Ọ̀yẹ̀kú Meji (Oyeku)

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 the 0/1 notation used in the scholarly literature, 1 here = 0 there and 2 here = 1 there.

The commentary names ẹbọ to Ọbàtálá, to Èṣù and to Ifá as what turns the odù's enemies aside, and it specifies that the Orí of a child of this odù is given palm oil and never water. The verse recorded for the odù is the story of Ọ̀yẹ̀kú refusing the ẹbọ his brother Ọ̀gbẹ̀ made and being closed up as a result — which is why the prescription is framed as the thing that was not done rather than as a list.

Ọ̀yẹ̀kú is the second odù and the principle of contraction: the darkness and night that came into creation, the concealing of what is hidden, and death. The tradition reads death here as the end of a cycle rather than as annihilation — the end of poverty, of illness, of confusion, of a stage of life — so the odù is as much about transformation as about loss, and its name is glossed both as 'the spirit of the mother of death' and as 'the wisdom of death'. It carries wealth and family when it is ìre, and premature ending when it is not, and its constant requirement is humility: the one born under Ọ̀yẹ̀kú succeeds as long as he does not overreach.