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c h a p t e r t h i r t e e n  “What Part of the River You’re In” African American Women in Devotion to Òsun Rachel Elizabeth Harding A lineage of water and gold; the shaken gourd and the metal fan, the artist, the fabric, the painted beads. The connoisseur: good stuff when she sees it. Sunflower. A plate of coins. Yellow cloth gelé, draped long. A high bed, rose petals sinking beneath the brown plush of her thighs. Aromatic herb smoke: lemon thyme, manjerica ̃o, alfazema. The poem lifted like thin gold leaf from her lips. The song’s bitter smell. The storyink damp; cuneiform spatter of falling water on rock. Gullysnake in the hips. Something the body knows about a current. Her line of women, the half-reed voices of her grown daughters in wingspan. . . . This essay is a collective reflection on the presence of the deity Òsun and the meaning of Orisha religion in the lives of six African American women—four with parental roots in the southern United States, one Haitian-American, and one with combined Caribbean and southern U.S. ancestry. Two are simply allegiant devotees of Òsun, having been guided at certain pivotal points by Her energy, though not initiated as Her priestesses. Four others are consecrated to sacerdotal duties and are at various stages in their development as spiritual leaders and transmitters of Òsun’s energy. The priestess who is youngest in years of initiation celebrated her second ritual anniversary in November 1998. The most senior Òsun initiate has been a priestess for twenty-eight years. All of the women were raised in greater-or-lesser proximity to the Christian church: Baptist, United Methodist, Catholic, Lutheran, and Presbyterian. These six women presently represent several different traditions within Orisha religion: Lucumı́/Santeria of Cuban origin, Yoruba/Ifá of Nigerian origin; African American Yoruba tradition; Brazilian Candomblé; and a combined experience of two or more traditions. Two of the women also serve the Haitian lwas. Iyalosha Osuntoki Mojisola, a priestess of Òsun, is a filmmaker and physical education teacher living in New York. Her godmother, Iyalosha Majile Osunbunmi Olafemi, was senior priestess of Òsun at Oyotunji, South Carolina, from 1971 to 1981 and lives presently in Tampa, Florida. Marcia Gibson Minter, art director at a women’s magazine in New York, is a devotee of Yemanjá and Oxum and is affiliated with the Ilé Axé Opô Afonjá Candomblé community in Bahia, Brazil.1 Iyalosha Òsunnikantomi Egbénihun Ajoké lives in Cleveland, Ohio, where she works as a registered nurse and gives leadership to a Yoruba Ilé and healing ministry . She is a priestess of Òsun and the Egbeogba. Manbo Asogwé Dorothy DésirDavis , a curator and scholar of African diasporan art and culture, is a devotee of Ochún and Yemaya as well as a Vodou priestess in the Minokan Sosyté of Haiti. She lives in New York. Iyalosha Osunguunwa, a Vodou manbo sur-pointe and priestess of Òsun, is director of a pre-school in Manhattan. The devotees and priestesses speak of Òsun with tremendous gratefulness, recounting examples of the deity’s beneficence in their lives. Iyalosha Osuntoki describes Òsun as the mother of kindness: [She is] the one who gives you anything you want. Especially when you know what you need in life—when you are focused and aware of what you need—to keep you healthy, to keep you at peace with your spirit. She is the giver. The mother of peace.2 The other women interviewed for this essay echo Osuntoki’s sense of the deity ’s benevolence and further emphasize the creativity and aesthetic acumen associated with Òsun. She is healer, artist, mother, bringer of joy and laughter, consummate diplomat and reconciler, resource of grace, and connoisseur of that which has beauty and value. She is also the feminine principle of sensuality, of luxuriant sexual arousal, and the gratifying spirit that accompanies good food, good friends, and good times. At points, however, some of the women speak with ambivalence about certain representations of Òsun, indicating discomfort with the popular stereotype of the river deity as “flirt” or “sex goddess.” In other moments they affirm that recognizing their connection to Òsun was a critical, transformative experience in their lives—giving them new and deeper understandings of their most essential being. Both Iyalosha Majile Osunbunmi Olafemi and...

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