#oshumare

Hi @standamagicman ! Thanks for your patience, it took me some time this week to really find the space and energy to devote to a reading. Worked out well as I was able to spend a lot of time in prayer to my Egun and meditation before this session - and right around the new moon as well, which turns out to have a strong tie to the message of your reading in renewal and the start of some new possible beginnings for you on your path :)

I hope these messages bring you some insight for your work with spirits! Best wishes to you.

1) What could be blocking me from hearing, sensing, and seeing spirits?

Ten of Chalices: Oshunmare & Joseph Cinqué

When you reach out to the spirits, they take notice, they hear you, some of them try to communicate back. And you are hearing and sensing it, but it is lost in the sea of noise and distraction in your mind. It’s like paint on a canvas that is so busy and full of other colors that you can’t find the brush strokes you are looking for. It’s so loud and noisy that you can’t hear what you’re listening for. You need to quiet your mind and your being enough to get in tune with the messages being sent your way.

Oshunmare is the Orisha (spirit of the Yoruba culture in West Africa) who is depicted here as a rainbow snake flying across the sky. On the Ten of Chalices, Oshunmare represents rebirth and renewal. With this, I can feel that you need to turn things some things upside down and be willing to start over to get the peace and quiet necessary to hear the spirits.

Joseph Cinqué gives a lesson on how to do this - he was a slave on La Amistad who revolted, won, and had a chance to fight for the right to be free since by that time the Atlantic slave trade was illegal in the US. Cinqué succeeded, and likewise you must free yourself from old patterns and habits that are holding you back. Speak up for what you need, fight for the quiet and peaceful space that you need. Make time to devote to resting your mind and clearing your head.

2) How can I better hear, sense, and see spirits?

Three of Pentacles: Agé & Benjamin Abnneker

This card speaks on mastery of an art, great ability, skill, craft, and specialization. Agé is a great hunter spirit of indigenous cultures in Benin and Togo. You see him on the card aiming with great precision and focus using his bow and arrow to strike a particular target. Benjamin Abnneker is a skillful masterful of the diaspora, an African American slave who gained his freedom and used his knowledge of astronomy to author a successful series of almanacs.

The message for you is that it takes time, practice, patience, and hard work to gain the knowledge, skill, and mastery that it will take to become a medium or a psychic. The Ten of Chalices told you the first step to solving your issue - learning to quiet your mind so that you can hear spirits and creating renewal in your life to remove the obstacles to peace in your mind. But once that has been achieved, the roads will only be open and clear for you. Then you will need practice to hone your skills for traversing and traveling down those roads.

Ashe! I’m so glad it was helpful, and I wish you all the best as you explore Yoruba tradition and what it means for you (: If I may, there are a few things to watch out for as you study further and get actively involved…

One thing to keep in mind is that traditional Yoruba concepts of gender, which are genuinely much more flexible and quite different, aren’t always well represented in modern practice. There is a lot of homophobia (and probably also transphobia) in many ilés (houes/lineages) of Ifá, Santería, and Candomblé. I wish this wasn’t the case, and I haven’t encountered it at all so far in my own ilé, but I have heard many stories from others.

As you may know, Olodumare and many of the orishas like Oshumare, Obatala, Oduduwa and more are traditionally genderfluid/gender-neutral, referred to with the neutral pronoun o in Yoruba language. Yet, today in many cases, all three of these and others are frequently portrayed as masculine with “he/him” pronouns.