Through my magic golden mirror, in the future I look back to the time when Obaluaye walked the earth and the women in the village of women returned the feminine back to human consciousness.
Do you remember?
Since crossing the seas, the sacred body of Olokun – the god.goddess of psyche and mystery in the Yoruba tradition, humans have evolved with amnesia of the sacred feminine inside of them – tilting the universe out of balance.
Halt – says the cosmic policeman. Esu. The one who sits at the top of the Babalawo’s Opon – the crossroads between heaven and earth; past and future. The one who sees it all and reports to Olodumare, the Supreme being.
Hearing the whispers of Ogboni, the universal court of justice, Esu conjures up the rainbow warrior tribe of Oya – the shemale who wears a beard and dances in a skirt weaved of rainbow scarves and bones as she simultaneously dances across the landscapes of earth and multiple universes bringing about sudden and transformative change.
Esu commands Oya and her rainbow warriors to carry the sun’s breath in the fabric of their mighty winds stirring the sands carpeting the earth’s desert floors. On contact, their kiss of cosmic breath vibrates into the cracked, dry, droughted earth, sending tremors into the underlying fault lines, causing lands to quake and rivers to overflow and flood.
Birds pause and fly upwards, returning to Orun- heaven; animals seep into the velvet curtain of the deep forests and oceans; sacred plants immolate- catch themselves on fire – to protect their seeds for future generations; and great leaders fall into a deep sleep leaving only their footprints as evidence of their time on earth.
The cacophony of the chaos reaches down into the bellows of the earth’s soul where Baba- the one who spreads the pox – lies sleeping bored with social isolation and banished by human’s fears of his power, medicine, and being.
Jostled from his slumber by the desperate cry of the universe, Baba grabs his staff and palm fronds and manifests into humankind, hoping to awaken consciousness in the hearts and minds of humans destroying earth with hunger, greed, rape, exploited labor and power, pollution, homelessness – led by selfish leaders with broken character- violating the pact of coexistence between humans and Onile- Mother Earth.
The King of Earth was enraged and prepared to defend his Mother, Protector, and our sacred Orisa.
Oya rides with Baba, applying her winds to spread medicine hidden in his palm fronds that dispersed into the air like dandelions seeds as he danced. Baba’s medicinal motion intoxicates every community he enters, shapeshifting arun – the ajogun of illness – into airborne structures that lodged into life sustaining passageways blocking the flow of air to lungs and clotting bloodstreams, commanding attention by stopping humans from breathing.
The pounding of grave digging for burials of bodies piling returning to the womb of earth, weakened the psychic membrane suppressing historical secrets of inequities, rising them to the surface like festering wounds needing to be healed. Historical archetypal energies of racism and patriarchy embolden in the chaos, seek to resist the change Baba and Oya are bringing to the world.
Tensions rupture in the climax of George Floyd’s cry for his mother as he labored through his last breaths under the knee of one possessed with past karma circulating since the first colonial ship. George’s cry vibrates across the universe. As his Mother comes forward from the ancestral realm to grab his hand and carry him home, women in the village of women too heard his call and ran to the river to see what was happening down below.
The women in the village of women ran away many moons ago as an act of defiance to the changing traditions that switched the energy of the world from feminine to masculine. They are women warriors – who escaped death on earth and in their isolation became keepers of the traditions and protectors of the future. They fought men who tried to enter their kingdom until the men found ways to exist without them and stopped trying to bring them home. Through time they forgot about earth and without their energy feeding the soul, their legacies on earth forgot them too. That is until dreams of remembrance of another way, began seeping into consciousness as their off-springs sought to navigate through these turbulent times through the calling of their ancestors.
With guilt and fear, the women of the village of women looked deep into the river and saw the havoc on earth and saw Mother earth’s womb filling up with bodies piling up on top of decaying trash.
And then they saw him – the king – Obabaluaye – walking the earth, shaking his palm fronds – with illness and death falling in his wake.
Where is Osun they cried? Where is Yeye – Mother? Had she left earth again? remembering the time Osun left earth in Odu Ose-Tura, when as the only female irunmole she was ignored and disrespected so she left and earth began to die, only agreeing to return when she gave birth to the male energy of Esu.
On cue Osun appears out of the water with a cadre of women, dressed in white. Women who had been praying since the first breath of the sun touched the earth. Women who held the faith of Osun’s love and protection of humanity. Women like Iyalorixa Mainha da Bahia, a daughter of Oxum and mother to many communities the world over – for whom when the world leaned into fear and violence, continued to pray and lead with love.
Osun spoke to the women in the village of women in a stern, yet loving voice – “it’s time. It’s time to return back to earth. We must return with confidence and self-love, ownership of our own sensuality, respect for one another, willingness to tend to the wounds of the earth and protect her from new injury. We must learn how to forgive and re-enter into relationships with men – those that through all of this are willing to redefine their manhood in harmony with earth. It is time to burn the village of utopia and return to love ones in the present – bringing our Black queen magic to the alchemic pot in the creation of a new consciousness of love.
The women in the village of women returned to earth. The ways of the Ancient Mothers rose out of darkness into the public square through dance, song, ritual, initiation- aloshuada- our coming together. The feminine is back. It is inside of you, me, us. We thank our Elders the keepers of the tradition for preserving this knowledge so we can learn to become better caretakers of self and world.
Alisa's thoughts on Beloved Communities 