Mérìndínlógún: Òrìsà Divination Using 16 Cowries: Revised and Extended Edition

Traditional Yorùbá culture is founded on the idea that everything in Nature has Orí or consciousness. This belief leads to the idea it is possible to communicate with Forces in Nature called Òrisà. One form of communication is through altered states of consciousness commonly refered to as possession. The other is to communicate with Nature through the use of divination. In traditional Yorùbá culture divination is the manipulation of either seeds or shells to create numberical patterns these patterns refer to specific verses of oral scripture. These verses are a way of preserving the wisdom of the ancestors. Traditional Yorùbá culture has four main systems of divination that are interrelated and inter connected. The first is obi obata, which essentially is used to give yes no answers to direct questions. The second system is bàsed on the use of sixteen principles that traditional Yorùbá culture considers the foundation of Creation. This system is called Mérìndínlógún from the elision mérìn meaning four, dín meaning subtract from, and lógún meaning twenty. In the Yorùbá system of counting Mérìndínlógún is the word for sixteen.

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