Mérìndínlógún: Òrìsà Divination Using 16 Cowries: Revised and Extended Edition

Traditional Yor b culture is founded on the idea that everything in Nature has Or or consciousness. This belief leads to the idea it is possible to communicate with Forces in Nature called ris . One form of communication is through altered states of consciousness commonly refered to as possession. The other is to communicate with Nature through the use of divination. In traditional Yor b culture divination is the manipulation of either seeds or shells to create numberical patterns these patterns refer to specific verses of oral scripture. These verses are a way of preserving the wisdom of the ancestors. Traditional Yor b culture has four main systems of divination that are interrelated and inter connected. The first is obi obata, which essentially is used to give yes no answers to direct questions. The second system is b sed on the use of sixteen principles that traditional Yor b culture considers the foundation of Creation. This system is called M r nd nl g n from the elision m r n meaning four, d n meaning subtract from, and l g n meaning twenty. In the Yor b system of counting M r nd nl g n is the word for sixteen.