Oya

Oya

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.

The sculpture on the right is after the Oya Shrine: Female Equestrian by 
Bamgboye, Odo-Owa, Ekiti region, mid 20th century. The heads on her 
necklace are from the same piece.

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

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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 in the 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!)

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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

http://www.awakened woman.com/ oya.htm