Iroso Kanlú

There was a time when the Awoses went to the market (ilé loya) to advertise themselves as diviners: they took out the ókpele and threw it anywhere at all, even on the produce stalls, with the Gan always on their heads, showing off and swaggering and reading for everyone in sight. Olofin heard of it and said: «I am going to have them read for me». The Awoses read for him, saw this Ifá and marked him an ebbó; but when Olofin asked what the ebbó was for, they could not explain it to him. He was read by seven different Awoses and they all did the same, until Olofin, displeased, said: «I have spent my money and none of you has told me a thing».

As he was leaving he met Orunmila and made his complaint. «Are these my children? How can they do such a thing?» Orunmila read for Olofin, saw this Ifá and told the Awoses: «Olofin has come because he has ten wives and wants to know whether one of them has another man». And Olofin confirmed it: «That is exactly what I wanted to know». Then Orunmila sent his children out of the market and home, to take the Gan off their heads and to trouble themselves to learn Ifá, because what they were doing shamed his rule. This Ifá speaks of the Iyoyé, which is when the Gan is taken off the Awó's head: learn to read what Ifá says, and learn everything you can.

Orunmila became a great priest, well known because he did not prescribe complicated sacrifices: he almost never ordered a goat, and made a specialty of ebbó with materials easy to come by. That modesty earned him the displeasure of the elder priests, who saw sacrifice as a way of living off human suffering, and they accused him of sorcery — since it was believed that only sorcerers could afford to prescribe modest sacrifices. He was ordered to appear at God's ordeal: to drink the brew of the obo. First he went for divination and served Eshú with a goat, antelope meat and a rod; and his enemies, in case he survived, bribed assassins to ambush him.

He drank the brew and nothing happened to him: he brought it up, they gave him the chalk of innocence and he went home in triumph. Just before the place of the ambush, Eshú let a live antelope loose among the assassins: they all abandoned what they had come for and went after the animal, which they could not kill; blaming one another, they fought, wounded each other and were arrested for disturbing the peace. By the time they came out of the Obá's palace, Orunmila was safe at home. Even so they went to demand that he sing the song of God's ordeal; he said he did not know it, but sang in praise of the Awó who had divined for him. And after his triumph, every one of his enemies began to show him warmth and loyalty.

Tabita was a charlatan Awó who made out that he could see beyond what he was able to, and for that reason he lived in serious trouble. Once he said in the market that he could name what and who had killed the Obá's son, who had just died, without holding any hidden or inner power at all. He promised to reveal it on the next market day; when the day came he could not, and proposed hanging up a bunch of palm fruit: when the fruit began to fall, the guilty one would die. After fourteen days the fruit fell and nothing happened.

Called on to explain his failure, he lied: he accused an old woman, one of the pillars behind the Obá, and asked for her execution. The Obá, knowing no better, had her arrested. The next morning a flock of vultures came down in the palace yard; the traditional diviners revealed that they had come to protest at an innocent old woman's sentence, since vultures do not allow the old to be mistreated. The Obá overturned the order, made it up to the woman and ordered Tabita arrested for false witness; he escaped the city before the guards arrived and never came back. To the Awó of this sign: serve your head, Ogún and Ujá with a rooster each, begging not to be landed in trouble by the words that come out of your mouth.