cozy_casita | Entries tagged with orisha

It would be easy to sink into the worse of the world but instead I turned to what is most divine in me. Oshun. Mother of Love. Love of Olofi’s heart. I have meditate in my Mother all morning, and in the way Chango helps me manifest what is in my crown. Where love lives, trauma and hate can not win.

It is wonderful to know this is our individual and collective super power - and this will be our theme for this Valentine’s Day.

This winter has been frigid, and people surrounding me do not always have the best intentions. But where love lives - cruelty does not win. I choose love today. I chose love for my entire life when I was crowned Oshun. I chose love as the ruler of my life.

My religion is a closed practice, but the meaning of Orisha is for all followers. It is for anyone who wishes to respect their energies: Lightning/Passion, Storm/Change/Courage, Rivers/Love/Life, Ocean/Earth Life/Life Pulses, Mountains/White Clouds/Peace, Forest/Animals/Focus, Steel/Strength/Justice/Progress, Crossroads/Doorways/Destinies.

Whatever ails you deep down, I hope you can be in your personal devotional no matter what you believe in. No matter if you believe in God or Not. Take in the present and now you are a miracle. Where you are alive and in gratitude - Love wins.

The need to share my journal writing revisits me. This need to create a good archive of thought and narrative. Sharing to dig out who I am at this moment. Sharing to dig out who we can all be? I remember digging to find the voice of the ancestors when the pandemic started in 2020 - wishing for their wisdom and comfort. I do the same now. I am the future ancestor in my life.

It is important that I am not invisible during this point in time. Raising our voices, we break the invisibility and we become our myriad of colors and shades, our diverse selves. This is a tense point in history, the rise of this new wave of fascism. It had started with the first term of D.T. but this second term created more intense crisis after crisis - a plan by the entire right wing being placed in motion. This is how human cruelty creates a cradle.

And yet this is also when I learn from the ancestors again - this time Etty Hillesum. She is being quite a muse. She teaches me to resist going under the despair and to look at the current events from the other side of my own protection. To raise and share my voice. To let it be known that I am living in the new world now, even amongst the birth of these horrors.

Of course Etty Hillesum is not the only ancestor I am inspired by - for all our African Mothers who resisted and survived captivity and colonization have paved the road we all can walk on. If they were able to survive all manner of things, their daughters can survive many things. We can create community, care for children and each other. We can mother ourselves into a new life.

It is important that I see, I am living these moments with Bettsy by my side, as her wife. It is important to say, I am living my Iyaworaje during this year regardless of what is being destroyed - I am reborn. Life is movement no matter where the current goes.

The world is--people are changing. People are constructing methods of resistance that have no faith in anything but the community. That in itself is wonderful even if the reason we are doing it is a horrible collapse. This means we all understand the power of the collective. I am glad that I get to see and work through these beginnings of collective moments, at the beginning of my spiritual vocation.

Dressed in all white I will celebrate Valentine’s Day with my wife in our house, away from all noise - in this space we have created so I can listen to Olofi and the Orishas. It is humbling to be asked to celebrate Orisha above all things, above all crisis and above all fear. I celebrate them, for they are life - they guide us to be in good relationship with Olorun and the Ancestors.

And they push us to find our real power.

I published an entry on Iyaworaje in Vocal media:

https://vocal.media/longevity/iyawo

"Ewemilere. Elube. Oba Oyo:
Effective leaves have profit. Brilliant red Indago, you are truly over brimming"

(Oriki to Chango / Lukumi / Translation by John Mason)

I have spent the last few days listening to YouTubes by "El Conquistador" on Lucumi Orisha songs. He teaches how to sing the song for English speakers and also provides the translation for John Mason in the comments. Learning Chango's song with the videos and translation made me pause for reflection. I always need to learn each part of our religion with spiritual intention and mindset no matter the setting or the source. So while learning I kept feeling the meditation surface, a reflection on what it is that we sing in tambores. What am I saying as I sing Wemilere - the meaning of the words hit me and joined all I have lived with Baba.

Over brimming - meaning "you are truly abundance."

In the song the lyrics exalt Chango as abundance over and over. The lyrics also exalt Chango's status as King, the main character of many Pataki's where his character is tested. Sometimes he wins. Sometimes he fails. But in the end we always find him as the first Alaafin of Oyo. He overcomes and becomes abundance in masculine form / as Oshun is in female form.

My own heart is overwhelmed by what abundance Chango has brought to my life. Not just in dollars and cents but in freedom, in joy, in passion of life. When my smile shines with light and warmth that is Chango loving me from deep inside the sun - the secret of fire. He is an incarnation of God, as mighty and high to me. So deep is his love for me that I am never to deny I am his child, no matter what Orisha rules my head. Just saying that brings tears to my eyes.

I remember one time I had a conversation with my Iyugbonakan after her own meditation, and she places these very words in my ears - "I have to be in awe, I am overcome with how much Baba loves us." I am never going to forget those words from my Godmother. She could have easily personalized those words by saying "how much he loves me..." but his love is so deep and wide for his children that I feel she couldn't just own it in individualism. She had to be faithful to Chango's great love for his collective family. Those words from my Iyugbona ring in my ear every time I prostrate in Moforibale to salute him. His love is so great that his mariwo (skirt made of palm fronds) will caress everyone who passes under it, from the tiniest baby, to the aleyo/aborisha uninitiated, to the eldest amongst us, making his love accessible equally.

That the Iyalochas of the great Kingdom of Oyo who were brought to Cuba survived, resisted, protected and gifted us this mystery. That the good people of Oyo even brought forward this love from within their community. That we in the diaspora can benefit from this abundance - its a special privilege, a blessing beyond words.

Chango understands that we are all in a path of trials. Chango understands that we can all receive abundance - that no one should be a slave to no one. He places the initiate on the throne to find regal success such as he did after growing in his trials.
Right after I realized I was not entirely Christian and Lucumi was my main source of spirituality - I began to feel how I did not really connect with Christmas. While the festivities and the lights are all pretty - I could only feel them in the surface. But when I thought of Nature's rhythm and the rebirth of the sun after the long night of Winter solstice, I realized all I wanted was to celebrate the birth of a different King - and for me that became Chango. He who knows the fire at the heart of the sun. It was very fortunate for me that in Lucumi we celebrate Chango on December 4th - during the feast of St. Barbara. But I decided to celebrate my King all of December.

The Oriki We mi 'lere specifically speaks of Chango acknowledging and accepting the offerings of his followings. He mentions all of his ebbos, and he asserts that he eats them. He listens to his followers proclaim that they pray for him to pour over his abundance on them.

As I have walked with Baba as an Aborisha these 20+ years I felt those words of his acknowledgements were so powerful. He is the one Orisha who happily proclaims what he sees we do for him and that he accepts them. The tone of his lyrics tell me he is happy with every ebbo - every effort from us.

He eats the Amala and is happy to transmute the energy of his followers' devotion into his abundant love, manifested in joyous blessings and lessons (some hard with trials, and some very pleasurable -- but all with love).

As an Iyawo - this means I have no fear of new beginnings because he is about to make them so very amazing.

Maferefun Chango every day. Moforibale my Alaafin Oyo, Oba Oyo, Oba Ikoso. Kabiesile.

Current Mood: loved

Nothing as an Aborisha or Aleyo can prepare you for what this is. Of course coming in with a good foundation of spiritual work and shadow work will help a lot - in fact it is essential to start the process. But for all that I have just lived, nothing prepared me for that. It was all devotion, love, community and dedication to loving Oshun and Orisha.

I am Iyawo de Oshun. My Mother. Beautiful. Essenial to the world. Essential to the birth of Kariocha. I owe her my life. She manifested in every single essence of me from Day 1 and she continues to understand me and love me as no one has. I want to dedicate my writing in this year to the beautiful reflections of my soul and my growth. To reflecting and being an ambassador to Oshun but also who she is in humbleness. How wonderful to have Her as my Mother so that I can take each little step in love and in her care, in the divinity that she is. I'm not sure that I will ever be someone to share a lot about my spiritual work in depth.

You see I think there has to be some very respectful and loving care to how we speak of the mysteries. It is good to demystify who we are as practitioners but, this religion is very much about relationship building. Respect and relationship hand in hand. And so no matter what reflections I write here or what information I give, it will never really describe anyone's experience with Orisha. Only Ifa can give you insight on what each Odu and each Pataki and each lesson means for you.

There are also many things from my Ita and my tratados that will never be talked about in this space because that secrecy is what keeps the religion sacred.

But what I do want to reflect is personal growth. It is personal experience in the daily. It is lessons that I have that perhaps will help someone along the way in their spiritual life.

Maferefun Oshun every day. Maferefun my Yeye, My Mother, Iyalorde every second and every breath of my life.

One difficult thing I find about reading spiritual books by white American or even some European authors is that in catering to the "wider" audience, the western audience - they start developing this style of extracting what looks like foreign to make it accessible to some readers.

You -as a person not of that culture or discipline or apprenticeship where the spiritual practice was born - shouldn't be trying to explain things to an audience who has no interest in that cultures, who views that culture as an other or who exotifies the culture.

It always gives "let me make this palatable for the civilized reader" and more condescending than the author thinks. That may not have been the original intention but the road to hell is paved with good intentions so...you did that. You wrote exactly that. When people of that culture read that writing it always sounds so forced and like something is being sanitized that doesn't need to be sanitized. It has happened in nearly everything from Hatha Yoga to lucumi.

A spiritual practice from African, Indigenous or Eastern culture is not difficult for people of those cultures, and for students outside of the culture that come prepare to do the work or learn while doing due diligence. The people who have inherited these practices, all we have to do is go to the ancestors. Real students of these practices get to know the ancestors, their descendants and inheritors and seek kinship in apprenticeship.

These are beautiful, healing, spiritual practices. These practices are medicine. They don't need to be made accessible. They just are.