ABSTRACT
The Yoruba diviner Babalawo Kolawole Ositola sits before a carved wooden tray (opon) in the Porogun Quarter of the city of Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria. He begins the divination ritual in which he will explain the present and predict the future by invoking the past. First he traces the crossroads pattern, two lines that intersect at a right angle, in irosun powder on the surface of the tray. The crossroads symbolize the meeting place of all directions, all forces. Like any busy intersection, the crossroads from a place of danger and confusion that arises with the opportunity to change direction. The Yoruba experience of the universe is expressed by the carvings on the opon and the words of the diviner that speak of continuous change and transformation, amidst the social realities of interaction and interdependence. The divination will become a dialogue with the ancestors and spiritual forces. The divine messenger, the deity Esu/Elegba, will be called upon to assist with the deeper truths about nature and the dangers and ambiguities of human communication. Yoruba divination sculpture reflects an ideal world of balance: humans are in the balance with nature and the unseen forces of agency and energy; the past is in balance with the future. According to the Yoruba scholar Robert Farris Thompson, “If there is anything to learn from [Esu] the god of the crossroads, it is that all is not as it seems to be.”
