Ifá
The Knowledge System
01 / INHERITANCE
Begin with the context.
Divinatory and intellectual tradition through which important individual and collective questions are interpreted. Its corpus preserves philosophy, history, medicine and mythology.
Place & variation
Yorùbá divinatory traditions. Terminology, authority and practice depend on a practitioner’s training and community.
02 / SYSTEM — EDITORIAL ANALYSIS
Knowledge & interpretation.
Signs, oral knowledge and trained interpretation meet a particular question.
This is the archive’s reading of a structure or relationship, not a claim that the tradition was designed as a modern technology.
03 / FUTURE — INHERITED FUTURES SPECULATION
What could knowledge tools learn from keeping interpretation in human hands?
Indigenous knowledge engine.
An artistic proposition to explore. Historical documentation does not establish the technological analogy.
04 / A CLOSER READING
Knowledge needs interpretation
The archive’s technological reading begins with structure, but its interest is not exhausted by the number of signs. An index becomes meaningful through learned interpretation. An interface alone is not the knowledge system.
What the project takes forward
Inherited Futures asks how an archive could preserve multiple readings, acknowledge its sources and leave meaningful decisions with people. The analogy to a knowledge engine is a design proposition, not a claim that Ifá is a computer or predictive AI.
FOLLOW THE RESEARCH
Sources & context.
The linked sources distinguish collection evidence, research and contextual reading. They support the inheritance layer; the system and future layers are editorial interpretations.
Research edition 01 · September 2026. A desk-research synthesis; not a practitioner-certified account. Some linked books and articles require library access. Read the evidence guide ↗
Follow another thread.
Editorial links connect shared themes, objects and practices. They do not make the records interchangeable.