Oya

Oya is seen in aspects as the warrior-spirit of the wind, lightning, fertility, fire, and magic. She creates hurricanes and tornadoes, and guards the underworld.[1] Spirit of tornadoes (which are said to be her whirling skirts as she dances), lightning (the power of which she acquired from her husband, Shango), earthquakes, and any kind of destruction. Beyond destruction, Oya is the spirit of change, transition, and the chaos that often brings it about. Her association with the marketplace, and more specifically with the gates of cemeteries (as opposed to the entire underworld), reveals her in her aspect as facilitator of transition.






Oya's close association with the passage from life into death also means she is one of the few Orishas which are worshiped alongside the Egun ancestors, whose cult is most often distinct from that of the Orishas. In the stories of the faith, she can transform herself into a water buffalo. One of her preferred offerings is the eggplant.






She is closely associated with many Orishas, but most especially Chango, Oggun, Oba (Obba), Yewá/Euá and Ochún/Oxum. Oya is believed to have been Shango's favorite wife. She is also called "the one who puts on pants to go to war" and "the one who grows a beard to go to war".






As the deity of the wind, Oya manifests in Creation in the forms of sudden and drastic change, strong storms, and the flash of the marketplace. Her representation of natural disasters and death is not as arbitrary as it may seem, these factors often serving as a means of creation for her.










ShangoFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search


This article is about the Yoruba divinity. For other uses, see Shango (disambiguation).


In the Yorùbá religion, Sàngó ( also spelled, Sango or Shango, often known as Xangô or Changó in Latin America and the Caribbean, and also known as Jakuta[1]) is perhaps one of the most popular Orisha; also known as the divinity of thunder and lightning, Sango is historically a royal ancestor of the Yoruba as was the third king of the Oyo Kingdom prior to his post-humous deification. In the Lukumí (Olokun mi = "my dear one") religion of the Caribbean, Shango is considered the center point of the religion as he represents the Oyo people of West Africa, the symbolic ancestors of the adherents of the faith. All the major initiation ceremonies (as performed in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Venezuela for the last few hundred years) are based on the traditional Shango ceremony of Ancient Oyo. This ceremony survived the Middle Passage and is considered to be the most complete to have arrived on Western shores. This variation of the Yoruba initiation ceremony became the basis of all Orisha initiations in the West