Ebo is misdescribed when it is called appeasement. The structure divination reveals is an imbalance in an exchange — something owed, something out of position, something the person is doing that is producing the outcome they came to complain about — and the prescription restores the balance. The prescribed item is precise: a particular food, a number of cowries, a specific cloth, an animal of a stated colour, delivered to a stated place, which may be a crossroads, a river bank, the roots of a tree, or a shrine. Substitution requires fresh divination. A great deal of what is offered is subsequently cooked and shared among those present, so the rite is frequently a communal meal, a fact that surprises people expecting destruction. And the single most common prescription in the odu is not material at all: the client is told to change their behaviour — to stop being greedy, to stop quarrelling with a relative, to be patient — with the material offering secondary to that.