Oya- Yoruba GodDeity"Mother of Nine"

The Buffalo Woman

In primordial times, Oya could shed her buffalo skin and walk among humans as a beautiful woman. She would hide the skin in the hollow of a tree and enter the town in human form. A hunter discovered her secret. He watched her transform, and when she left the skin behind, he stole it.

Oya became his wife and bore him children. For years she lived as a mortal woman, her true nature concealed. But her co-wives mocked and taunted her mysterious origins, and one day Oya found where the skin had been hidden. She retrieved it, transformed into a buffalo, and killed her tormentors with her horns. She stampeded away, leaving behind the horns that became her sacred symbol. Her children became the ancestors of a great lineage, and the horns she left them are still worn by her priests and placed on her altars.

Oya and the Niger River

Oya is the Niger River, known in Yoruba as Odo Oya. The river's annual floods reshape the land, destroying what stood before and depositing the silt from which new growth emerges. Her title "Mother of Nine," Iya Mesan, is connected in some traditions to nine branches of the Niger as it flows through Yoruba territory toward the delta. The number nine saturates her worship: nine copper bracelets, nine offerings, nine candles at her shrine.

Oya and Shango

Oya and Shango are storm companions. Shango wields thunder and lightning; Oya commands the wind and the tornado. Among Shango's three principal wives, Oya alone accompanies him into combat rather than waiting at home.

One tradition from the Ifa corpus tells how Oya obtained Shango's power of producing fire from his mouth. While he slept, she took the thunder medicine and swallowed it, gaining the ability to breathe fire and command storms in her own right. When Shango discovered what she had done, their relationship shifted. Oya had taken his power and made it hers. Together they devastated opposing armies with thunder and hurricane winds.

When Shango fell from power at Oyo and wandered into exile, Oya was the only wife who followed him. Oshun and Oba remained behind. Oya accompanied Shango on the journey that ended at Koso. After his death, Oya's grief drove her to the boundary of the land of the dead. Unable to bring him back, she refused to leave the threshold. She remained, and became the guardian of the cemetery gates.

Guardian of the Dead

Oya guards the gates of Ilu-Igbo, the forest of the dead. She receives the dying at the threshold and escorts them across. No funeral rite is complete without acknowledging her. No work involving the ancestors can proceed without her permission.

She alone among the female orishas has authority over the Egungun, the ancestral masquerade tradition in which the spirits of the dead return to walk among the living. The Egungun emerge from the sacred grove dressed in elaborate layered cloth that conceals their identity, speaking with voices transformed to sound as though they come from beyond. When they move through the town, it is Oya's authority that holds the boundary. She fights with the irukere, the horsehair flywhisk that sweeps away evil and commands the winds, and with a sword. In some traditions she wears a copper crown and carries an Egungun mask.

At the Shrine

Oya's colors are maroon, burgundy, and deep purple. Her number is nine. Offerings include eggplant and red wine. She has no taste for sweetness.

Ceremonies for Oya feature whirling dances that imitate the tornado. Devotees possessed by Oya spin violently, shake their heads, and make sweeping gestures with their arms, clearing the space around them as wind clears a path. Oya is not a gentle possession. Her spirit arrives like the storm she commands.