Òṣé-Ọ̀gbẹ̀ (Ose-Ogbe)

Ifá odu

Tradition · Yoruba Ifa
Alternate Names
Ose OgbeÒṣé Ọ̀gbẹ̀Ose-OgbeOché Ogbe
Kind
Amulu
Odu Number
225
Binary
12121111
Notation

1 = single line (I); 2 = double line (II). Eight marks: the first four are the right-hand leg, the last four the left-hand leg, each read top to bottom; in an amulu the two halves are different figures. In the 0/1 notation used in the scholarly literature, 1 here = 0 there and 2 here = 1 there.

Themes
AbundancePaymentBusinessContractsGreedProtection
Orisha
EshuOshun
Counsel
Ire ajeIre iseIre ileOsogbo ajeOsogbo arayeOsogbo ofo
Proverbs
Yoruba
Mo wá ilé, mo bọ̀nà; ọ̀nà ni mo pàdé Èṣù Ọ̀dàrà.
English
Verse line — I came home and met the road, and on the road I met Èṣù Ọ̀dàrà.
Offerings

The commentary prescribes kola to the person's Orí for wealth, ẹbọ for protection from Àjẹ́, ẹbọ for long life made with white cloth, white beans, a calabash of ẹfun and four white pigeons, and — where the client is pregnant — ẹbọ for the child's health. For children it prescribes a party serving ìlasa soup, which is one of the few prescriptions in the corpus that is explicitly a feast.

Meaning

Òṣé-Ọ̀gbẹ̀ is abundance arriving at the open road: collection of what is owed, payment in full for work done, and success in business shared with a friend. It is a prosperity odù with a sharp practical edge — the commentary's first instruction is to collect the debts and to refuse to work without a contract, which is unusually concrete for the corpus. Its warning is that abundance must not become greed, and that the person must not associate with bad people; it also says the person may be confiding in someone who is in fact an enemy. Èṣù Ọ̀dàrà appears in the verse because the road, and who one meets on it, is the odù's subject.

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