Tag: oshun

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UNESCO: Bringing Oshun Into the Home: Origins, Healing, and Creative Inspiration

I was thinking of the Yoruba Goddess Oshun today. Whenever I am facing intense challenges, I like to destress with painting and reorganizing. I was painting my bathroom wall this afternoon and her beautiful essence came to mind. Oshun’s story begins in the sacred cosmology of the Yoruba people of Nigeria and Benin, where she is honored as the orisha of sweet waters, beauty, fertility, sensuality, and emotional healing. She is the spirit of the river—flowing, generous, and deeply restorative. Her presence brings sweetness back into difficult seasons, and her energy is often invoked when someone needs softness, joy, or renewal.

The Origins of Oshun

In Yoruba tradition, Oshun (also spelled Osun or Ochún) is one of the most beloved orishas. She is associated with the Osun River in Nigeria, where her sacred grove remains a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a major pilgrimage destination. Her colors—yellow, coral, and gold—reflect her essence: joy, vitality, sensuality, and the shimmering movement of fresh water. As a healer, she supports emotional balance, fertility, creativity, and the gentle clearing of stagnant energy.

How to Bring Oshun’s Spirit Into Your Home

Inviting Oshun into your home doesn’t require elaborate ritual. It’s about creating a space where beauty, warmth, and emotional ease can flow freely.

Use Her Colors With Intention

  • Yellow: Add throw pillows, candles, fresh flowers, or ceramics to brighten your space and lift your mood.
  • Coral: Use coral textiles, bowls, or artwork to bring warmth and emotional grounding.

Create a Water-Inspired Corner

A small bowl of fresh water, a fountain, or a vase filled with river stones can symbolize her cleansing, flowing energy. Refresh the water often as a simple act of renewal.

Honor Sweetness

Honey, oranges, and soft fragrances like vanilla or citrus echo her love of sweetness and pleasure.

Invite Softness and Sensuality

Silks, warm lighting, gentle music, and lush textures help cultivate the atmosphere Oshun is known for—one of ease, beauty, and emotional openness.

Before we close, I want to share a story that carries the heart of Oshun’s healing. It’s a reminder that even the sweetest waters can be shaken, and yet they always find their way back to flow. This story captures what happens when love shifts, when heartbreak arrives, and when a woman chooses to return to her own sweetness.

Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove image credited to Thierry Joffroy @UNESCO

After Shango Left: Oshun’s Journey Back to Her Own Sweetness

After Shango left, the world grew strangely quiet.

Not the peaceful kind of quiet that comes after rain, but the hollow quiet that settles in a house when laughter has walked out the door. Oshun felt it first in her chest — a tightening, a dimming — as if someone had placed a hand over her heart and pressed down gently, then harder.

She didn’t rage. She didn’t chase. She simply turned and walked back to her river.

The water recognized her before she even touched it. The surface trembled, shimmering gold, as if trying to rise up and hold her. Oshun knelt at the edge, letting her fingers slip beneath the coolness. The river asked no questions. It only received her.

Days passed. Maybe weeks. Time moves differently when a heart is healing.

Without her sweetness, the world began to crack. Arguments sharpened. Crops withered. Even the other orishas felt the shift — the absence of her laughter, her diplomacy, her gentle way of softening the edges of things. They searched for her, calling her name across forests and crossroads, but Oshun stayed with her river, letting the water carry away what she could not hold.

One morning, as the sun stretched itself across the sky, Oshun rose from the riverbank. Her sorrow had not disappeared, but it had changed shape — from a wound into a wisdom. She wrapped herself in yellow, coral, and gold, colors that reminded her of who she was before love and after it.

When she stepped back into the world, sweetness returned. Flowers lifted their heads. People remembered tenderness. Even Shango felt the shift — that unmistakable glow that only Oshun could bring.

But this time, she did not return for him.

She returned for herself.

And the river followed her, shimmering at her heels, whispering the truth she had finally learned: No matter who leaves, Oshun always comes back to Oshun.

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“Unbreakable” Contemporized Yoruba Oshun Divination Vessel

.      “Unbreakable” Contemporized Yoruba Wedding Vessel 

In Yoruba culture Oshun is an orisha or, deity, that reflects one of God’s manifestations. She symbolizes fertility, love, beauty, luxury and pleasure. She is the mother of the river. Most notably the river located in Nigeria that bears her name.  Gold, deep yellow, white and green are her signature colors signifying the deep connection to the Earth in Nigeria. 

Oshun is the Yoruba orisha connected to destiny. The vessel is often used as a divination tool that allows a querent to illicit guidance and inspiration from its markings. With the markings on the pot the diviners are able to gain insight into one’s life by studying the markings on the vessel.

What approach did you take in making this vessel?

Creating art in this medium is similar to channeling. As a black American with roots in Puerto Rico, Barbados and through marriage Nigeria—I wanted to create something that was both spiritual and useful. It is a vessel that I set out to be a snapshot of my family. During my middle daughter’s battle with cancer there were many unanswered questions and I often turned to meditation and prayer. This path led me to the discovery of diviners in both my family, and my husband’s family, which I feel is uniquely African in how our culture conjures or calls upon the spirit world. 

The vessel was supposed to be a bit more beautiful, however, upon appearance it looks almost like an artifact. It is weathered and there are what appears to be cracks with embedded dates and words. At any given moment a different person could look at this vessel and ask it a question. Someone may see the numbers. Someone else may see the words. The markings look like life lines on a hand. It can be placed with the “mouth” facing up or down, which would give it a decidedly different read as well.

It all is dependent upon who is looking at it when and how it speaks to you.

I see a family and in its center are the words “Unbreakable.” Families in all forms are under attack. Unity is under attack but love always wins. I find it interesting that this is the message that I channeled while constructing this piece and look forward to its further revelations.