An odù is one of the 256 figures of the Ifá oracle, and at the same time the body of verse, proverb, story and prescription that belongs to that figure. The two senses are not separable in practice: to 'cast Ògúndá' is to cast a pattern, and to have 'an Ògúndá' is to be in possession of a chapter. Òdù also means womb, and the tradition works with both meanings — the odù is a container out of which a situation is born, and the figure is read as the energy currently acting on the client rather than as a prediction of fixed events.