Ogbe Wori

Zambia had a sorcerer king of enormous power, Karamazo, owner of a fearsome fetish: a cooking pot called Endoki. He decided to take over the kingdom of the Fang and put a spell on his soldiers for the campaign, but in the middle of the conquest he felt the urge to go on as far as Ife.

Ife had as its Oba Lamujerin, an awo of Orunmila. When he consulted with osode, Ogbe Weña came out, warning him of a war of religion. Ifá ordered an ebbó and asked that a goat be offered to Orunmila, on the condition that all the Oba's godchildren be present.

Lamujerin sent word to the Yoruba and to the lands of Dahomey, Ashanti, the Mandingas and the Hausas. He also remembered a godchild who was an awo of Congo origin, from Angola, a son of Elewa, named Mawambo Eshu Alawana. He too came to the meeting.

With everyone gathered, they offered the goat to Orunmila. In the itá Ogbe Weña appeared again, and the awo, one after another, indicated the ebbó that fell to each. When his turn came, Mawambo marked the blood of the goat, Iyefá, mud from the river, rose apple seeds and money. With these they made a powder (iyé), prayed over it together, and went with it to face the forces of Karamazo.

The armies met on the banks of the Ayaná River. When all the awo blew the powder, Karamazo tumbled from his horse and Mawambo, whose sign was Ogbe Weña, cut off his head. When the sorcerer died, his cauldron broke into pieces.

The allies of Ife defeated the enemy troops, advanced as far as Zambia and imposed a peace agreement on the Congos. The victory over the mayombero was due to Eshu, to Mawambo and to the power of the Iyefá. When a fetish has to be undone, the key is the rose apple seed.

An awo who worked with Osain lived with his son. After clashes of temperament, the young man left home of his own will, and the father moved to another region.

Years passed and the son, now grown, became an excellent Osain practitioner. He knew so much about Osain that he wiped out all the mayomberos of his town, who were at war with him. Puffed up, he began to challenge mayomberos and Osain practitioners elsewhere and came out victorious from every fight.

One day he learned that in a remote town there was an Osain man of greater power, undefeated in all his wars. He set out for that place, crossing rivers and very difficult terrain.

After many days of walking he reached the territory of that Osain man. By asking, he learned that the man lived at the top of the highest hill, and he headed there, already sick from the exposure. At the foot of the hill rain broke out, with gales and enormous thunder. With such weather and his illness growing, he had to give up the idea of fighting that Osain man. But the ground was rough and the nearest town was far away, so he chose to go to the Osain man's house.

He knocked at the door and from inside a voice said: “Come in, my son.” It was not an entirely strange voice to him. On crossing the threshold he was stunned: the Osain man he had almost fought was his father.

A group of boys, with Kuariboshe at the head (a young daughter of Olofin), set about examining everything that exists. On their rounds they came to Olofin’s house and opened the sacred boxes where he kept the power of good as well as that of evil.

Inside one of them slept Aron, the sickness. The boys woke it, and the epidemic burst out of the box, threw itself on the children and began to make them ill. Fear spread everywhere, because the evil was advancing and every child who died left more sadness in the world.

Obatalá saw it and went to Orunmila, who consulted this Ifá and explained that only the cow, Malú, was free of the illness. He told him to cut hairs from the cow’s tail, braid them and use that braid to cleanse all the children. He also asked him to combine his necklace (ileke) with Orunmila’s and to have the children wear them. Obatalá did so, and the children recovered little by little.

Olofin, seeing what the two had achieved, declared: “You have saved them, but from today the illness will strike childhood harder than adults, and the threat of the epidemic will never leave them.”

For this reason, Orunmila and Obatalá look after children during epidemics. In this Ifá the cow and her tail were born, which serves to drive illness away, and the atmosphere as well. It is said that this Ifá has its root in ingratitude. The most important sarayeye is made with the cow’s tail (Ariku Malú), since no other animal keeps insects away with its tail as she does, and a cow almost never catches an epidemic.