The consultation has a specific epistemic structure that is easy to miss. The client does not tell the diviner the question — they whisper it to a coin or a kola nut, or hold it in mind — and the babalawo casts, marks the resulting odu on the divining tray, and begins reciting the verses belonging to it. Each verse is a case: someone consulted Ifa about something, was told to offer something, did or did not, and the outcome was such. The identification of which case applies is the client's, not the diviner's, and clients describe the disconcerting experience of hearing a narrative about people they have never heard of and recognising partway through that it is a description of their own circumstances. The prescriptions follow from the matched verse. Whatever one makes of the mechanism, the design places the interpretive act with the person who has the information, which is a more interesting arrangement than the popular image of a fortune-teller making pronouncements.