The Odu are understood not simply as geomantic forms and their textual representations in terms of poetic or prose narratives. Those geomantic and textual characteristics are perceived as constituting the physical embodiment of their essence as spiritual entities, each of which embodies its own Ori.

Abimbola characterizes the Odu as equivalent to volumes in a textual corpus or as chapters in a vast text. This characterization is a useful heuristic device in understanding the concepts they represent, but Abimbola’s exposition makes it clear that this characterization represents only part of the conceptual complexity represented by the notion of the Odu.

The concept of the Odu, in embodying geomantic and textual characteristics, could be seen as cognizable within the province of the symbolic signs represented by language, as conventionally understood. The complete range of its characterisation, however, goes beyond the ontological categories normally assigned to linguistic entities in the Western tradition but bears greater affinity with conceptions of sacred language in Indian philosophy, in which the sacred syllable om is understood both as a graphic symbol, representing a referent, as in Western linguistics, but as the creative word through which the universe has been created and is sustained. The syllable thereby embodies both linguistic and metaphysical categories of being19.

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19 George,Feuerstein, The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice (New York: Hohm Press, 2001).