#ookun

The Okun-Yoruba people where the secret societies of Arut,Ofosi and Ogun were formed is an interesting study because thre is not much information since like us they had a policy of Wogbe Woku(say it and die)but the little of the oral history we know is facinating.It reveals that a man called Amugbagewo travelled to Gbobe and found the women,that cured and made the Odu pot,he stayed with them and became one with them.When he left with his pot the women in his village came out to greet him,it was them that performed the essential sacrifices that released and disseminated divinity,after this the women went into possession for 13 days.

Amugbagewo revived the women by anointing them with soothing palm oil and shea butter.The Aje that they came to Earth with was magnified and enritched,and to better harness their power and ensure its holistic juditial application,the women formalized the language,dances,rituals and codes of their new identity and power.The gender dynamics of the Ookun-Yoruba are profoundly important.Fathers ensured their daughters were nominated for initiation,glorified and deified when the time comes.Here is ample evidence of a nation of men who demanded the full empowerment and deification of their wives ,daughters and mothers.While some ese Ifa suggest ways to weaken and delimit women,I think the Ookun-Yoruba's response to Aje and female empowerment is reflective of the gender relations that prevailed in Yoruba and other African societies prior to the patriarchal shift and the destruction wrought by slavery,colonization and Christianization.

When from the 1800s to the mid-1900s Christians infested the hinderland of West Africa,they brought with them and began spreading the world's most virulent disease,evil.The Christian converts of the various denominations described the women cults as devil created,and the spirit that descended on the adherents of Ofosi,Ogun and Aruta was described as an evil spirit.There were neither devils nor evils in Ookun-Yoruba nation until the arrival of Christians.Evil and the devil were nonexistent because African societies are founded on empirical knowledge acquisition,reciprocity,balance and propriety as opposed to ignorance,judgement casting,scapegoating and vilifying.