Where the Heads Are Chosen

Three friends come down from heaven to choose their heads. Ọ̀rúnmìlà's son, Ògún's son, and the son of Ìjà — the hunter so swift, Ifá says, that he could snatch the tail off an elephant — set out together for the house of Àjàlá Mọ̀pín, the old potter who makes the heads of the unborn. He is also called the debtor of heaven, and he is hiding in the rafters.

Two of the friends walk straight in and take what is on the shelf: a head still soft from the wheel, and a head already cracked. Afuwapẹ stops at his father's house. The diviners cast Ifá and name the sacrifice — salt, cowries, three days of hard work — and he does it, all of it, before he goes on. Then the old man drops down out of the ceiling.

A painted graphic novel for grown readers, from the Odù Ogbègúndá, after Wande Abimbola's translation in Sixteen Great Poems of Ifá. It ends the way the old poems end, plainly: "We chose our heads from the same place, but our destinies are not identical."

By Babalawo Ifadahunsi Obafemi.