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OYA as Black-River-Cloth
OYA as Lightning
What follows are excerpts from a book I am writing on the Yoruba goddess Oy a, whose name literally means "It tears. " The excerpts are from a chapter on her natural manifestations as tornado, river and lightning. The part about tornado (including a discussion of winds and tropical weather in general) is certainly too long to include here (20 pages). Chapters to follow this one include discussion of Oya as goddess of the dead and patron of the Egungun masquerade society, of Oya as buffalo and her relation to hunting, of Oya as leader of the market women and witches, together with a good deal of personal material on various ways I have experienced this goddess.
Although I realize that the material here presented is rather "scientific, " I hope for that it is not the less poetic. What I am trying to achieve in this (albeit difficult book) is the presentation of transpersonal power as process. The west has a paralysing idea of goddess-on-a-pedestal. Well, here is an African power whose traces may be seen in certain natural patterns as well as in transformative moments of human consciousness. She has also been anthropomorphized by the Yoruba into a legendary queen (ofNupe origin) who became the favorite wife of Shango, himself both king and thunder-god. In an earlier incarnation she was wife of Ogun, god of iron and patron of hunters.
According to Ifa, the Niger river was produced in the following manner: The king of the Nupe (northern neighbors of the Yoruba) consulted the oracle in time of war. How to prevent invasion? Ifa said that the beseiged king should procure a black cloth and appoint a virgin to tear it. The king's choice fell upon his own daughter, who ceremonially ripped the cloth into two pieces and flung them on the ground. O-ya: "she tore," with the result that the black cloth became water flowing protectively about the nucleus of the Nupe Kingdom. ' That nucleus still exists today as Jebba Island.
Curiously, the birth of the Niger from black cloth torn is by the Yoruba attributed to the action of a foreign princess from a bordering kingdom, traditionally adversative to their own. The Nupe themselves...