Two Studies of Ifa Divination

This is a collection of two academic field studies of Ifa divination among the Yoruba, by Peter Morton-Williams, William Bascom and E. M. McClelland, published by Cambridge University Press for the International African Institute, a body that supported serious ethnographic research in Africa. Bascom in particular was a leading anthropologist of Yoruba religion who trained directly with Ifa diviners. Its strength is firsthand ethnographic documentation of how Ifa divination was actually practiced and interpreted by working diviners at the time of the research, rather than a secondhand or comparative summary. Its limit is that it documents specific fieldwork from a particular period and place, and Ifa practice, like any living tradition, continues to vary and develop across different Yoruba communities and in its diaspora since.