Traditional Yoruba culture is founded on the idea that everything in Nature has Ori or consciousness. This belief leads to the idea it is possible to communicate with Forces in Nature called Orisa. One form of communication is through altered states of consciousness commonly refered to as possession. The other is to communicate with Nature through the use of divination. In traditional Yoruba culture divination is the manipulation of either seeds or shells to create numberical patterns these patterns refer to specific verses of oral scripture. These verses are a way of preserving the wisdom of the ancestors. Traditional Yoruba culture has four main systems of divination that are interrelated and inter connected. The first is obi obata, which essentially is used to give yes no answers to direct questions. The second system is based on the use of sixteen principles that traditional Yoruba culture considers the foundation of Creation. This system is called Merindinlogun from the elision merin meaning four, din meaning subtract from, and logun meaning twenty. In the Yoruba system of counting Merindinlogun is the word for sixteen."