The Life of Odi Ika
The continuous biography of this odù's own spiritual evolution — celestial works, then earthly works — told as one unfolding life. Click any title to read it.
Odu Invocation and Source Provenance
Odí Ka
Translator's note: All ritual, medical, and sacrificial statements below are reproduced as the source presents them; they are attributed source material, not advice. Yoruba-derived ritual formulas, prayers, and rezo lines are reproduced exactly as printed, without translation or correction; runs of multiple spaces are collapsed to single spaces, with no word changed, added, or removed. The second name printed at the head, “Odí Ka,” is retained. Bracketed notes are the translator's and are not part of the source.
Adifafun (preserved verbatim):
Odí ka okoloyu opua adifafun orisaye tinshomo ayalorun oba nifa tinshomo Olofin oba orisaye adifafun egun oyiba Orun maferefun Shangó orisaye obaye adifafun oduduwa.
Source. Translation of odu 071, Odí Ika, from the source document 071 Odi Ika — Tratado fuente (Google Docs).
The Patakín Corpus — 1 to 6
Presented in strict numerical order as in the source Tratado. Click any title to read it.
01There Is No Divine Justice
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Patakín:
Here it was that there was an awo who had a leri de eggun, and this one attended to his saints a great deal, and every day he went to the beach to pray; and one day he saw how, in a boat in which three individuals were traveling, they struck one of them with a stick, and afterward the other two finished him off, tied him up, and threw him into the sea. And then he began to think and said to himself: “This only I have seen — there is no divine justice, neither in heaven nor on the earth.” And so that awo was becoming disillusioned with life.
Along the way he met a little old man (Orúnmila) and asked him whether he knew whose the head was that he had under his arm, and he said it was his brother’s, and he went into details with Orúnmila, explaining to him that the one he had seen treated that way in the sea was his brother, the one to whom that head belonged. [The source reads “le preguntó si él sabía de quién era la cabeza que él tenía bajo el brazo y este le dijo que era de su hermano”; its pronouns do not establish whether the awo or the old man carries the head, whose brother is meant, or who explains the details to Orúnmila. The translation keeps the same pronouns and does not resolve these questions.]
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