Ifa Orisa Religious Council of Canada

The Ifá divination system, an oral tradition for thousands of years later in the 18th,19th and 20th centuries codified in texts is practiced among Yorùbá communities and by the African diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean. In contrast to other forms of divination in the region that employ spirit mediumship, Ifá divination does not rely on a person having oracular powers but rather on a system of signs that are interpreted by a diviner, the Ifa priest or babalawo, literally “father of the secrets”. The Ifá divination system is applied whenever an important individual or collective decision has to be made. The Ifa literary corpus, called odu, consists of 256 parts subdivided into verses called ese, whose exact number is unknown as they are constantly increasing (there are around 800 ese per odu). Each of the 256 odu has its specific divination signature, which is determined by the babalawo using sacred palm-nuts and a divination chain. The ese, considered the most important part of Ifa divination, are chanted by the priests in poetic language. The ese reflect Yoruba history, language, beliefs, cosmovision and contemporary social issues. The knowledge of Ifa has been preserved within Yoruba communities and transmitted among Ifa priests. Under the influence of colonial rule and religious pressures, traditional beliefs and practices were discriminated against.The Ifá  priests maintain the tradition, transmit their complex knowledge and train future practitioners. 

Òrúnmìlà is the divinity of Wisdom,   Eleri Ipin (witness of destiny), Ibekeji Olodumare (Second only to Creator). Babalawos use either the divining chain known as Opele, or the sacred palm or kola nuts called Ikin, on the wooden divination tray called Opon Ifá. 

Our Services:

We offer the local and international community: 

• Ifá divination, 
• Ifá-Òrìṣà Religious ceremonial and 
• Ifá-Òrìṣà Religious ebbo services

right here in Georgetown, Ontario, Canada.

Bio:

Jean-Jérôme Christophe Baudry has studied the Yorùbá Ifá-Òrìṣà belief system most of his life and he is the son of the Dr. Lydia Gonzalez-Huguet (Gifted Elegun and Field researcher for the respected Cuban Ethnologist and Musicologist, Don Fernando Ortiz Fernández (16 July 1881 – 10 April 1969) and author of “La casa-templo en la Regla de Ocha” (1968)) She was posthumously given the Orisa name Omigbade and was enshrined in Gelede. Jean-Jérôme is also the Co-Founder of Consejo Cultural Yorùbá de Canada, and the Ifá-Òrìṣà Religious Council of Canada founded in 2012 and representing practitioners of Yorùbá Ifá-Òrìṣà faith from the four corners of the world.  The spiritual community he leads includes practitioners from many countries and languages, which has allowed him to play an active role in the globalization of traditional Yoruba culture and religion in its various forms and manifestations.  Jean-Jérôme received Itefa Itolodu on November 2^nd, 2009. He is Omo Odu and was initiated as an Apena Ogboni in 2019 and as Akoda Awo in 2023. He has researched, studied and practiced with various lineages of Ifa from Isese families in Oyo, Ife, Ibadan, and Osogbo as well as Afro-Cuban Regla Ocha-Ifa and Vodun-Fa (Fa-gbassa from Abomey, Benin). In 2014, Jean-Jérôme had the privilege of organizing, a 2-year long series on “African Indigenous Belief and Knowledge Systems” in partnership with York University’s Harriet Tubman Institute and most recently in 2025 was hired as an Ifá-Òrìṣà Subject Matter Expert at McGill University, School of Religious Studies working closely with the Harvard graduated Dr. Ayodeji Ogunnaike. In the summer of 2014, Baba Ifálọdún received the AFRICIES Heritage Award for preserving the practice of Ifá-Òrìṣà Isese in Canada. Jean-Jérôme is also a Director of Technology Solutions Architecture and has been in the Information technology industry for 35 years and leverages this background to help facilitate the recovery, digitalization and preservation of ancestral wisdom for future generations.

Throughout these years Jean-Jerome has promoted, through the Consejo and Ifa-Orisa Religious Council, the vision that Mainstream society in Canada and the world recognize the Ifá-Òrìṣà belief system (that encapsulates the various branches and lineages including Ifá-Òrìṣà, Santeria, Lucumi, Candomblé, Vodoun-Fa and Èsìn Òrìṣà Ìbílè ) as 6th largest religious and spiritual belief-system in the world with well over 100Million adepts, and as such, that its followers should enjoy the same recognition and protection under the law as those in other great world faiths more information on this presentation or on Yorùbá Ifá-Òrìṣà please feel free contact Mr. Baudry by phone at: 647-770-2086 or email at jjbaudry@ifareligiouscouncil.ca or message him on Facebook