Osun’s visit.

It was not unusual, a week where I didn’t wish for company, didn’t want to talk. I revelled in the darkness that pulled me into a never-ending down, arms flailing because I expected danger, but it was a gentle whirl lower, darker.

I watched Favela Rising a while ago – if you haven’t and you FW docs, you should. If you plan to watch it, skip this paragraph. Anyways, the lead subject had a surfing accident and Yemoja came to him in his dream to assure him he’d walk again, after docs feared he’d be paraplegic – he was a dancer and musician who used music to keep local children away from predictable dangers. Suffice it to say, post the dream he put in the requisite physiotherapy work and walked.

Did he walk because of the dream? This story is mad random, by the way. It has nothing to do with my own experience.

Dreams as a placebo.

If you follow me on a particular social medium, you’d know I dig Osun as my personal Orisa. Whilst I was whirling in darkness, flailing and reaching at first then submissive, I had a dream.

I had no desire to talk, two Sundays or is it three ago, I had a dream. A middle-aged woman with a dimpled smile at the foot of my bed, resplendent in a white Iro and Buba, telling me it’ll be alright. That battles aplenty and I’d conquer this one. That it was okay to reach and stop flailing. That did I not know I was here for more than had been revealed to me thus far?

I wish I could remember which language the dream was in, English or Yoruba.

Was it psychosomatic? I am a sceptic, dubious about the ‘magic’ of faith. But tell me, why did my black cloud shift when I came to, duvet under my chin desperately tryna see the face of my Orisa in my wakefulness?

I was reluctant to tell this story. I’d looked askance at people who told me of angels, premonitions and such. Not a cynic about faith, just mad circumspect.

I had never had a comforting dream, as far as my memory allows. If ever I get that dark, I wait until the cloud breaks apart in great parts such that the light floods in immediately or in slivers.

My Orisa came to me in a dream and my darkness departed like IT was the dream.