Four Cowrie Shell — PreLesson 0.0
This is an offering for enlightenment seekers — those who discover that blessings can appear as calamity, disaster, and delay. This course provides tools to transform distraction into blessedness and nourish self-realization.
Motivation
Enlightenment is not what it appears to be, and is nevertheless beneficial. Self-realization is only temporal. This course may serve as a tool to pierce the veil of the One Truth. It stimulates deeper insights, compels clarity of purpose, and provides a baseline for intuitive expression within an ancestral framework.
Cowrie Snail
Cowries are small to large sea snails in the family Cypraeidae. Spiritually, their ventral ridges resemble teeth and are considered the “mouth.” In this course, we work with cowrie shells (not live snails) for divination.
Asking Questions
Limit questions to those that require a yes/no response. Avoid questions that are harmful, already known, or ill-formed. The Four Cowrie Shells respond clearly only to well-formed questions.
Orientation & Casting
• Skyward (open mouth) → success
• Earthward (closed mouth) → success after struggle
When four shells are cast, there are five possible families of responses: Alafia (Yes), Ejife (Definitely), Etawa (Probably), Okanran (Probably Not), and Oyeku (No).
Optional Assignment
Practice casting 500+ times within a lunar cycle. Document and name each cast. Submissions may be reviewed within two cycles.