Just as he was about to leave heaven, Ojuani Meyi met several priests of Ifá, who recommended an offering to free himself from the conspiracies that awaited him below. On the very eve of the journey he had to give a billy goat to Eshu. He did so, and he also invited the oldest Awó of heaven to a meal with a gray goat; they all blessed him and promised him permanent support during his life on earth. Finally he appeared before God to receive his blessing and his leave, with a white cloth, a large piece of chalk, a parrot feather and a pair of white kola nuts. God accepted the gifts, expressed his good will and gave him permission to depart.
Once in Oyó, Ojuani Meyi worked as a priest of Ifá and also did business. At first he did well in both, but his success aroused envy among the older priests.
They began to plot his downfall. First they consulted among themselves about how to lessen his fame, and finally they went to him to ask what to do to destroy Ojuani Meyi. He answered that they should sacrifice a goat for his Ifá and a billy goat for Eshu. Eshu warned him that a sacrifice was being made against him, and Ojuani Meyi replied that he had seen it when he consulted for them and that he already knew how to ruin their plans. The conspirators never went back to carry out the sacrifice.
The annual festival of a deity of the town arrived and the conspirators invited him to go with them. They had opened a pit in the ground of the path that led to the shrine and counted on his passing there, while they would take another. It was the rule that visitors arrived by one road and returned by another. Ojuani Meyi explained that he was only permitted to visit the shrine of Orunmila; they replied that they would expel him from Oyó if he did not go, since attending was a duty of all the inhabitants.
Under that threat he consulted his Ifá, which asked for a gray goat for himself and a billy goat for Eshu. He complied and traveled to the shrine, where visitors had to spend fourteen days. It was the custom to arrive together and to return each on his own.
When the fourteenth day came, the ceremonies ended. The conspirators proposed that Ojuani Meyi, as the newcomer, should leave first, hoping to see him fall into the disguised pit. As he approached, Eshu turned the skull of the offered billy goat into an obstacle. Ojuani Meyi hit his foot, jumped over the pit without noticing it and went on to his house, where the people celebrated his arrival safe and sound.
Meanwhile, Eshu filled in the pit and opened another right at the main door of the shrine. The conspirators waited a good while and then left one by one, suspecting nothing. Eshu had left the skull near the hole; the first one hit it and fell. Eshu again placed obstacle and pit for the next one, and so on until all of them were in that bottomless grave. After the last one fell, Eshu closed it as if nothing had happened, and the conspirators vanished without a trace. From then on, Orunmila decreed that whoever goes to a shrine seeking salvation must go with a clean heart, because the wicked may not return alive.
Soon after, Oyó was filled with uproar: many families were looking for their husbands, sons and missing relatives. The whole town went to consult Ojuani Meyi. After the divination, he revealed that the king of death had sent emissaries to seize those who returned from the shrine with evil intentions. For that reason he had asked them, before leaving, for a goat for his Ifá, with which to calm the king of death, and a billy goat for Eshu, with which to turn danger aside; they had not done it. He told them that the sacrifice was still needed to rescue the lives of those who were too frightened to leave the shrine. It was done at once, and only then did Eshu open the way for those still there who wanted to return safely.
When the storm had passed, Ojuani Meyi gave a great banquet and sang a song of thanks to the priests who had divined for him in heaven. In it he told how the elders of Oyó were ordered to sacrifice and paid no attention, how he was told the same and obeyed, how for that reason he stumbled and survived while others stumbled and died, and how whoever sacrifices always receives salvation.