Joseph McNair

Ogun Oní ré

There is …. a type of power that can be released
through the integrated andcompletely formed selfhood
of the individual person…[whose]… spiritual identity
has become incarnated
Dane Rudhyar

It was a thoughtful and subdued thirteen-year-old who sat at his mother’s dinner table on this particular evening. Shango was very tired, so tired that he almost fell asleep at the table. His mother, Maggie, the village healer, was not unused to such demonstrations of fatigue after a day with his mentors, especially Peter and Tom, where his studies were more often than not physical. Where the boy was concerned, everything took an innocuous second place. She had lived in this quaint village called Aiye for nearly twenty-eight years, reinventing herself again and again, but nothing like the total transformation that had overtaken her these last thirteen years. She was the mother to this boy; the only mother he knew. She had been with him from the time he drew his first breath. In fact, by cutting him from his dead mother’s womb, she had given him life. The bond between them was strong and extended across several lifetimes.

Colors of concern and expectancy painted the features of her handsome brown face, a face that only hinted at the fifty years that etched significance into its ethereal contours and crevices. Her bushy medium lengthy hair was now streaked with gray and her tall, lean frame had begun to stoop slightly. The face of her son, a binocular image projected on the burnt sienna irises that were so intimidating to those who beheld them, filled those eyes as the boy himself had come to fill her life and heart.

She fixed him an herbal tea, a pick-me-up, hoping to talk to him about the day’s events. The fatigue drained from him almost as fast as he drank the tea.

“How was your day, my son?”

“It was a wonderful day, Mama. Now Peter is at one with himself. Soon there will be enough of us for me to really begin my work.” Shango was all smiles as he said this, as if he was going over the day’s pleasant events as he spoke of them.

“Did you not think it would go well?” Maggie asked, probing.

“I wasn’t sure, Mama. When Peter’s memories came through me so that I could look on them as I revealed them to him, I thought that he would hate me for sure. I have not treated Peter/Osanyin kindly in the time that I have known him.” The boy said this with a faraway look in his eye. “I am the cause of his crippling, Mama. You know how Peter dances, hopping around one foot, with one eye closed and waving one arm while the other hangs like a dead thing at his side – I did that to him, Mama!” The boy shuddered releasing some of his shame.

“You were also the agent of his redemption!” Maggie’s voice took on the nuances of Eshu.

“Do not sink into morbid recrimination, god man. It does not become you. Remember, I was there. I put Osanyin under my protection after you and Oya maimed him. I felt so sorry for him that I didn’t even subject him to my trickery. But make no mistake, Shango, it was his arrogance and his carelessness that disfigured him. You were merely the hand. With his disfigurement came his transfiguration, when the one-legged man became worth more than two. You were the hand of justice, and justice will ever be served. But had you not done so; then the greater life, the great mystery, could not have lived in such great measure in his life thereafter…”

Maggie paused a moment, and then her eyes widened with revelation.

“Is this not why you are here, Shango?” Eshu/Maggie asked. “Is this not, in part, the new path – to join man and orisha and open each new union up to being lived by a greater life?”

“Yes, Mama. I believe that what you say is part of it. But all of it hasn’t been revealed to me yet. All I know is that I must help a few more of us awaken before I can even begin the real work, and that all of us working together, each doing his or her own part, is the way in which the new path will be made real.”

“You should sleep now, my son. Tom will be by before dawn to get you. You will need your rest.”

“Yes Mama.” The mere mention of his needing rest brought back the fatigue. The boy seemed to sag.

“Mama?’

“Yes, Shango”

“Do you think anything bad will happen once Tom awakens to who he is?” The uncertainty in the boy’s voice drowned out the overtones of deity. For a moment, the voice was that of an adolescent making up his mind to face a schoolyard bully.

“It will be as it will be, my son, but nothing more than you can face and overcome. I know you are equal to the task. Now go to bed before you fall out where you sit.”

As Maggie cleaned up the table, washed and put away the dishes and prepared for bed, her mind raced with insight. If man and Orisha are to be joined and awakened, she thought, then man shares not only the memories of the Orisha, but the power as well. It seems that part of our collective task, after the joinings and the awakeni ngs, is to teach this new being how to manage safely and constructively this power if mankind is to survive and thrive. She began to envision a new humanity, men and women appearing across the humanscape, glowing with extraordinary and wondrous light. Men and women who were able to condense the diffuse expectations of all who were dissatisfied and discontent with the human condition, past and present, into gifts of service to humanity – serving humanity and serving the great mystery as well. Men and women who come to know in their service the great fundamental, and the harmonics that comprise that cosmic harmonic spectrum, man and Orisha alike; frequencies of the great mystery who make up in part its timbre and tonal color.

At dawn Tom the blacksmith came calling for Shango. As was their custom, Tom took the path through the forest behind Maggie’s house until he reached the stream that ran past the copse of trees that framed the dancing ground where Maggie performed her ceremonies on the nights of the new and full moon. That stream branched off into several tributaries. One of them led to the backdoor of Tom’s workshop. The one-story mudbrick workshop contained a large forge, three anvils and three quenching pits and several piles of discarded metal on the floor.

When they arrived at the smithy, Tom had already laid out a good number tasks for Shango to perform. Tom was a stern task master and expected his apprentice to work as hard as he. There was no idle time in the workshop. As such, Shango’s tasks were considerable. There were nails to straighten, a few pots to mend, including a brass kettle. There was a plow to finish, a couple of axes to sharpen and, if he could get around to it, some harness hardware to fix and at least two iron tires for wagons to make. Later there would probably be a horse or two to shoe. When the horse came in, Shango had to stop whatever he was doing to tend to the horse. Horse shoeing was big business and quick income for Tom.

Shango was almost as adept at shoeing horses as Tom. Even better than Tom’s was his ability to calm skittish or frightened animals so that they could be shoed. Tom sometimes had to call him over to “work his magic”, as Tom called it, to settle a horse down. The boy seemed to have an answer all kinds of equine misbehavior. Whether the horse slammed his feet to the ground, dropped to the ground, kicked, pulled away violently, or leaned against him when he tried to put on the shoe, Shango seemed to know intuitively what to do or what to say to a recalcitrant animal.

He made a point of introducing himself to the horse. Then in a language that only he and horse understood he would ask him to pick up his feet. Usually the horse did so, and the shoeing went ahead without incident. Occasionally a horse would test him, waiting until the boy cradled one of his between his legs, and then slamming it violently to the ground, sometimes both front feet, or front feet and hind feet. Making a crooning sound, Shango would look the horse in the eye and let him know that he would not tolerate that kind of behavior. The horse always complied.

Shango set about this day’s tasks aware that Tom was watching him intently. He was used to the blacksmith’s meticulous scrutiny, but this experience was different. Tom was never much for words. Tom would bark out commands that normally only required a “yes” or “no” answer. He himself would usually grunt in the affirmative when questioned or scowl his negation in response. This day, however, Tom regarded the boy as if he’d never seen him before. Every time Shango lifted his eyes toward Tom’s direction, he would find the blacksmith staring at him.

“Shango,” Tom said. It was late afternoon , and Shango had completed most of his tasks, “What is different about you? Have you had time to find and dally with a woman? Maybe I am not working you hard enough.” If Shango’s chocolate colored face could blush, he would have reddened furiously at Tom’s clumsy attempt at humor.

“No Tom, I ain’t been messing with no woman!” Shango was adamant that he would take the secret of Ezzie’s kiss to his grave. “But you are right. There is something different about me.”

“ Well what is it, young pup? Tell me… and don’t waste my time!”

The moment had come. Unlike any of the others that he had helped awaken to and join together with their higher harmonic, to the orisha who ruled their heads, Shango had dreaded this moment. Of all of his teacher/mentors, he had worked the hardest to please Tom, his most demanding taskmaster. While Tom did not mistreat him, he was cool almost indifferent to the boy in the best of times and acutely, nit-picking critical of all of the tasks, repairs and finished products offered by the boy for his inspection.

In the first few months of the apprenticeship, Shango was bewildered by this because he usually had no problem winning over people with his natural charm. When his charm didn’t work, he tried to dazzle Tom with his diligence – working harder, longer and learning quicker – but even though Tom had complimentary things to say about his work and his attitude to his mother, Maggie, he would maintain his frosty and distant demeanor when around the boy. But as his own memories expanded, consolidated and extended beyond the boundaries of this incarnation, Shango understood Tom’s covert antipathy.

As he participated in the awakenings of his mother, Maggie, Ezzie and Peter, he learned enough about his prior relationships with Tom to experience real anxiety about facing him in full possession of his memories and powers. Although Shango the teenager might not be able to articulate it, his altered consciousness knew and understood that Tom embodied karmic consequences resulting from Shango’s past; consequences that he , Shango, must now face and overcome.

“Can I ask you a question first?” The boy elected to circumlocute.

“Hmph” replied Tom, a grudging yes, but his eyes, still fixed on the boy, were curious.

“How long have you been playing drums for Mama?”

“If memory serves,” he said, genuinely trying to remember, “Your mother first heard me, my brother, Simon, and my cousin, Peter, beating on logs in a small hollow behind our house. She came to us and asked us if we really wanted to play drums. When we said we did, she called out rhythms for each of us to play. When we got them right, she said that she needed us to play for ceremonies she conducted in the forest and invited us to come out to forest on the night the moon was full. That was about five years before you were born, which means, in answer to your question, that I have been playing for her eighteen almost twenty years.”

“How did you feel the first time your guardian spirit mounted you, Tom?”

“How did I feel? I didn’t feel much of nothing, boy, ‘cept a buzzing in my head and a numb-like feeling before I passed out. Then, when I came to, people were talking about how I was acting and stuff like that, but I didn’t feel much of nothing. Where is this conversation going? Has your guardian finally taken you?”

The reason why Shango had not been mounted was known only to Maggie and more recently to Ezzie and Peter when he facilitated the joining of those two initiates with their guardian spirits. On the night of his initiation, instead of “mounting the boy” or “taking his head” as was the custom, the Orisha spoke through the boy’s voice and personality, and only to Maggie’s guardian spirit, Eshu of the Crossroads. The boy was aware of the spirit being and the Orisha announced that he and the boy were one and the same personality. He explained that he had incarnated to show a different spiritual path, one that replaced possession with metamorphosis- the sudden emanation of radiance from the personality of the Orisha permeating and suffusing the human personality -- creating a being of light.

“I am my guardian spirit, Tom. I am the Orisha, Shango” the boy replied.

“What silliness is this? “exclaimed Tom “You are no guardian spirit. You are nothing more than a big-headed boy getting a little too big for his pants!” Tom was getting angry, and he didn’t know why.

Shango decided not to let that all too familiar anger escalate. He found his Orisha voice and began to intone the ritual greeting for Ogun, the god of iron:

Spirit of the mystery of Iron,
the owner of power and strength
I salute you.

Spirit of Iron
Who dances outside to open all pathways
I salute you
.
Spirit of Iron, owner of good fortune,
Who is the civilizing power
I salute you

Spirit of Iron
wisdom of the Warrior Spirit,
who guides us through our spirit journey
I salute you

There was a pregnant pause and then another's voice was heard.

“Why do you summon me thus, brother? It is not our custom to greet each other politely.” The deep soft-spoken voice snarled. Tom was still standing, but he looked as stiff as a statue. His eyes were closed and only his lips moved.

“I cannot change the fact that you are my brother, Spirit of Lightning, and we are both the sons of Yemoja. Neither can I change wrongs you have committed against me, which I have sworned mighty oaths that I will avenge. Is this the day we dance, brother?”

“I did not call you to fight with me, Spirit of Iron, but to beg your forgiveness." the boy replied. "There is much to amend. I have wronged you greatly…”

“It was I who because of my jealousy spread the rumor that you were sleeping with our mother; that your incestuous relationship took our mother's affections away from our father. I hated you because I truly believed that Yemoja loved you more than I. I vowed that I would take from you everything that you loved.

When you and Oya became lovers. I waited and watched your house until you left Oya alone. When I was sure that you were well away, I kicked in your door and, grabbed Oya and ignored her protests. She tried to fight me, but I was stronger.

"You are coming with me now," I told her. "You are going to be my woman."

I took her then and made love to her again and again. I befuddled her with sexual magic. She fell in love with me, not exactly knowing why. I confess to you, brother, that I kept her with me to spite you and because of her power. She was a great warrior woman and became my trusted companion in battle. She was also a powerful sorceress who could control the storm. But I didn’t love her. She was merely a trophy to be kept.

I mocked you when you came looking for her.

"What do you want, brother?" I shouted.

"I want my woman back," you yelled.

"Well, let's see if she wants to go back with you," said I.

I relished the look on your face when she leaned out of my bedroom window and said to you:

"What do you want, little man?" she shouted. "Go back home. I'm quite happy here."

I remember how black you became in your fury; how your throat swelled like an angry bull's. I was beside myself with glee! Oya and I laughed when you said I had put a spell on her. We laughed even louder and harder when you vowed to take her back and destroy me.

And then there was lovely Oshun. She was the one I truly loved. In truth, brother, I did not seduce or steal her from you. She seduced me. You cannot lose what you truly do not have. As she smeared your lips with her honey, so did she smear mine. I took her and her trouble into my house. I have already paid mightily for that transgression. In this time of confession, I thought it important for you to know that I suffered after taking her to wife.

I do not wish to fight you, my brother. The first time you challenged me, after Oya and I had dismembered Osanyin, Oya spirited me away with her magic. In truth, given the limitations of this body as compared to yours, I would surely lose and even die if I were to try to fight you today. Of course that never stopped me from taking advantage of you, The last time you challenged me, I tricked you into drinking strong drink. and got you drunk; so drunk that you could not fight, so I had my way with you, beating you until you were unconscious.

I have been grievously wrong in the way that I have treated you, brother. I was sick with anger and jealousy and was even more dangerous when I secured heaven’s mandate to dispense justice. You are the true spirit of justice, and I begrudged you even that. My thunderstones have killed the innocent and guilty alike. There is nothing so renegade or cruel as righteous anger. I have come to make amends, not just for my treatment of you, but for all of us, the Orishas, who have, in spite of our elemental powers, behaved as childishly as our human wards.

We who are self-conscious aspects of the great mystery are no closer to an awareness of that Great mystery and our unity with it than humans. I have come to change that. But first I must get right with you. You have heard my confession. How may I make reparations; pay compensation for your injuries and loss? How may I expiate my sins against you? I am willing do whatever is in my power to do.”

The spirit being who was Ogun was skeptical. “ Is this another one of your tricks, Spirit of Lightning? How is it that a leopard can so change its spots? And what is all of this palaver about making amends for the Orishas? Since when did you become our spokesman and conscience? I have vowed to destroy you. What makes you think I can be so easily persuaded to keep from striking you dead where you stand, let alone continuing to listen to this other nonsense you speak?

“Take on your aspect, spirit of iron. Only Eshu is more adept than you at looking on the fires of our souls and seeing whether we are speaking the truth or not. Look upon my fires.”

“What is this I see?” Ogun/Tom exclaimed “ I see only one soul fire. Yours and the boy’s are blended. You are the boy ,and he is you! How can this be?” The guardian spirit was in full possession of the blacksmith’s body, moving it around and looking through its eyes.

“It is what I have come to show you. It is but the first step on the new path to at-one-ment with the great mystery.”

“But this is not our way! We have always mounted the heads of the humans who would receive us. We possess them and then we teach them. It has ever been so.

“But look at what we have wrought, Ogun. They worship us as gods. They aspire to take on our negative as well as our positive attributes. Possession has become the evidence of our presence in their lives, not righteousness. Look at us, we spend so much time trying to re-live our lives in human flesh, at pursuing sensual pleasure, that we have made little progress toward unity. If the truth be told, some humans have made more progress than even ourselves, the ancient ones, and have done this without our help.”

Ogun did not respond immediately. It was obvious that he was thinking on Shango’s words, checking back through his memories as if to find evidence of their truth. Finally he said:

“Even if I wanted to believe you, brother I am not sure I can trust you. This seems more like a trick of Eshu’s to send you to me, my sworn enemy. It would be just like him to make me learn from the one I hate most. Too much has passed between us for us to reconcile just like that; without blows being exchanged.”

“You are right, Ogun. The hand of Eshu Elegba, the mischieveous one, is at play here. My mother, Maggie the healer, is Eshu. It is she who is the wonder maker; who brings us together to make corrective choices. She arranged for the blacksmith to apprentice the boy, just as it was she who brought the wisdom teachings to the village. It is she who set the stage, who makes things happen as Eshu has done since the first days of creation.”

The boy sighed, stood up and assumed a wrestler’s stance.

“If we must fight, so be it. If you kill me, as you have sworn, then my work is finished before I start. But what does our fighting prove?

“ I will have my sweet revenge, for there is no doubt that I will kill you.”

“And what then, brother? Will killing me heal your hurts, make your life which you say was ruined by me the better? How powerful I must be.”

“ Do you dare mock me, little rat, as you stand in front of me, knowing that I will kill you?” Ogun’s anger began to surge again. The blacksmith’s body tensed; seemed ready to strike.

“ I do not mock you, spirit of iron. Can you not see that you are proving me right? Is this the way guardian spirits solve their problems; settle their differences? If human beings followed our example, they would never evolve. They would never find the love, joy, freedom, peace and unity that is the great mystery. And if we do not change our ways, neither will we.”

Shango, having said this, waited for the blacksmith to attack. The attack never came. After staring at the boy for some time, the anger seemed to drain from the blacksmith’s body.

“There is truth in what you say, Kabyiesi. There was a time when I withdrew my power from the world. I lost all hope in human beings and in the way they were using my gifts. I, the civilizing power of invention, abandoned human beings. As a result all human progress stopped. No new forges were built, nor tools and weapons fashioned; no new fields were cleared for planting, no new roads were made for travel and no new inventions to make life easier.

I retreated into the forest living like a hermit. So overcome by futility and defeat, I would have let human beings perish. No sudden revelatory vision caused me to change my mind; no pang of divine love within caused me to quit my folly and reaffirm my faith. Since we are being truthful, brother, what brought me out of the forest and back to my senses was nothing more than Oshun’s undulating hips and the promise they contained, the smell of her dripping honey and my desire to paint my lips with it and my throbbing need to fill her, open up new roads and paths until she yielded like a river and drowned me in her flood. It is as you say, if my case is an example…”

“As is mine,” Shango interrupted.

“…then we really have made little progress. We are as base in our behavior as humans. But what is this you are saying about the human progress. Do you really think some of them have made more progress than we their guardians? ”

“ There are humans, Ogun, capable of speeding up their thinking while their memory is left intact. They can experience entire lifetimes in mere minutes. There are others who can expand their perceptual spaces so that they become extremely vast, beyond anything normally' conceivable.”

“ But this is what we do, brother. How…”

“Let me finish! There are those who can expand their body consciousness, that is, the consciousness, say, of one’s arms and legs as his own and not somebody else’s, into their entire environment and beyond. Their “old” bodies are simply connecting centers or nodal points through which their wills exert themselves.

There are others who have died while they still live, who have unveiled an intense, radiant Self in doing so and have identified completely with that Self. They are conscious of a strong, ubiquitous presence and experience a rapture and ecstasy far beyond that brought about by possession.

And there are those who have combined and integrated their physical senses into an awareness that is far greater than the sum of its parts. They have done this without us, brother. What is more, they have demonstrated an ability to evolve that we have not.

“But what does this mean, Shango?”

“It means a new path, my brother. Think about it. The Orisha is an aspect of the ashe of the great mystery. We are the differentiated forces of nature. Ours is a part to whole relationship to Oludomare. If Oludomare is the entire spectrum of color, we are the reds, the yellows, the blues.

The human is to Oludomare as the drop of the ocean is to the Ocean. The human is of the same substance of the great mystery, identical in its composition, characteristics and qualities. But the human is not the same as in equal to the great mystery, for the same reason that the drop does not contain the immense and incalculable power of the ocean. the drop of ocean cannot operate on the scale of the entire ocean. Neither can the human operate on the scale of the great mystery. Unless…” Shango paused to make his point, “the human can expand his consciousness to become at one with Oludomare.”

“If this is so, Shango. Why do they need us?”

“The need is mutual, brother. The elemental forces that we are, that we command will quicken, accelerate the expansion of their consciousness. Your initiates are those with a preponderance of your “color” in their nature. That is why they receive you. The old ways have made the people who follow them receptive to the descent of spirit beings. But we have come like ravagers, caring little for our hosts, so absorbed were we in our pursuit of pleasure or acting out our petty vengeances.

We have not evolved, expanded our own consciousnesses since our creation. But if we become one with each of our hosts, our memories, wisdom and power becomes theirs. We can open them to our consciousness, and evolve with them as they continue to expand. As they redeem their character flaws and defects in this process, we can learn to redeem ours; as they progress along their evolutionary path, so do we progress with them along our own.”

“And you have come to show the way?

“It is the only way that I can expiate my transgressions. But I cannot do it alone. Many masters are required. As it has ever been said, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

“Yes, the hand of Eshu is in this. Eshu comes into our lives to present us with choices so that we can choose the way to achieve our destinies. Please tell me what to do, brother. I am shamed by my pettiness.”

“Do not be ashamed, Ogun. Your sins are no worst than mine; than any of us. Just tell me that you forgive me or that you will try. Tell me that we can begin our relationship anew, truly as brothers.”

“I can do that, brother.” The spirit of iron made his voice loud and booming as if he wished the whole of creation to hear.

“I forgive you, owner of the thunder stones. I can see now that you are not the convenient excuse for anything or everything that is wrong with me and my life; that I have made you to be. I know now that I am neither a victim nor an innocent in whatever pain or injury that has happened to me. There is no power to be gained in hating you or planning your destruction. I need no protection from future hurt. I am tired of the pain I have harbored and release it. Let my healing begin. I declare it so.”

“Thank you, my brother.” Shango felt humbled by Ogun’s words of forgiveness. He truly is humanity’s civilizing power,” he thought. “Now, look upon your host, upon his soul fires and see yours blending with his.”

From that space within where Tom had gone when Ogun possessed him, Tom’s awareness switched on. He felt a presence, much like a glove suddenly becoming aware of the hand. He felt “full” as he had never felt before. And then his mind became awash with memories…

I am Ogun, the true son of Oduduwa, the eldest son of Yemoja and step-son of Obatala, brother of Shango, brother and former husband of Oya and Oshun. I am the owner of war, energy and metal. I keep matter in motion; I am the sustainer of life, the force of gravity and attraction.

I am one of the first among the Orishas. When the guardian spirits came down to inhabit the earth, It was I who cleared away the thickets that obstructed their paths, cutting through the thick shrubbery with my machete. I was the first king of Ogun-Oniré

I am the tools that shape mankind, bringing out an individual's potential, enhancing one's life. I am the anvil, the symbol of earth which transforms man. I am the shovel, which digs into one's potential. I am the machete, that clears paths and protects. I am the rake which gathers and smoothes the rough areas of the self. I am the hoe that breaks ground and cultivates human potential. I am the hammer that bends and shapes human faculties. I am the pick which pierces and penetrates the hardened areas of the self.

I am the warrior, hunter and farmer. I am the owner of loyalty and life long friendships; the master of secrets, skills, crafts, professions and creations. I am he who eats first at ritual feasts and blood sacrifices. I am the father of metamorphosis, my great strength and intense heat transforms carbon into diamonds, sandstone into marble, and marble into banded and foliated metamorphic rock…”

Tom/Ogun opened his eyes wide. He stood up straight and looked around his workshop as if seeing it for the first time. His eyes went first to the quenching pits, then to the pile of scrap metal on he floor, then to the forge, until resting finally on the teenager who was watching him intently.

“It will take a little time for the blending to be complete, Tom” the boy said. “Usually a few days. Ogun’s memories will mix themselves with yours. Sometimes it will feel like you are dreaming while you are awake. The part of you who is Ogun is the presence you feel like an echo; the fullness. This is so with all of us who have been awakened, Maggie, Ezzie, Peter and me. Soon all sense of division, of dual personality, will vanish.”

“I never dreamed I could feel like this, Shango. All of my senses are tingling. I can see much more, hear more clearly even my sense of balance seems enhanced. What will we do now that we are awake, Shango?”

“First we will awaken others. We must get them to remember who they are. Then we will teach the message of oneness with the great mystery. We must teach about the grandest aspects of that mystery – love, freedom joy, peace and unity. The time has come for many masters to appear, and we are the first among many."

“In deed! It is a wonderful vision, little brother, and I can’t wait to get started. But first you must put these tools up in their proper place, smother these forge fires and clean up this workshop!” There was no mistaking that the personality barking these orders was none other than Tom, the blacksmith, master to the apprentice Shango.

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