Learning the Odu
Aboru Aboye Abosise and Alaafia!
I am currently reading and learning the the 16 Major Holy Odu. I am learning them from my godmother as well as my Adjubona. I have at least 4 different versions/translations of the Odu Ifa that I'm using to school myself with as well. What I am finding is that each version of the odu is different than the others. My godmother translates one way, my adjubona translates another way and each book has its own translation as well. By looking through this group's posts I found a reference to Ifa Dida which seems to have at least 10 different translations for each odu all within the same text.
My question is, how do I "learn" the odu if there can be so many different translations? I've been practicing Ifa for about 7 years now and it wasn't until recently that I realized I need to know and understand at least the major odu. Am I trying to make the odu something they are not? I mean what comes to mind is the different versions of the Christian bible. While there are several published versions of the book, they all pretty much say the same thing. I'm not finding that with the odu.
Please don't take my question as a critique of the odu because that is not what I'm trying to do. I'm really just trying to make some sense of all of this as I learn.