The traditional unit is the agbo ile, the compound: an extended patrilineal family occupying a walled cluster of buildings, with the family shrine inside it and the eldest man of the lineage functioning as its priest. A person's orisha is in the first instance inherited — the orisha of the father's line — before any question of individual affiliation arises, and divination may later reveal a further personal orisha. What follows is that religion is not a separable institution here: the same structure handles land, inheritance, marriage negotiation, dispute settlement, burial and worship, and there is no congregation to join or leave. This is a large part of why missionary strategies developed for congregational religions worked unevenly, why census counts of traditional practitioners are unreliable, and why the practice persists inside families that would identify themselves on paper as entirely Christian or Muslim.