One Crowned Head

Ọ̀rúnmìlà called his eight children to a festival and dressed as a king: white cloth, a brass ọ̀sùn staff, brass sandals, a crown. Seven came forward and saluted their father. The last, Olówò, came dressed exactly like him — and stood still. "You wear a crown. I wear a crown. And nobody uses a crowned head to bow down for another person."

Ọ̀rúnmìlà took back the staff and walked out of the world. Then the world came undone. The rain stopped. Fire was no longer hot. Water was no longer wet. Women gave birth to goats and not to children. The people called their father back, and at the foot of the palm with sixteen heads he answered them — and put sixteen palm nuts into their hands, a way to speak with him beyond this world.

A painted graphic novel for grown readers, from the Odù Ìwòrì Méjì, after Wande Abimbola's translation in Sixteen Great Poems of Ifá: the story of why Ifá is consulted through the ikin, and of the one son who would not bow.

By Babalawo Ifadahunsi Obafemi.