Across multiple Odu Ifa, Orunmila repeatedly outwits Iku through the power of divination and prescribed sacrifice, teaching humanity that proper ebo can delay or avert death when the oracle is consulted.
Olodumare dispatched Iku as the agent of death to reclaim human souls at the appointed time, establishing mortality as part of the divine order.
Abiku spirits repeatedly deliver children to Iku, fulfilling prenatal pacts by dying young. Each cycle of birth and death strengthens Iku's claim while tormenting the earthly parents.
Aroni's herbal medicines include preparations that ward off premature death brought by Iku. Traditional healers trained by Aroni learn incantations and plant remedies specifically designed to deflect Iku's approach.
The Egungun represent the dead who return to visit the living, while Iku originally claimed them. The Egungun masquerade demonstrates that death's hold is not absolute — the ancestors can cross back to bless their descendants.
In several Odu Ifá stories, Eshu outwits Iku (Death) through cleverness and misdirection, delaying or preventing death from claiming those under divine protection.
After Oduduwa established Ile-Ife, Iku (Death) entered the newly created world. Oduduwa instituted the first funeral rites to honor the dead and maintain balance between the living and the ancestors.
Ogun the warrior and Iku the spirit of death are closely linked in Yoruba cosmology. Ogun's iron weapons bring death in battle, and in several Odu Ifá stories of the Ogunda corpus, Ogun confronts or bargains with Iku over the fate of warriors.
Olokun receives the souls of those who perish at sea, while Iku claims the dying. In Yoruba tradition, drowning deaths blur the boundary between Olokun's ocean domain and Iku's dominion over mortality.
When Iku claims a life, the body returns to Onile's earth through burial. Death completes the cycle that began when a person first stood upon Onile's ground, returning all borrowed substance to the primordial owner of the land.
In Odu Ifá, Oshun used her beauty and charms to seduce Iku (Death), delaying him from claiming a life that had been marked. Her story teaches that sweetness and attraction can overcome even the inevitability of death when divine intervention is at work.
Yemoja, as the ocean mother, protects her children from Iku (Death) by hiding them in her deep waters. In Ifá narratives, Yemoja interceded to save her offspring from premature death, using the vastness of the ocean to shelter them from Iku's reach.
Iku severs the thread of life and Yewá tends what remains. While Iku is death as an event, Yewá is death as an ongoing state — the silent caretaker of bodies after Iku has claimed them.
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