The orishas became vain, proud, thinking themselves greater than even Olódumare. Olódumare, grieved by their arrogance, withdrew from the world. So far away did he go that the earth became unbalanced, and without Olódumare, there was no rain. Plants withered, animals suffered, and soon even the humans and the orishas were weakened from heat and hunger. Without Olódumare’s ashé in the world, there was only misery on earth. No longer did humans sacrifice to the orishas because animals were too scarce, and without worship the orishas themselves knew suffering. All of them, even the mighty Obatalá, wanted Olódumare’s forgiveness. And as all do in time, each sought out God.

Every orisha used his remaining strength to rise to heaven and beg God’s forgiveness, but so far removed was Olódumare that no one had the power to make the ascent. After the most powerful orishas had tried but failed, the weaker among them made the attempt. Finally, Oshún Ibú Adessa came before her brothers and sisters in her sacred form, that of the peacock, and she told them, “I will make the flight to heaven. I will be the one to save the world.”

There was laughter. Everyone loved Oshún for her beauty and sweetness; they loved her because the gifts she gave the world made life bearable and worth living. But the gentle peacock was known for its beauty and not its strength. No one believed she could fly higher than a treetop, and heaven was far beyond that; it lay beyond even the sun and stars. One by one, the orishas tried to talk sense into Oshún. But she stood firm. “I will make the flight and save the world. I will go to Olódumare’s feet and beg forgiveness for us all, or . . .,” she grew silent, looking at her feet, “. . . or I will die trying. If we cannot save the world, we will all die anyway. I will be the first to sacrifice my own life for the world.”

Before another word was said, Oshún Ibú Adessa spread her wings and sailed to the skies.

Everyone was in awe.

The door to heaven lay through the sun, and before she broke the clouds Oshún Ibú Adessa was exhausted. Still, she pushed herself harder and higher. Breaking the clouds, she felt the sun’s scorching heat and her feathers singed. Soon her body was covered in flames, and those feathers that did not burn melted against her soft skin. She screamed; every nerve in her body was exposed, her skin scorched and blackened and sore. Oshún took one last look at the sun to make sure she was headed toward heaven’s gate; the light blinded her, it melted her eyes, but she flapped what remained of her wings even harder, throwing herself through Olorún’s domain. Burning, she screamed, her screams fueling her desire to arrive at Olódumare’s feet or die trying. When finally the pain became too much, when all she knew was agony, she went slack and fell in a faint.

Unconscious, Oshún had not a clue that she lay at Olódumare’s feet.

When she awoke there was pain; she remembered being on fire, burning, and she was weak. Oshún spread her blackened wings as far as they would stretch before trying to stand. She was too feeble.

“Don’t try to move,” said a voice that was as ethereal as it was powerful. “Rest.” Oshún felt like she was falling into herself. Mercifully, she was locked in a dreamless sleep, free from the fire, free from the pain.

She awoke to find herself in a soft bed. Oshún tried to lift her arm, but there was no arm, only a blackened wing. She tried to focus, to shed her avian form for that of a human shape, but her flight had left her too drained, and she was locked in the form of a bird with burnt feathers and scorched skin. The pain, however—it was gone.

“Why did you do such a foolish thing, Oshún?” She turned her head. Sitting beside her bed was a man whose skin was so dark that he seemed a black marble statue, perfect and unmoving. “Why did you fly through the sun? You know your form, the peacock, had not the strength to withstand such a journey. You are lucky to be alive.”

“The world is dying,” she said, surprised the power of voice still existed in her withered form. “I came to beg you to save us.”

“I tried to heal you, Oshún,” said Olódumare. “I tried to restore you to your beauty, but your ashé has changed. The beauty of the peacock is gone. Now your form remains withered and blackened, but you are stronger. You are no longer as you were, no longer Oshún Ibú Adessa. You are now Oshún Ibú Ikolé, and your sacred form is now that of the buzzard.” Oshún sat up as best as she could in her bird form; she shook when she saw her once beautiful peacock feathers replaced by those of a buzzard. But she felt the new strength in her body. She concentrated, bringing all her ashé to bear with one purpose: returning to her human form. Even that was different. She was older, stronger.

“I came to beg your forgiveness, Olódumare,” she said, carefully rolling out of the bed and putting her head to the floor in obeisance. “We were wrong to become so proud and vain, to think we could manage the world without you. We are forever your servants. Please, don’t destroy the world. Come back to us.” Tears stained her black cheeks. “We need you. There can be no world without you, no world without God.”

Oshún’s innocence touched Olódumare’s heart the way his heart was touched when she was first created, an afterthought born from the first stirrings of love. He closed his eyes and with his inner vision saw the earth. His love for his creation was still there. He opened his eyes and saw Oshún with her head on the floor to him; his love for her was even greater. Gently he touched Oshún’s shoulders and bid her to rise. They embraced. Strength flowed from Olódumare; it filled Oshún; it healed her.

Still holding her, but at arm’s length, Olódumare told her, “For your bravery and self-sacrifice I will spare the world, Oshún. I will become a part of it once again, and the rains will fall to save creation from extinction.” It was at that moment that the rains fell again, and the water locked up in heaven was set free on the earth. The rivers began to flow once more, all rushing toward the sea. “Because of your own selflessness, the plants will grow and the scorching heat on earth will cool. And as it was before, all of you will exist as spiritual rivers on the earth, always flowing to and seeking me, and always carrying those who worship you back to me, back home to heaven and to me, Olódumare.”

Oshún cried; she embraced Olódumare. And while they embraced Olódumare made one final decree. “Because you were able to reach heaven by your own strength, your own ashé, you, Oshún, in your new form of the vulture, as Oshún Ibú Ikolé, will forever be my messenger on earth. You will tell me of everything that is about to happen in the world. And whenever a new aspirant is brought to the river to become an abokú, and then an iyawó, it will be you who brings that name and the nature of that aspirant to me as he submerges himself in your waters, my waters, and begins his true journey back home to me, with his orisha as his guide.”

And this is why we bring those who are about to be initiated into our faith to the river before the rites of ocha can be done. There, beside Oshún’s flowing waters, the yubonna tells her what is about to happen so that she, in the shape of a vulture, can fly directly to heaven to tell Olódumare what is about to occur. It is Oshún Ibú Ikolé who tells God that yet another human has begun his journey, with an orisha as his guide, back home to the creator of all life.

Once a postulant is taken to the river and a secret ebó is made to Oshún, she announces to Olódumare the sacred ritual about to occur. With this, the spiritual nature of the river changes. No longer is it just running water; instead, it becomes a current of ashé containing all the possibilities locked up in Olódumare’s mind. It is a flowing stream of limitless potentials, and the postulant is immersed in this. His small pool of water, his simple human life, is washed away and he merges with something greater; that pool that he once was, the water that has grown stagnant over years of living on the earth, is refreshed and renewed. No longer separated from the stream of consciousness represented by his orisha, he is now a part of it. To do this, however, he dies there in that river; symbolic though that death might seem, spiritually it is a true death, and the aspirant is no longer human. He becomes what is known as abokú. Abó is the Lucumí word for “one who is free.” Ikú, the second word found buried in the word abokú (the letter i is dropped through elision), is death. Abokú is also a contraction of a longer sentence: abó lowó ikú, which means “one who is free by death.” It is also àbò lowó ikú, or “one coming back from death.” The postulant immersed in the river hangs in limbo; he is freed by death, and he is coming back from death.

The concept of abokú is taught in the odu Obara Unle (6-8) in the diloggún. It is this odu that speaks of the postulant dying, willingly, when he makes ebó de entrada and goes to the river, and it is this same odu that speaks of him returning from death when he emerges from the river, having obtained a “secret” in its waters.

He does not have life again until going through the rites of the asiento, the initiation ceremony, to become an iyawó, a new initiate of an orisha. Once he enters the river he dies, and he awaits rebirth the following day.

Before going to the river, the aspirant undergoes a ritual in his godparent’s home known as ebó de entrada, or “the ebó of entrance.” It is both a divination and a cleansing done by either an oriaté or a babalawo, and with that cleansing, his old life is, literally, locked up in a brown paper bag (biodegradable!) that is thrown into the river’s currents before the postulant is immersed. Once that bag is thrown into the river, his old life is gone; he is dead, and the bag travels with the current back to Olódumare. After making the secret ebó to Oshún, the postulant himself goes into the river to find his new life and its new potentials.

While the iyawó is in the river, the flow of life’s ashé is interrupted by secret ritual actions, and part of that divine ashé returns to the igbodu, the sacred room where the orishas are born and where the initiate is reborn, crowned by his titular orisha, and there all this ashé is forever locked into the orí, the head or consciousness of the iyawó, and in the sacred stones and shells of the newly birthed orishas. While there in the river, the iyawó finds one otá, a smooth black pebble through which the ashé of the orisha will be connected to his orí. Then the yubon, the priest or priestess who assists one’s godparent in the ritual, puts the stone in the river pot, filling it with the river’s water, and the stone goes back to the initiate’s igbodu, where it is surrounded by the ashé of God’s love and the ashé of the new spiritual current in which the abokú has been immersed. Once the abokú and the other congregants return to the godparent’s home, another special set of songs are canted to acknowledge the great ashé that he carries back from the river in the calabash balanced on his head—an ashé that will soon be a vital part of the new initiate’s own life force.

All these odu—Oché (5), Metanlá Ejioko (13-2), Irosun Unle (4-8), and Obara Unle (6-8)—reveal the massive powers involved when a simple human seeks initiation in an orisha, and all give us clues as to the true spiritual nature of the orishas. They are spiritual beings whose sole purpose is to take us back home, to heaven, to the primal ocean of love and to the immovable stone in the water that is Olódumare. The orisha, as a vessel of this spiritual current, is installed in the iyawó’s orí, both his physical and his spiritual head; it then guides the new priest back to Olódumare, the primordial sea from which all emanates. Once installed in the iyawó’s head like a crown (hence the term crowning), the orisha carries the new priest’s orí with it as it travels through life, seeking God. When interpreted this way, one can truly comprehend that the orishas are, indeed, containers of heaven’s ashé, and one understands that they are more than mere “goddesses” or “gods”; they are the roads to spiritual enlightenment and fulfillment, and they are the core of Lucumí worship.