Painting Oya
A sped up video of me painting my Oya token!
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@martinquelecavalier
Painting Oya
A sped up video of me painting my Oya token!
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🌈🗡️🌈🗡️
views from my fav smoke spot
the loas (spirits) explained in Haitian voodoo🇭🇹 !
DIt doesn't matter who you are
It's what you do that takes you far
And if at first you don't succeed
Here is some advice you should heedI let it go at the edge of the property in a little while. For now, I have a new friend. Yay 😀 Modern voodoo is the derivation of one of the oldest religions in the world, present in Africa since the beginning of human civilization.
Voodoo ceremony in Jacmel (Haiti)
Fonte : Wikipedia
Widespread in various African areas even before European colonization, the religion then spread to the Americas, following the deportation of slaves to the new colonies, where they were exploited for forced labor. The codification of voodoo as we know it today dates back to this period, between the 17th and 18th centuries: born from the synthesis of various African spiritual expressions and some Catholic elements.
For African slaves, voodoo represented a glimmer of light in the misery of slavery[1]; a common faith that could make them feel part of a valued culture, as well as part of a community. However, voodoo had to face a tough fight against the oppression exercised by Catholicism: the Catholic Church fought strenuously against African religious expression, due to its combination of superstitions and black magic.
With the deportations to the Americas, voodoo began to spread to the Caribbean islands, and subsequently throughout Central America. Over time the voodoo religion hybridized with the Catholic one, identifying the presence of a supreme god and numerous intermediaries; In the three centuries that separate the birth of modern voodoo and the current era, various religious currents were born, with the acclamation by Catholics found in the 1950s and the aversion of Protestants which continues to this day.
Despite the repression, voodoo attracted an ever-increasing number of followers, thanks precisely to that aura of the forbidden and mysterious that its condemnation had created. In modern times, voodoo is enjoying a fair diffusion in the United States and South America: in Haiti the official recognition of the voodoo religion, practiced by almost the entire population in parallel with Christianity, dates back to 2003. In West Africa there is an ongoing revivalism: in Benin it has been recognized as the official religion since 1996 and is practiced by four fifths of the population; it is also administered by an organized community and taught in schools. Numerous believers are present in Ghana and Togo.Modern voodoo is the derivation of one of the oldest religions in the world, present in Africa since the beginning of human civilization.
Voodoo ceremony in Jacmel (Haiti)
Widespread in various African areas even before European colonization, the religion then spread to the Americas, following the deportation of slaves to the new colonies, where they were exploited for forced labor. The codification of voodoo as we know it today dates back to this period, between the 17th and 18th centuries: born from the synthesis of various African spiritual expressions and some Catholic elements.
For African slaves, voodoo represented a glimmer of light in the misery of slavery[1]; a common faith that could make them feel part of a valued culture, as well as part of a community. However, voodoo had to face a tough fight against the oppression exercised by Catholicism: the Catholic Church fought strenuously against African religious expression, due to its combination of superstitions and black magic.
With the deportations to the Americas, voodoo began to spread to the Caribbean islands, and subsequently throughout Central America. Over time the voodoo religion hybridized with the Catholic one, identifying the presence of a supreme god and numerous intermediaries; In the three centuries that separate the birth of modern voodoo and the current era, various religious currents were born, with the acclamation by Catholics found in the 1950s and the aversion of Protestants which continues to this day.
Despite the repression, voodoo attracted an ever-increasing number of followers, thanks precisely to that aura of the forbidden and mysterious that its condemnation had created. In modern times, voodoo is enjoying a fair diffusion in the United States and South America: in Haiti the official recognition of the voodoo religion, practiced by almost the entire population in parallel with Christianity, dates back to 2003. In West Africa there is an ongoing revivalism: in Benin it has been recognized as the official religion since 1996 and is practiced by four fifths of the population; it is also administered by an organized community and taught in schools. Numerous believers are present in Ghana and Voodoo postulates the existence of a supreme divinity, which in African tradition would be indicated with names such as Mawu, Olorun or Gran Met (from the French Grand Maître, or "Great Master"), but this supreme divinity, if it exists, is distant and unknowable .
The supernatural elements with which man can interact and which represent the perceptible divinities of voodoo are the loa, collective spirits capable of presiding over various phenomena, whose qualities they acquire. For example, the loa Papa Legba is depicted as an old man at a crossroads, and his domain is roads, passages and communication. As such he is always invoked first during the voodoo rites, so that he accepts the request to open the channels through which the other loa, specific to each problem, will be able to receive the prayers of the faithful. For these qualities he is associated with, and often venerated, in the guise of Saint Peter of the Christian tradition.
Papa Ghede is the collective sum of the spirits of the dead and at the same time the afterlife in which the same spirits of the dead reside, who can be questioned through him.
Other particularly characteristic loas are Erzulie (associated with fertility and borrowed from the image of the Christian Madonna), Ogoun (associated with money and earthly power in all its forms), Damballa (the serpent of the sky).
The loa, also called 'divine knights', during rituals can possess (or 'ride') the faithful predisposed to possession. The possessed acquire the movements and manners of the loa; they often later report that they remember nothing of what they said or did.loa, a bit like the orisha deities, are very numerous, with the most varied personalities and generally humanoid in appearance[5].
They are divided into three large classes: the sparse, positive and protective towards humans; the petro, wild, violent and the ghede, spirits linked to black magic and fertility. Among the most important loa we can mention: Papa Legba, one of the most powerful, Agwe lord of the sea flanked by La sirène (The Mermaid) and La Baleine (The Whale); Ayizan, genius of commerce; Baron Samedi in his various aspects (Baron Samedi, Baron Cimetière, Baron La Croix, Baron Kriminel) who embodies death and sexuality; Erzulie, patroness of love and beauty; Loco lord of the woods and plants in general; Zaca, patron saint of agriculture; Azeto, demon in the form of a vampire.
Beaded Bracelets for the Orishas
****last post I had in draft from my Orisha recognition***
Obatala and Yemaya by Kypris Aquarelas
In Brazil, the yoruba deity Obatala goes by the name Oxalá, a contraction of the expression "Orixalá", meaning "the Great Orisha". In afrobrazilian traditions this Orisha commonly takes two forms: Oxaguian, an youthful and impetuous warrior that likes eating yam and Oxalufan, an old wise man that uses a staff called Opaxorô. The greatest of the yoruba gods, Obatala is an Orisha Funfun (white-wearing deities), he is connected to the Forces of Creation, peace, purity, order and in Brazil it's a common practice to save fridays, his sacred day, avoiding to eat red meat, having intercourse and drinking alcohol. Some of his symbols are the Alá (a white cloth), the igbin (an african snail), the white dove, the Sky and the Sun.
Oxalá is a figure of utmost importance to most of the afrodiasporic religions. His cult is present in religions such as Umbanda, Candomblé, Batuque de Nação, Tambor de Mina, Santeria, Omolokô and many others. He's also syncretized with other proeminente divine figures: the Nkisi (deity) Lembá Dilê worshipped in Bantu Traditions and with Jesus Christ.
One of his most known pontos (prayers) says:
"Oxalá created the Earth,
Oxalá created the Sea,
Oxalá created the World
Where the Orishas reign (...)"
Yemoja, Yemaya or Iemanjá is the name of a major yoruba deity. Her name comes from the expression Yé Yé Omó Ejá: "Mother whose Children are the Fish". Yemaya is an Orisha connected to fertility, maternity, to good mental health and to the sustenance of life. In brazilian lands, she was crowned as the Queen of the Seas, but in reality she's connected to all bodies of water - fresh or sea ones. Her most known symbols are the fishes, the abebé (a fan-like object), sea shells and pearls, the Moon, the colors White, silver and blue. In nigerian lands, she's the goddess of the river Ogun.
Her worship is presente in most of the afrodiasporic religions such as Umbanda, Candomblé, Batuque de Nação, Tambor de Mina, Santeria, Omolokô and many others. Yemaya was syncretized with many catholic saints such as Our Lady of Immaculate Conception, Our Lady of Cabeza, Our Lady of Glory and Our Lady of Navigants. She's also syncretized with other african deities, such as the Nkise Kaiala.
To Yemaya, we sing:
"My brother, when you hear
In the distance a beautiful song,
There must be the Angels from Paradise
or the Mermaid of the Sea..."
Oshun worship suggestions
Associations
Rives/Fresh waters
Love
Beauty
Prosperity
Femininity
Divinity
Creation
Purity
Destiny
Divination
Sexuality
Fertility
diplomacy
Offerings
Yellow Flowers
Honey
Coins
Fresh waters
Gold
Jewelry and pearls
Crowns
Peacock feathers
Oranges, pumpkins, yams
Bells
Baked food
Mirrors
Incense
Shells
Cinnamon & Ginder
oils/perfume
Sweet teas
Sacred animals
Peacocks
Vultures
Bees
Sacred colors
Yellow
Gold
Orange
Coral
white
Action devotion
Dancing and singing
Visit Rives/springs/lakes and/or swim
Cultivate Empathy and sensitivity
Assist people in need
self-love/care
Prayers for love, safety, and abundance
Going to an Osun-Osogbo festival
Creating/inventing
Taking care of peacocks
Learn and study Divination
The Iwa: Haitian Vodou Spirits
Rituals, Possession, Sacrificial Offerings, Symbolism
from Kafou: Haitian Art and Vodou, the exhibition catalogue
Florence Griffith Joyner at the 100 meters race,LA, California, 4 of August 1984
Mr. Soul! (2018)
Aunt Betsy Francis Blackwell Mayer (1827 – 1899)
ℑ 𝔫𝔢𝔢𝔡 𝔰𝔲𝔫𝔰𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔢.
Kirby — Reparations
New Orleans, Louisiana. Photographs by Michael P. Smith (1970s-1990s) via The Historic New Orleans Collection
The Legend of Pümi, Who Scattered the First Colors
Before the world learned the habit of naming, before the sky was called sky or the earth was called earth, there was only the great, breathing vastness—the endless, luminous consciousness the sages would one day whisper of as Brahman.
It did not speak in words.
It did not move in steps.
It unfolded like a dream dreaming itself.
And within that dreaming arose a longing—soft as starlight, curious as first breath:
What would it mean to be many?
What would it mean to be known in countless forms?
From that question, like a ripple widening across still water, came Pümi.
Not born. Not fashioned.
But revealed—like color waiting inside light.
Pümi emerged in a form that refused to settle. Their body was a living horizon. One moment they shimmered with the grace of a woman crowned in quiet radiance; the next, they stood with the grounded strength of a man shaped by earth and storm; and then, in the sacred pause between heartbeats, they became something vaster still—beyond all naming, beyond all division.
Those who glimpsed Pümi did not know what they were.
So the oldest voices did not try to define them.
They bowed.
For in Pümi they felt a truth older than language—that the self is not fixed, but flowing; not singular, but infinite. The seers would later speak of Atman, the inner essence that mirrors the cosmos, and they would say Pümi walked as that mystery made visible.
Some whispered that Pümi carried the echo of Ardhanarishvara, where all dualities dissolve into unity. Others said they were a wandering thought of Krishna, escaped from divine play, still laughing as it reshaped the world.
But the oldest telling is the simplest:
When the One desired to become many,
Pümi was the first answer.
In those early ages, the world existed in a kind of sacred hush. Mountains rose like held breath.
Rivers moved as though remembering something they had not yet become.
Living beings walked the land, but all seemed cast in a gentle sameness, like a melody played on a single, unbroken note.
There was harmony. But there was no surprise.
Pümi wandered this quiet creation and felt its beauty—and its absence.
For what is beauty without contrast?
What is life without variation?
So Pümi knelt upon the earth.
They placed their hands against the soil, and the world seemed to listen. Even the wind stilled, as though waiting for permission to begin again.
Then Pümi reached inward—into that boundless place where self and cosmos are not separate, where Atman and Brahman are reflections of the same infinite truth.
From within, they drew forth color.
Not color as mortals would later know it, but color as essence—color as identity, as emotion, as possibility not yet constrained by form.
They lifted their hands.
And they scattered it.
The first color did not fall—it sang.
It moved like music through the sky, and the sky awakened, no longer a blank expanse but a living tapestry of shifting hues. Blues deepened into mystery, golds spilled into dawn, violets whispered of twilight yet to come.
Pümi laughed, and their laughter became light.
They touched the rivers, and the waters shimmered with hidden depths. They brushed the stones, and even the silent things seemed to glow with quiet individuality.
Then Pümi pressed their palm into the earth.
And the earth answered. From the soil rose the first flowers. Not one. Not a handful. But a thousand, unfolding in a single breath.
Some were small as secrets, trembling close to the ground. Others stretched wide and fearless, petals open like laughter. Some blazed with colors so bold they could not be ignored; others carried hues so subtle they revealed themselves only to the patient and the kind.
No two were alike.
No two were meant to be.
Pümi moved among them, not as a ruler, but as a witness.
They touched one bloom, and it deepened in shade.
They touched another, and it shifted entirely, becoming something never before imagined.
The field became a living truth: that harmony is not born from sameness, but from difference allowed to exist without fear.
Pümi knelt there for a long while, watching.
Not as a creator admiring their work, but as the universe delighting in itself.
When the first humans came upon this field, they stopped in wonder.
They had never seen such abundance, such unapologetic variation. Their eyes moved from flower to flower, trying to understand what refused to be reduced.
And as humans often do, they began to ask:
“Which one is best?”
“Which one is true?”
“Which one is as it should be?”
Pümi rose.
Their form shimmered again—now soft, now strong, now something beyond all opposites. They walked among the people, each step leaving a trace of color that faded only after it had been felt.
They touched one person, and their skin caught the hue of twilight.
They touched another, and their body moved with a rhythm no one had seen before.
They touched another, and something long hidden within them rose at last into light.
The people murmured, uncertain.
Pümi turned to them.
“Do you ask which flower is right?”
They gestured to the endless field.
“If the world had chosen only one,” Pümi said, “would it be a garden—or a repetition?”
The wind moved through the blossoms, and they answered in motion.
“No bloom hides its color,” Pümi continued. “No petal apologizes for its shape. The smallest does not strive to become the tallest. The brightest does not dim itself to comfort the pale.”
They stepped forward, their form shifting like light through water.
“Difference is not a mistake,” they said softly.
“It is intention.”
But still, a quieter question lingered in the hearts of the people.
It was not spoken at first. It trembled beneath the surface—carried in glances, in hesitations, in the unspoken weight of longing that did not follow the paths they had been taught to walk.
At last, someone asked: “What of love?”
The field fell still.
“What of desire,” they continued, “that does not move as it is told it should?”
Pümi did not answer immediately.
Instead, they walked deeper into the field, where the flowers grew wild and intertwined, where colors blurred into one another until no boundary could be drawn.
There, they knelt.
Among the blossoms were many forms of blooming.
Some flowers turned toward the sun.
Some turned toward each other.
Some grew in pairs so close they seemed one.
Some bloomed alone, radiant and complete, needing no witness.
Pümi touched them gently.
“Tell me,” they said, “which of these loves incorrectly?”
No one could answer.
The question dissolved like mist.
Pümi rose, and now their presence held something deeper—something like recognition, like the quiet joy of being seen.
“Love,” they said, “is not a rule given to you by the world.”
“It is the world recognizing itself through you.”
They moved among the people once more, and as they passed, something awakened—truths long hidden, desires long silenced, identities long denied.
“To love what is familiar is reflection,” Pümi said.
“To love what is different is discovery.”
Their voice softened, becoming something almost like a breath:
“To love beyond expectation is freedom.”
The flowers stirred.
A closed bloom opened.
Two blossoms leaned toward one another without hesitation.
A single flower stood alone, luminous and whole.
“All are sacred,” Pümi whispered.
And so it is said that Pümi never left.
They move still through the unseen edges of the world—where identities shift, where boundaries soften, where new ways of being dare to emerge.
They are there wherever difference is questioned.
Where love refuses to be confined.
Where a person stands in the fullness of who they are and does not bow to the demand to become less.
In every field of wildflowers that blooms without pattern, Pümi lingers.
In every sky that refuses to be only one color, Pümi breathes.
In every soul that expands beyond what it was told it must be, Pümi awakens.
Not as something distant.
But as something remembered.
For the universe did not create diversity by accident.
It created it the way a garden blooms—
with wild intention,
with fearless abundance,
and with a beauty so vast
it could never be contained
in only one form.