Obi divination is the domestic, everyday oracle. Four lobes of a kola nut — or in the Americas four pieces of coconut, since kola was unavailable — are thrown and read according to how many land face up and face down, giving five possible configurations with standard meanings ranging from emphatic yes through qualified answers to no. It requires no initiation, no fee and no specialist, and it is used constantly: to check whether an offering has been accepted, whether an orisha wants something more, whether to proceed with a small decision. The contrast with Ifa is one of scale and cost. Ifa involves a trained babalawo, a formal consultation, payment, and access to a corpus of hundreds of verses capable of addressing a complex situation; obi answers a closed question on the spot. Most practitioners will use obi many times for every one occasion on which they consult Ifa.