“The female Orisha you talked about are part and parcel of Iyami in this role of justice. And the actions that are necessary for justice and for communal restoration often appear to be ruthless. However, the Iyami are the most compassionate. It has been observed that when someone has come before Iyami’s justice the Elder women will often weep and beg Iyami (the spirit) to help the person right the wrong by completing all ebo in the proper time frame. If the violator still does not satisfy Iyami and is deemed a danger to the community, the Elders will carry out the necessary action even if that means death to the perpetrator. If ever the Iyami act out of revenge or out of dislike of a person, they too are subject to immediate repercussions from the Iyami forces. The Iyami Elders are the most disciplined, thoughtful, and calm of the community. They are held to the highest standards by the Orisha.”

One ceremony I attended held by my spiritual community included the presence of the Iyami in the form of sacred objects dedicated to them. These objects were sheltered by a temporary roof, with mats hanging from the roof’s eaves to delineate the Iyami’s space. It would have been possible to dance below these mats and into the space reserved for the Iyami. However, our chief priest explained that anyone who did so, “inadvertently” or not, would be seen as asking for initiation into the Iyami’s mysteries, with the expectation that they were prepared to conform to the high standards Iya Fakayode mentions above. During the four-hour ceremony, no one danced under that roof.

Love, C.

1) Lucumi or Ifá or Santería is about achieving harmony, how to live productively as an individual within a family and a family within a community. Each part is necessary. Thus the readings in Ifá do not confine solutions to one orisha, one camino of an orisha, but several combinations of caminos and orishas. Each affects each. They fit like jigsaw pieces to make the whole picture. Or like a kalidescope, each shake changes the pattern.

2) Nor are any orisha confined to a single a gender.

3) Ochun is the baby orisha, for she is the orisha of art — she also rules witchcraft and witches.

4) Oyá is the orisha who rules the cemetery and the crossing from this world to the other. She is the head of the societies of egunguns (the dead ancestors)– which never came to the Caribbean, but did come to Brasil. They remain vastly important in Nigerian’s Yorubaland to this day.

She is the ruler of the marketplace. Not only is she one of the Warrior orishas with her spear and Changó’s horse, but she provides the fundamental service to the family and community of mercantilism.

As Buffalo Woman she is an animal woman – shapeshifter too.

5) Ochun is the baby orisha, the last; as such she presides over creativity and art, as well as romantic love and sexual obsession. So therefore it is easy to understand why she presides also over witches and witchcraft.

There is no end, but not in the sense that all dissolves into some fuzzy hash. It’s not like that. The deeper and longer one studies the orishas, Ifá, the deeper your understanding and appreciation of life and the world becomes.

Love, C.

Zahra, I sure hope you enjoy my book.

I know who I am.

Love, C.

Yemaya is very evident in two stories in my (ahem–award-winning!) collection Filter House. I write about her in “Wallamelon” and “Good Boy.” She’s also evident (at least to me) in “Momi Watu” and “The Water Museum” in that book.

Oya had a deep influence on another story in Filter House, “The Beads of Ku.” And one aspect of her is the basis for Amma in “Shiomah’s Land,” also collected in that book.

Oshun inspired “But She’s Only a Dream.” That’s available online as well as in Filter House. Oshun is also a large part of how I came to write “Women of the Doll.” That’s not in Filter House, though it’s one of my favorite stories. It’s in GUD #1. And “Vapors,” my only published erotica so far, is Oshun through and through. “Vapors” appears in AquaErotica 2.

I didn’t realize it when I wrote “Bird Day,” but that story owes a lot to the Iyami, as my godmother pointed out to me when I did a reading from Filter House in San Francisco last autumn.

Other Orishas, other elements of Ifa are tangible in my work, always. Don’t know how I’d do it if they weren’t with me.

Does that help?

If at some point you’re ever moved to talk about the way these goddesses and the religions with which they are associated appear in fiction, or whether you as a writer feel their angry black divine touch, I’d be an eager reader.