Orunmila, Olorun and Obatala Creation Myth, not Oduduwa

The following statement are nothing but fabricated fallacy: "The third Ife was founded with the arrival of Oduduwa and his groups. Prominent among those people he met at Ile-Ife were Oreluere, a very powerful wiseman and Orunmila." 

Orunmila Depiction

The person who wrote this article has got his facts spectacularly wrong. First, Orunmila and Oduduwa did not exist in the same time-line. Second, Orunmila predated Oduduwa's existence by at least 10,000 years. Third, Orunmila (Olori-Ipin meaning a witness to creation), was a God and an Immortal in his own right, only second in command to Olodumare (The Supreme Architect) himself. Fourth, Oduduwa was a mere mortal whose father Lamurudu, was killed in Mecca during the wars of religion pertaining to polytheism and monotheism.

In the Beginning, Olodumare (God) gave the Orisa Orunmila a flawless method of communication between himself and the Orisa called Ifa. Ifa is linked to destiny through the symbolism of the number sixteen. Sixteen is the number of cosmos; it represents the primal order that issued from the unity of Olodumare. 

(Sixteen is also a significant number in the world of computers.) When the world was first created, it spread out from an original palm tree that stood at the centre of the world at Ile-Ife. The palm tree had sixteen branches, which formed the four cardinal points and the sixteen original quarters of Ile-Ife.

In political terms, Odudua, the first oni of Ife, fathered sixteen sons who founded the sixteen original kingdoms of the Yoruba. On a deeper level still, Orunmila taught the art of divination to his sixteen sons; they, in turn, passed it down to the Babalawos who practice it today, through the linked concepts of order, creation, and destiny, the number sixteen represents the variables of the human condition, the sixteen possible situations of human life. The Ogham lines on the face of Obatala (Eshin in Igboland) are transliterated into: R - Ra/Ora = Sun, Y - Iyi = Sea, N - Ana = Earth, Kw - Kwa = Tribes, Kw - Akwu = Alter/Temple, Ch - Chi = God/Spirit, P - Opa = Moon and so on.

Obatala Depiction

Orunmila! Witness of fate Second to Oludumare (GOD or The Supreme Architect)) Thou are far more efficacious than medicine, Thou are the Immense Orbit that averts the day of Death. My Lord, Almighty that saved mysterious Spirit that fought death. To Thee salutation is first due in the morning. Thou are the Equilibrium that adjusts World Forces. 

Thou art the One whose exertion it is to reconstruct the creature of bad lot. Repairer of bad-luck, He who knows thee becomes immortal Lord, the undisputable king, Perfect in the House of Wisdom! My Lord! Infinite in knowledge! For not knowing thee in full, we are futile, Oh, if we could but know thee in full, all would be well with us. Ase o, Amen, Amun or Amen-Re.

Furthermore, Orunmila, in order to make access to the retrieval of the Divine Message (Ifa) easy, devised the computer compatible binary coding system, thousands of years before the emergence of computer consciousness in so-called modern man! So, Ifa is preserved in binary coded format and is output Parable - Format. According to many indigenous African legends "their gods once existed as humans and had their way of communicating. Prior to their disappearance, they left with the people a means to communicate with them in the outer realm (Oracle Divination Systems)."

"Ifa Oracle divination is based on the square of 16=16x16=26 = 2^8 corresponding to the vertices of an 8-dimensional hypercube and to the binary 2-choice Clifford algebra C1(8) and so to related ones such as C1(8)xC1(8) = C1(16) [7]. Since the number of sub-hypercubes in an 8-dimensional hypercube is 6,561 =81x81=3^8, the Ifa Oracle has N=8 ternary 3-structure as well as binary 2-structure."  

And the following statement confirmed my assertion about how inaccurate this article is: "It is believed that Oduduwa, the founder of the Yoruba raced emerged after the deluge, he (Oduduwa) and his followers descended on to dry land by means of chain ropes from their life boat." Fifth, here this person has got Obatala exploits wrongly mixed up with Oduduwa's because Obatala was the creator God of the Yoruba myth and an Immortal in his own right, not Oduduwa. In addition, Obatala also predated Oduduwa's existence by at least 3,000 years.

The following paragraphs are the true and correct myth pertaining to Obatala from Yoruba and Igbo land. "In the beginning, there was only the sky above, water and marshland below. The chief god Olorun ruled the sky, and the goddess Olokun ruled what was below. Obatala, another god, reflected upon this situation, then went to Olorun for permission to create dry land for all kinds of living creatures to inhabit. He was given permission, so he sought advice from Orunmila, the oldest son of Olorun and the god of prophecy. " 

"He was told he would need a gold chain long enough to reach below, a snail's shell filled with sand, a white hen, a black cat, and a palm nut, all of which he was to carry in a bag. All the gods contributed what gold they had, and Orunmila supplied the articles for the bag. 

When all was ready, Obatala hung the chain from a corner of the sky, placed the bag over his shoulder, and started the downward climb. When he reached the end of the chain he saw he still had some distance to go. From above he heard Orunmila instruct him to pour the sand from the snail's shell, and to immediately release the white hen."

"He did as he was told, whereupon the hen landing on the sand began scratching and scattering it about. Wherever the sand landed it formed dry land, the bigger piles becoming hills and the smaller piles valleys. Obatala jumped to a hill and named the place Ife. Obatala soon found clay with which to mould figures like him and started his task, but he soon grew tired and decided to take a break. He made wine from a nearby palm tree, and drank bowl after bowl." 

Oduduwa's Statue in Ile-Ife

Not realizing he was drunk, Obatala returned to his task of fashioning the new beings; because of his condition he fashioned many imperfect figures. Without realizing this, he called out to Olorun to breathe life into his creatures. The next day he realized what he had done and swore never to drink again, and to take care of those who were deformed, thus becoming Patron Saint of the Disabled and Protector of the Deformed. 

Sixth, we have been able to transliterate the Ogham lines on the face of Obatala (Eshin in Igboland), and it does not equates to the same thing when transliterating the lines on Oduduwa's face. Seventh, Obatala existed during the fourth and fifth replenishing of the earth, while Oduduwa only existed during fifth replenishing of the earth. Yoruba mythology also shed light on the pre-Oduduwa era in the IIe-Ife, when 'Obatala' and Oreluere were the ruling chieftains of the indigenous Ife-speaking community.

'Awo' Ogboni (Freemason), among so many other 'Awos'(i.e cults) in Ife then, became so prominent and relevant, more as a pressure group to protest the unceremonious arrival of the great colonial master in history, (i.e.) Oduduwa. The Word "Osirica" taken from the Mystery of Osirica and derived from the name of the Egyptian God Osiris. The affinity this word has with the Yoruba word "Oriṣa," derived from the word Oriṣi, which means Gods or Deities who numbered 499 + 1, is quite remarkable. 

If we apply the word "Oriṣa" it equates to the Mystery of "Oriṣica." If we swap the "R" with the "S" in the word "Oriṣica," It eqates to the Mystery of Oṣirica. Left: These are ancient "Marks" not just a tribal mark and can be transliterate using Ogham lines and Iberian Script. A few Transliteration of the "Marks" There are a few letters Z/F at least twice, and the letters T twice as well as Letters OI, letters EA/CH/KH and AE/X/Xi, and the words Past, God/Spirit, Tribe and so on.

One of the stranger ancient scripts one might come across, Ogham is also known as the 'Celtic Tree Alphabet' and Iberian 'Script'. Estimated to have been used from the fourth to the tenth century BCE, it is believed to have been possibly named after the Irish god Ogma but this is debated widely. Ogham actually refers to the characters themselves, the script as a whole is more appropriately named Beith-luis-nin after the order of alphabet letters BLFSN.

The script originally contained twenty letters grouped into four groups of five. Five more letters were later added creating a fifth group. Each of these groups was named after its first letter. There are some four to five hundred surviving ogham inscriptions throughout Britain and Ireland with the largest number appearing in Pembrokeshire. The rest of the inscriptions were located around south-eastern Ireland, Scotland, Orkney, the Isle of Man and around the border of Devon and Cornwall. Ogham was used to write in Archaic Irish, Old Welsh and Latin mostly on wood and stone and is based on a high medieval Briatharogam tradition of ascribing the name of trees to individual characters. The inscriptions containing Ogham are almost exclusively made up of personal names and marks of land ownership.

There are four popular theories discussing the origin of Ogham. The differing theories are unsurprising considering that the script has similarities to ciphers in Germanic runes, Latin, elder futhark and the Greek alphabet. The first theory is based on the work of scholars such as Carney and MacNeill who suggest that Ogham was first created as a cryptic alphabet designed by the Irish. They assert that the Irish designed it in response to political, military and/or religious reasons so that those with knowledge of just Latin could not read it. 

The second theory is held by McManus who argues that Ogham was invented by the first Christians in early Ireland in a quest for uniqueness. The argument maintains that the sounds of the primitive Irish language were too difficult to transcribe into Latin. The third theory states that the Ogham script from invented in West Wales in the fourth century BCE to intertwine the Latin alphabet with the Irish language in response to the intermarriage between the Romans and the Romanized Britons. This would account for the fact that some of the Ogham inscriptions are bilingual; spelling out Irish and Brythonic-Latin.

The fourth theory is supported by MacAlister and used to be popular before other theories began to overtake it. It states that Ogham was invented in Cisalpine Gaul around 600 BCE by Gaulish Druids who created it as a hand signal and oral language. MacAliser suggests that it was transmitted orally until it was finally put into writing in early Christian Ireland. He argues that the lines incorporated into Ogham represent the hand by being based on four groups of five letters with a sequence of strokes from one to five. However, there is no evidence for MacAlisters theory that Ogham’s language and system originated in Gaul. 

Olojo Festival

Mythical theories for the origin of Ogham also appear in texts from the eleventh to fifteenth centuries. The eleventh-century Lebor Gabala Erenn tells that Ogham was invented soon after the fall of the tower of Babel, as does the fifteenth-century Auraicept na n-eces text. The Book of Babymote also includes ninety-two recorded secret modes of writing Ogham written in 1390-91 CE.

OLOJO FESTIVAL: It is the biggest annual festival of the IIe-Ife. On this occasion, Ooni (King) appears after about seven days of seclusion, completed, not communicating with anyone except the"spirits." He wears the special beaded Oduduwas original crown called “Aare” only once a year during this Olojo festival as he leads the crowd to Okemogun shrine.

The LOKOLOKOs are his bodyguards during the Olojo Festival. The time for the festival is indicated by the sun’s movement in about the month of October from the West to the East. Only the Olojo chief priest identifies the particular day to celebrate the festival.