Who is Oya Iyansa and Why is Change Good?

Indigenous Faiths of Africa / Iyami Aje
As human beings, we have a tendency to make our divinities in our own image. It allows us to relate to qualities within ourselves. We understand divine forces according to our level of consciousness. So as we grow, we should cultivate more expansive views of these forces. Oya is an Orisha known for change and the wind. Because we perceive Orisha through people and historical figures, we often confuse those human traits with cosmic ones. As a result, Oya is often relegated to hurricanes, the dead, and Shango’s wife. I’d like to introduce a wider perception of Oya… From a cosmic and universal perspective.

Oya… Governs the winds and by extension, the winds of change. The winds are determined through the rotations of the planet and the rotation of the entire solar system and Galaxy… Moved by the magnetic motions of the black hole in the center of the universal and the northern circumpolar stars. The circumpolar stars are where the North Star is found along with the drinking gourd aka the Big Dipper. It is the North Star that gives direction when you are lost. The winds are not just on earth but also in the heavens and ethers. Thus…Oya is the mother of the 9 heavens…Oruns ..because the winds and dancing movements extend through the layers of the atmosphere and throughout deep space. Oya is what makes it all spin and turn… That spin is what creates our experience of day and night, summer, winter, fall, spring, the rainy and the dry seasons. That dance and spinning also creates orbital patterns of sacred geometry when tracked over years. As a change agent, Oya is related to time. Time is governed by the moon’s rotations and seasons . Oya ushers in change at its proper time.

The winds carry oxygen on earth via how it impacts the oceans currents. Those currents are impacted by the atmospheric pressure and the earth’s poles. The winds carry the seeds for the plants from one area to the other and via the birds… Iyami. The winds carry oxygen to breathe and exist. It’s what fuels the iron in our blood to give us energy to do anything. It’s what is exchanged in our lungs and returned back to our heart. The winds are what fuel the fires on the planet and also the internal fire of our bodies. It can also put those fires out. The wind is the breath of life. When it is no longer, we go back home.

We already know the winds create tornados and hurricanes… But Oya creates thunder and lightening too. As the etheric realm is hers where sound and light is produced. When water evaporates into the sky, it creates clouds that hold bits of ice that when full collide together creating an electric charge. That electric charge is lightening which creates pockets of air through which the light travels and then collapses producing the sound of thunder. It is within the atmosphere that radio waves, sonar waves, and digital waves travel. Thus all wireless technology uses these atmospheric waves to send and receive information. Cell phones, internet, broadcasting, media streaming. It is within the atmosphere that quantum particles travel between dimensions. Thus, Oya can travel between heaven and earth. As such rainbows use the atmosphere to build a bridge of light. When the sun’s light travels through the atmosphere and contacts water droplets in the air, the light is reflected off of the water and creates fractals of bended light that produce the colors of a rainbow.

Oya is the master shapeshifter and as buffalo woman, the power is hidden… Veiled …not so much in what you see…but what you can’t see.. If you just look at the surface and the outside, you will miss it entirely because the material world is her mask. Her mysteries cannot be pierced by the faint hearted nor the shallow. She is the transformer of consciousness via the ultimate change…evolution. Oya forces growth and evolution.

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