Mama OYA Strikes!!

Funny, yesterday I woke up with Mama Oya's energy right in the room. After I wrote my last post she came to me as the picture. Little did I know that it was a message that she was comin' and she was bringin' change. Last night I fell asleep early - it was like a veil of sleepiness came over me around 9pm and just turned in... Today, Atlanta got a warning that even she - this mythical city of far away traveler's dreams - named after a place that is now under water -can change and will be changed.
It is coming to me that if you are reading this early post from me that you should reflect on the energy of Mama OYA. What is she asking you to pay attention to? If she brewed up a storm in your life, what do you picture "blewing" right away? How do you handle situations and conditions that you can NOT control? How do you work with the forces of nature to reclaim your true nature?

www.stevesphotomythology.com/moon.htm

Here some descriptions of Oya I found on the web:

Oya is the powerful Yoruba Goddess of the Winds of Change; the Primeval Mother of Chaos; Queen of the Nine (for the nine tributaries of the Niger River). Using her machete, or sword of truth, she cuts through stagnation and clears the way for new growth. She does what needs to be done. She is the wild woman, the force of change; lightning, fire, tornadoes, earthquakes and storms of all kinds are ruled by Oya. She is also Queen of the Marketplace, a shrewd businesswoman and adept with horses. As the wind, she is the first breath and the last, the one who carries the spirits of the dead to the other world, which is why she is associated with cemeteries.

by Sandra Stanton (Visit her website at www.goddessmyths.com)


Oya-Yansa is the Queen of the Winds of change. She is feared by many people because She brings about sudden structural change in people and things. Oya does not just rearrange the furniture int he house -- She knocks the building to the ground and blows away the floor tiles.

She is the cyclone and the earthquake. Oya fans Her skirts and blows the branches from the trees; should She choose to cry, torrential rains fall on the earth.

She is the Mother of Mind. She can impart genius, restore memory, or slap you with insanity.

Oya opens Her mouth, flicks out Her tongue, and lightning strikes. She has nine heads; She is the River Niger.

No one can be certain of Oya's movement; no one can capture Her smile. She is the mistress of disguises. yesterday Oya was a gentle lamb; today, a buffalo trampling the earth beneath Her feet. Tomorrow She'll be a rainbow -- maybe.

from Jambalaya, by Luisah Teish (Order from Powells!)

To seek adequate words with which to trace her elemental patterns is an act of homage to the goddess of tropical weathers in hopes that her compassion may reciprocally illuminate inner equivalents with which we have struggled in private darkness. It has been a struggle intensified by patriarchal discountenance of powerful emotion -- its problematic relegated to women "in need of help," as the saying goes. In being choaked by compliant mothers to stifle rather than outride our storms, to dam and conceal our floods, to bank our fires and give tinder over to future husbands, the Oya in ourselves froze in its tracks. Yet such ice particles, negatively charged at the heart of mounting storm are the mysterious, generative sources of Oya's lightning. Thus, in other way obstructed, Oya strikes us -- quirking here, cramping there. Soon with our brains, the indefatigable goddess goes jaggedly to work upon our bodies, cutting off circulation, opening sluices, instilling victims who could be votaries with a variety of "female complains," catching them up in mindless swirls of activity, throwing them down into incapacitating vortices, playing havoc with appetite. Stop, Oya, we beg you! We will sound your praises along all rivers from Hudson to Niger. We will hang prayer flags to flutter like laundry stretching from fire escape to fire, continent to continent. We will strive to know your winds the better to reclaim our part of fire.

from Oya, In Praise of the Goddess, by Judith Gleason, 1987