The Ifá He Threw Away

Òpìnmí was a Babaláwo with no clients. He tried the farm, the market and the road, and nothing held. He cast Ifá for himself, and Ifá told him: go to Ilé Ifẹ̀ and keep your priesthood. He went. And there, among his own peers, he was left at the palace door morning after morning. Nothing Ifá earned was ever shared with him. Until the day he gathered it all up, his ikin, his tray, his Ifá, and walked to a fast river to throw it away and forget it. Then he tripped on a stone. He landed in the dust, and he laughed. And he could not do it. What the people on the far bank pulled out of the water that day is why the sixteen are counted the way they are: five, five, three, two, one. Before the story ends, a king has called for the poor man with the cut whisk. An ìtàn of Ìrosùn Ìrẹtẹ̀, as a Babaláwo tells it, about the Ifá that is thrown away and counted again.