Dear seekers of wisdom,
One question returns to me with some regularity whenever readers discuss the creation of these newsletters:
How much artificial intelligence do you use, and when does its use remain legitimate?
The question is understandable. Artificial intelligence can now produce an essay, an illustration, a summary, or an apparently scholarly argument within seconds. It can imitate confidence without possessing knowledge, reproduce the surface of a spiritual voice without having undergone spiritual formation, and create language polished enough to conceal weak research.
When the subject is a living tradition such as Ifá, transparency becomes more than an editorial preference. It becomes an ethical obligation.
Who selected the teaching? Who established the relationship between the Odù and the subject? Who examined the sources? Who decided that one interpretation was responsible while another was misleading? And, finally, who accepts responsibility for every sentence placed before the reader?
These questions lead directly into the territory of Ògún, the Òrìṣà whose iron extends the human hand into tools, machines, roads, surgery, industry, weapons, and technology.
A machete may open a road through dense forest. In another hand, the same blade may destroy what should have been protected. Iron can cultivate food, build shelter, perform an operation, or carry people across great distances. It can also become an instrument of conquest.
The tool possesses force, but it does not possess character. Character belongs to the person who holds it.
How Artificial Intelligence Supports My Work
Before exploring the theology of technology, I want to describe my own use of artificial intelligence plainly.
Over more than fifteen years, I have assembled an archive containing more than 50,000 verses, myths, revelations, commentaries, and comparative materials related to Ifá, the Òrìṣà, Candomblé, Santería, and associated traditions. A large part of this collection was gathered through specialist publications, older editions, difficult-to-find books, and antiquarian sources that required patience, investment, and continuous study.
Artificial intelligence helps me search within this archive.
Without such assistance, locating every appearance of a specific concept across thousands of pages would often require days of manual work. With it, I can identify passages in which a particular Òrìṣà appears, compare several versions of a myth, trace recurring themes through different Odù, and bring related materials into one working space.
This does not mean that the machine interprets the tradition for me. Finding a passage and understanding its spiritual meaning are not the same activity. A search system may locate several texts containing Ògún, iron, roads, or invention, but it cannot independently determine which teaching belongs to the theological question under consideration, how the sources differ, or whether two apparently similar ideas truly belong together.
The interpretation remains mine.
Artificial intelligence also helps me write in fluent English. As a non-native speaker addressing almost 6,000 readers, I regard linguistic clarity as an act of respect. A complex spiritual thought should not become unclear because of an avoidable grammatical error, an awkward construction, or a word that carries a different implication from the one I intended.
The ideas, personal experiences, theological relationships, and editorial structure do not originate in a language model. I establish the subject, select the Odù, define the connections, formulate the argument, and decide what I am prepared to publish under my name. Artificial intelligence helps shape the English so that the thought can travel more clearly.
It also produces the illustrations that accompany many newsletters. These images are symbolic visual interpretations, not historical documentation, ethnographic evidence, or literal portraits of divine beings. They support the atmosphere and theme of the text, just as a modern book cover may interpret an ancient subject without claiming to reproduce it photographically.
Most importantly, artificial intelligence does not independently structure or write these newsletters. I do not ask a machine to invent a spiritual teaching and then place my signature beneath it. I provide the theme, the argument, the personal account, the philosophical direction, the Odù relationships, and the practical conclusions. Every final decision remains human.
My Ifá research is based on the materials in my own archive. I do not build theological teachings from random internet pages, copied social-media posts, anonymous summaries, or websites that repeat spiritual claims without identifying their origin. External online sources enter only where a recognized institution is genuinely relevant, such as an established medical body, a university, a museum, or another reputable organization.
This method does not make every conclusion infallible. No archive eliminates differences of lineage, translation, historical context, or interpretation. It does, however, create a defined field of research for which I can remain accountable.
Ògúndá Méjì and the Passage from Intention to Action
The principal Odù for this reflection is Ògúndá Méjì, the doubled expression of the base Odù Ògúndá.
Ògúndá carries movement, implementation, effort, confrontation, labor, and the force required to overcome resistance. It is the energy through which a possibility becomes material. A road imagined but never cleared remains an intention. Ògúndá enters the forest and begins the work.
This makes Ògúndá Méjì a natural foundation for thinking about technology.
Every significant technology promises to remove an obstacle. The plough allows more land to be cultivated. The printing press multiplies the reach of a text. The train shortens distance. The computer accelerates calculation. Artificial intelligence promises to reduce the time required for research, translation, writing, design, and analysis.
Yet Ògúndá never teaches that the removal of resistance is automatically good.
Resistance sometimes protects what should not be entered carelessly. Slowness may preserve attention. Difficulty may compel the development of skill. A task that takes years can transform the person undertaking it in ways that an instant result cannot reproduce.
The central ethical question is therefore not whether technology makes something easier. It is whether the ease serves destiny, community, truth, and good character.
Ògúndá warns against delegating matters of deep personal importance without remaining involved in them. Applied to artificial intelligence, this means that the essential work of authorship cannot be outsourced merely because a machine can generate convincing language.
A tool may assist research, but it should not decide what the writer believes. It may organize information, but it cannot assume responsibility for the conclusion. It may suggest language, yet the person publishing that language must understand and defend what it says.
The path may be opened by iron, but someone must still know why the path is being opened and where it leads.
Ògún: Technology as Sacred Power and Moral Risk
Ògún is often described as the Òrìṣà of technology, but this familiar phrase can become too simple if separated from the full complexity of his nature.
Ògún is not merely the divine patron of invention. He is the intelligence through which raw matter becomes an instrument. He knows the heat needed to change metal, the force required to shape it, and the discipline through which material possibility becomes practical power.
His domain includes the farmer’s tool, the blacksmith’s forge, the mechanic’s workshop, the surgeon’s instrument, the railway, the engine, the factory, and the weapon.
This range is the teaching.
Technology does not arrive as pure blessing. It brings an increase in power, and every increase in power enlarges both human possibility and human danger.
A compassionate society may use technology to widen access to knowledge, improve communication, assist people with disabilities, preserve endangered texts, support medical care, and reduce exhausting labor. A dishonest society may use the same technology to spread misinformation, imitate authority, manipulate attention, exploit creative work, and automate injustice.
Artificial intelligence therefore belongs symbolically within the field of Ògún because it magnifies what the human hand can accomplish. It can search an archive in moments, translate across languages, produce visual forms, detect patterns, and accelerate tasks that once required enormous effort.
Yet Ògún asks us to look beyond the achievement itself:
What kind of person receives this increased power?
What discipline governs its use?
What happens to human skill when the tool performs too much of the work?
Who benefits from the acceleration, and who becomes invisible beneath it?
A technology may be advanced while the moral culture using it remains immature. In such a case, progress does not eliminate human weakness. It gives weakness stronger instruments.
The Blacksmith Does Not Blame the Hammer
The blacksmith offers a more accurate image of responsible AI use than the fantasy of a machine that simply “creates.”
A blacksmith does not stand passively beside the forge while the hammer produces a blade. The craft depends on judgment developed through experience. The metal must be heated sufficiently to become workable, but not so carelessly that its integrity is destroyed. The strike must carry force, yet its placement matters more than violence. The material is repeatedly examined, returned to the fire, reshaped, cooled, and tested.
In the same way, an AI-generated result should be treated as material that requires examination rather than as a finished object carrying automatic authority.
The first answer may appear elegant and still be wrong. It may combine traditions that should remain distinct, attribute a teaching to the wrong Odù, smooth over contradictions, or supply a plausible connection unsupported by the sources.
A responsible writer therefore returns the material to the forge.
The text is checked against the archive. The interpretation is compared with personal knowledge. The language is revised so that it reflects the actual argument rather than the system’s habit of producing general patterns. Repetitive claims are removed, superficial certainty is cooled, and attractive phrases are discarded when they do not carry substance.
The hammer remains useful, but the blacksmith remains responsible for the blade.
When an error appears in a published newsletter, I cannot place responsibility on the technology. The tool may have introduced the error, but authorship becomes mine when I accept, preserve, and publish it.
Ọ̀ṣọ́ọ̀sì and the Discipline of Research
If Ògún gives us the tool, Ọ̀ṣọ́ọ̀sì gives us the target.
Ọ̀ṣọ́ọ̀sì enters the forest not because every movement deserves an arrow, but because something specific must be found. He observes tracks, recognizes patterns, distinguishes noise from evidence, and brings back what can nourish the community.
This is the difference between collecting information and conducting research.
Artificial intelligence can search thousands of documents quickly, but speed does not create aim. A system may retrieve every passage containing the word “technology” and still fail to understand the question. It may identify a large number of references to iron without distinguishing symbolic iron, ritual iron, agricultural iron, warfare, medicine, industry, or the specific theological character of Ògún.
The human researcher must know what is being sought.
In preparing a newsletter, I must decide whether the central issue concerns invention, authorship, spiritual authority, language, ethics, labor, or the human desire to escape limitation. I must identify which Odù actually carries the structure of the teaching and which additional references merely provide illumination.
A strong research process also respects difference. A Yorùbá verse, a Brazilian theological interpretation, a Cuban patakí, and a modern psychological reading may speak to the same theme, but they should not be blended until their particular histories disappear.
The hunter returns with what is useful, not with every leaf encountered in the forest.
Èṣù and the Dangerous Fluency of Language
Artificial intelligence also touches the symbolic territory of Èṣù, who governs mediation, communication, exchange, translation, crossroads, ambiguity, and consequence.
A person gives the machine an instruction. A response returns. Between the intention and the result lies a threshold that is never entirely transparent.
The answer may preserve the original meaning, but it may also distort it. It may amplify an assumption hidden in the question. It may produce language so fluent that the user mistakes coherence for truth.
This is among the greatest dangers of artificial intelligence.
Poor language often reveals its weakness. A confused paragraph alerts the reader that something requires further attention. A highly polished paragraph may conceal its errors more successfully because it resembles expertise.
Èṣù reminds us that a statement must be judged not only by its beauty but by the road it opens.
Where does the claim come from? Which source supports it? What has been omitted in order to create a smooth explanation? What will the reader believe after encountering it? Does the wording preserve cultural complexity, or has a difficult tradition been converted into a simple slogan?
The spiritual writer stands at this threshold. Words cannot be permitted to pass merely because they are attractive.
Every sentence carries consequences once it leaves the page.
Ọ̀rúnmìlà: Why Information Is Not Yet Wisdom
Artificial intelligence can identify patterns, summarize texts, compare passages, and reproduce established interpretations. It cannot turn those activities into wisdom by itself.
Ọ̀rúnmìlà represents memory, patience, discernment, counsel, and the careful interpretation of patterns within context. His wisdom does not arise from possessing isolated facts. It arises from understanding how knowledge must be applied within a particular life, moment, destiny, and moral situation.
This distinction matters greatly in Ifá because the corpus is not a collection of interchangeable quotations.
The same subject may appear differently across several Odù. A symbol may shift according to the configuration in which it appears. Lineages may preserve distinct explanations. A teaching connected with one divinatory situation cannot always be transferred mechanically into another.
Artificial intelligence tends to resolve tension by producing synthesis. It prefers an answer that sounds complete. But sacred traditions do not always provide clean agreement.
Sometimes the responsible conclusion is that several interpretations coexist.
Sometimes a source belongs clearly to one regional tradition and should not be presented as universal.
Sometimes a possible connection is intellectually interesting but cannot be stated as established doctrine.
Sometimes the archive does not support a definite answer.
Ọ̀rúnmìlà teaches that intellectual humility is not weakness. Wisdom includes the ability to recognize the boundary beyond which confidence becomes invention.
Ọbàtálá and the Responsibility of Clear Form
The use of artificial intelligence to refine my English belongs most naturally to the symbolic field of Ọbàtálá.
Ọbàtálá gives form, structure, clarity, patience, composure, and containment. A meaningful thought requires a vessel through which others can receive it. When language is confused, the reader must struggle not only with the complexity of the idea but with the accidental obstacles created by its expression.
For a non-native writer, editorial support can therefore serve the teaching.
A sentence may need to be reorganized so that its meaning becomes visible. A transition may require refinement. A word may carry an unintended emotional tone. Grammar and rhythm can determine whether a theological distinction remains clear or becomes blurred.
There is no spiritual virtue in preventable confusion.
At the same time, Ọbàtálá warns us not to mistake polished form for meaningful content. Artificial intelligence can make an empty argument sound profound. It can produce an elegant introduction, balanced paragraphs, and a satisfying conclusion even when the writer has offered no original thought.
The vessel may be beautiful while carrying nothing.
For this reason, linguistic refinement must come after the development of the idea, not in place of it. The form should reveal the thought rather than disguise its absence.
Why the Source of the Research Matters
The quality of an AI-assisted answer depends heavily on the quality of the material it is permitted to use.
The public internet contains important scholarship, historical archives, institutional resources, and valuable voices from living communities. It also contains fabricated verses, unattributed translations, simplified correspondences, commercial inventions, and spiritual claims copied from one website to another until repetition begins to resemble evidence.
A machine cannot transform an unreliable source into a trustworthy one merely by summarizing it beautifully.
For the theological foundation of these newsletters, I therefore restrict the research to my own archive. This does not mean that every book in the archive expresses one uncontested truth. Sources may disagree, preserve different lineages, contain translation problems, or reflect the limitations of their period.
The value of the archive lies in its traceability.
I know which authors and traditions I am comparing. I can examine older and newer versions. I can recognize when a claim appears broadly across several sources and when it depends on one isolated interpretation. I can return to the complete context rather than accepting a detached sentence.
External online research enters only when the subject genuinely requires information from a recognized institution. Medical matters, for example, should be grounded in reputable health organizations rather than spiritual speculation. Historical or legal questions may require museums, universities, public archives, or official bodies.
The internet may assist the work, but it does not replace judgment about authority.
Artificial Intelligence in Iré
When artificial intelligence appears in Iré, it remains a servant of human purpose.
It helps a researcher find material that would otherwise remain buried in thousands of pages. It supports communication across linguistic boundaries. It makes specialist knowledge more accessible without pretending that accessibility is the same as initiation. It reduces repetitive labor and creates more space for interpretation, teaching, pastoral attention, and community.
In this balanced expression, the technology strengthens the work without hiding the person responsible for it.
The writer still studies. The researcher still verifies. The priest still interprets. The reader still knows the nature of the process through which the teaching was prepared.
The tool increases capacity, but Orí continues to direct the hand.
Artificial Intelligence in Òṣogbo
The imbalance begins when the technology no longer supports the work but starts to replace the disciplines that gave the work meaning.
A writer publishes material that has not been understood. A researcher cites what has not been verified. A spiritual teacher produces endless content without deepening knowledge. Distinct traditions are flattened into one convenient system because the machine prefers smoothness to complexity.
The danger is not only false information. It is the gradual weakening of authorship itself.
When every difficulty is handed to the machine, the writer may lose the patience required to develop an argument. When every sentence is generated externally, the personal voice becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish from the average patterns of digital language. When volume is rewarded more highly than depth, sacred teaching becomes content produced to satisfy a schedule.
The machete remains sharp, but the person holding it forgets how to recognize a road.
The most dangerous errors are often not absurd. They are plausible. They fit the reader’s expectations, imitate authority, and move through the world without resistance because they sound complete.
This is where the shadow of Ògún meets the ambiguity of Èṣù: enormous power carried by language that may conceal its origin.
Technology in Spiritual Development
Technology has already transformed spiritual education. People who live far from traditional communities can now access books, lectures, conversations, and teachers that would once have remained unreachable. Rare materials can be preserved digitally. Diasporic communities can remain connected across continents. Students can compare terminology, improve pronunciation, and enter a field of study that might otherwise have been closed to them.
These are genuine benefits.
Yet access must not be confused with formation.
A person can read thousands of pages about Ifá without developing the character required to carry its teachings responsibly. A generated prayer does not establish ritual authority. A list of Òrìṣà correspondences does not create relationship. A persuasive explanation cannot substitute for initiation, discipline, mentorship, divination, community, and lived experience.
Technology can open the door to study.
It cannot walk the path on our behalf.
Technology, Health, and the Human Nervous System
The technological world often presents every human limitation as a problem waiting to be optimized.
We are encouraged to work faster, respond immediately, learn continuously, produce visibly, and remain available across multiple channels. Artificial intelligence intensifies this pressure by making speed appear natural. If a machine can generate in seconds, human hesitation begins to look inefficient.
But a human being is not a malfunctioning device.
Grief cannot be accelerated into completion. The nervous system cannot always absorb more information simply because more information is available. Fatigue may be a message rather than an obstacle. Silence may be necessary for integration.
Technology can support health by improving organization, access, translation, and communication. It can also fracture attention, disturb sleep, encourage comparison, and create the feeling that one is never producing enough.
Ògún teaches us to respect the tool, but he does not require us to become machines.
Technology in Love and Community
Digital tools allow families to remain connected across borders and enable people to find communities that may not exist in their immediate surroundings. They help isolated individuals discover language for their experiences and make possible friendships that would never have formed through geography alone.
At the same time, communication can become constant while relationship becomes thin.
A perfectly generated message may lack the vulnerability of a sentence someone struggled to write. A person may become skilled at interacting with predictable systems while losing patience with the uncertainty of human conversation. We may exchange more words and encounter less presence.
The ethical measure is therefore not the amount of communication technology produces. It is whether the tool helps us remain more honestly related to living people.
A machine may help us formulate the message.
It cannot undertake the relationship for us.
Technology, Wealth, and Creative Work
Artificial intelligence can offer meaningful advantages to independent writers, small businesses, researchers, educators, and creators. It can reduce the cost of editorial assistance, accelerate repetitive tasks, and allow one person to perform work that once required a larger organization.
This can broaden participation and make professional communication available to people with limited resources.
Yet the economic shadow is equally real. Creative labor may be absorbed without proper recognition. Skilled professions may be treated as disposable. Markets may be flooded with quickly generated material, making it harder for careful work to remain visible. Speed may be rewarded while knowledge, craft, and originality lose value.
Ògúndá Méjì does not ask only whether a technology produces profit. It asks what kind of road that profit creates.
Does the tool strengthen human creativity or make it easier to avoid developing it? Does it distribute opportunity or concentrate power? Does it give people more time for meaningful work, or merely raise the expectation that they should produce more?
The spiritual question reaches beyond efficiency.
What kind of world is being built through the use of the tool?
The Seven-Minute Forge
Before publishing a text substantially assisted by artificial intelligence, I find it useful to close the program and remain with the work alone for several minutes.
During this pause, the polished surface begins to lose some of its authority. I can read the piece as a responsible author rather than as someone still participating in the momentum of generation and revision.
I ask whether I understand every important claim, whether the theological connections truly reflect my view, and whether I could defend the text without pointing to the machine that helped formulate it. I examine anything that sounds unusually certain or unusually elegant, because these are often the places where weak reasoning hides most effectively.
Then I rewrite at least one important passage without assistance.
The purpose is not to prove that every sentence must remain untouched by technology. It is to discover whether the thought still lives within me when the tool is absent.
When I can explain the argument independently, the machine has probably supported my authorship. When I cannot, it may have begun to replace it.
Cooling the Digital Head
After long periods of research and screen-based work, it is equally important to return to the physical world.
Cool water on the hands and face can mark the end of the technological task. An open window, a tree, the movement of clouds, the sound of a street, or the presence of another human being restores contact with what was not generated on demand.
In that moment, I find it useful to name one thing I know through study, one thing I know through experience, and one thing I still do not know.
The last admission is essential.
Digital systems encourage the expectation that every question should receive an immediate answer. Ifá does not share that impatience. Wisdom often develops through the capacity to remain beside an unfinished question without filling the silence with invention.
Closing Insight: Iron Must Remain Under Orí
Artificial intelligence will continue to develop, and its presence in research, writing, education, business, and creative work will expand. The meaningful question is no longer whether humanity will use it. We already do.
The deeper question concerns the human being who stands behind the tool.
Will artificial intelligence help us recover knowledge that would otherwise remain hidden? Will it improve communication, widen access, and leave more time for reflection and service? Or will it encourage us to publish before studying, answer before understanding, and imitate authority before earning trust?
Ògún teaches that power must be forged and disciplined.
Ọ̀ṣọ́ọ̀sì teaches that research requires a clear target.
Èṣù reminds us that words travel along roads we may not fully control.
Ọ̀rúnmìlà distinguishes accumulated information from wisdom.
Ọbàtálá gives thought a clear and dignified form.
Orí accepts the final responsibility.
The hammer does not become the blacksmith, and the machete does not become the road-opener. Artificial intelligence may search the archive, improve the sentence, generate the image, and help bring a teaching into clearer view.
But it cannot inherit the destiny of the person who publishes the work.
That responsibility must remain human.
Stay blessed, and may every tool in your hands serve truth, clarity, dignity, and life.
Babá Tilo de Àjàgùnnà
DAILY IFÁ ACADEMY
What to Ask Next?
How can Ògún help me distinguish useful technology from compulsive productivity?
What does Èṣù teach about misinformation, translation, and digital communication?
How can Orí remain sovereign when artificial intelligence supports creative work?
Which Odù can guide us when speed begins to weaken discernment?
Baba, I was taught Ogu day was a hot letra, representing bloody accidents and severe consequences. In some orientations does this hold true of Baba Ogunda Meji?
I received este odu in what we call a root or life reading. The babalorisha was so concerned with the letter he switched to the dillogun and recast settling on irosun. I have many questions regarding this lineage and it's legitimacy, does this sound right?