha rides them, speaks through them, and they will not remember it. The community's test is behavioural: if it is Shango, it must behave as Shango behaves.
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The leaves.
Several hundred plants, each with uses, gathered with the correct incantation — and the incantation is not ornamental, since the tradition holds that a leaf picked without the words is inactive. Yoruba herbal practice and Yoruba religion are one field of knowledge, and Osanyin owns it.
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Feeding your own head.
Cool water, gin, kola, honey — whatever your Ori was told it takes — pressed to your own head with your own palms while you speak to it. No priest, no shrine, no money, no permission. It is the most private act in the religion and the one that addresses the only divinity that is yours alone.
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Being ridden.
The vocabulary is explicit — the orisha mounts the devotee as a rider mounts a horse — and the person has no memory afterwards and is told what happened. The community does not accept every instance: what is watched is whether the behaviour is characteristic of that particular orisha, and a false one is spotted.
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Hearing your odu.
The babalawo casts, marks the figure, and begins reciting verses about people you have never heard of. The identification is the client's job, not his, and people describe the disconcerting experience of listening to a story about a stranger and realising partway through that it is an account of their own situation.
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Talking to your head.
Cool water and your own hands on your own head, addressing directly the destiny you chose before birth and cannot remember choosing. Practitioners describe it as the difference between fighting your circumstances and asking them what they are. No priest, no shrine, no fee.
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When it comes out.
People report fear, and the young men with switches keeping the crowd back are not there for effect. The covering is absolute — no skin, no eyes, no hands visible — because what is present is not held to be the man inside. The crowd's reaction is treated by the tradition as part of the evidence.
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The drum knows your name.
Bata drums reproduce the tones of Yoruba words, so a drum can say a praise name, and each orisha has rhythms belonging to no other. Devotees describe recognising their own orisha's rhythm in a crowded room before consciously registering that they have heard it. The drumming is not accompaniment — it is the summons.
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