Cowrie

Yoruba Ifá · Yoruba culture · West Africa

• Cowrie is used in Yoruba Ifá.

  Ifá divination as Bascom describes it uses palm nuts and related apparatus; cowries appear in Yoruba and neighboring lots-practices. Shell as a divinatory piece is not Atlantic currency.

  from William Bascom · Ifa Divination, 1969

  used in · partially sourced · culturally specific

Yoruba Ifá · Yoruba culture

• Cowrie is used in Lots.

  Casting cowries is a lots-technique in several West African and diaspora practices. Method-type, not one rite and not a slave-trade ledger.

  from William Bascom · Ifa Divination, 1969

  used in · partially sourced · documented

• Eshu is associated with Cowrie.

  Eshu as Ifá’s messenger belongs to the same West African ritual world in which cowries can be lots. Do not make Eshu a coin.

  from William Bascom · Ifa Divination, 1969

  associated with · interpretive · culturally specific

Yoruba culture · West Africa

• Cowrie is used in Atlantic trade.

  Hogendorn and Johnson treat cowrie shells as money in the Atlantic slave trade. Economics, not Ifá verses.

  from Jan Hogendorn and Marion Johnson · The Shell Money of the Slave Trade, 1986

  used in · sourced · documented

• Cowrie appears in Yoruba culture.

  Cowries circulate in Yoruba and neighboring economies and rites. Culture is not identical with Ifá and not identical with the Atlantic ledger.

  from William Bascom · Ifa Divination, 1969; Jan Hogendorn and Marion Johnson · The Shell Money of the Slave Trade, 1986

  appears in · sourced · documented

Twentieth century

• Cowrie is associated with Luck.

  Later popular charm-talk makes the cowrie a luck-shell. That is not Bascom’s Ifá and not Hogendorn’s money.

  associated with · interpretive · modern interpretation