Free Changer's Daughter by Jane Lindskold

Yoruba use forms of divination taken from other cultures, like Islamic sand cutting or even reading tarot cards or casting dice.
    Initially, she had been drawn to a form of divination similar to the casting of the palm nuts. In this form, sixteen cowries are cast instead. The way they fall onto a wicker basket indicates the verses to be recited, just as in Ifa divination the combination of ones and twos indicates what verses are to be recited.
    What had attracted Aduke to this form, even though it was less complex and thus (to her westernized way of seeing things) could offer her a less precise answer, was that in the divination with sixteen cowries, the diviner might be a woman. Babalawo are always men.
    Aduke had thought that confiding her grief to a woman would be easier and that a woman might be more sympathetic and so give her better advice.
    Oya had dissuaded her from this course of action.

    “Cowrie divination is good in its place,” she had said, “very good, but it has one weakness that Ifa divination does not. All Ifa diviners take their learning from Orunmila, who has been given this wisdom directly from his father Olodumare. Since it is Olodumare from whom the ancestral soul requests his new destiny, the chain of knowledge is simple and direct. Olodumare to Orunmila to the babalawo .
    “However,” she had continued, her voice growing soft yet more firm, “the chain of knowledge is not so simple in the divination with sixteen cowries. Depending on which deity the diviner is consecrated to, the verses differ slightly.”
    Aduke had protested. “But one of the orisha to whom the sixteen cowries divination is given is your own namesake, Oya. Another is Shango, who is the patron of this city. Yet another is Eshu, for whom each household keeps a shrine. Perhaps the personal orisha will intercede more closely with his diviner and so the knowledge will be more precise. Certainly Olodumare cannot be expected to keep track of every destiny he grants!”
    Oya had frowned sternly at her. “You sound like a lawyer or a medieval Christian invoking a patron saint! Since you are so wise, tell me, who are all the orisha who employ the sixteen cowries in their personal cults?”
    Aduke had blushed. “I can’t remember precisely. There are several. The ones I already mentioned: Oshun, Yewa... There are others, but I would need to look them up in Kehinde’s notes.”
    “I will spare you the trouble,” Oya had said coldly. “In some areas the cult of Shopona uses the divination by sixteen cowries. Now tell me, wisewoman, who is the one orisha of the many, of the over four hundred named deities, who is the only one whose worship has been banned by the government?”
    Aduke had not been brave enough to use the terrible god’s name. “The King of the World.”
    “The same King of the World who left his mark on your baby?” Oya asks mockingly.
    “The same.” Aduke’s answer was in a whisper.
    “And will his worshipers announce their alliance publicly?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “No, that is so.” Oya’s tones had softened. “Now, young mother, let me tell you my thinking. If I had been raised and trained in the cult of an outlawed orisha , I would not want to waste all the training I had been given, especially since that training serves my patron as well as me. Remember the saying, ‘A boy learns to divine in poverty. When he knows Ifa he becomes wealthy.’ So this diviner has been poor, and is going to be denied the chance for wealth. Do you think he—or she—will think this fair?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “So what does this diviner trained in the cult of an outlawed deity do? Tell me. You are wise.”
    Aduke had straightened and given the answer she knew Oya expected. “Go out and do the work for which he—or she—has been trained but say that you are from another cult, perhaps that of Eshu, for Eshu is a difficult god for any mere human to predict.”
    “Good girl!” Oya had seemed genuinely pleased.