Oshun, the River Goddess
Honoring the Waters Because Without Them, We're Cooked
I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”
– John O’Donohue
I was in a singing workshop recently where we learned this circle song of Yemaya, the ocean Goddess and mother of the Orishis from the Yoruba tradition. It felt like a lovely lullaby, one my body and mind needed. Salty tears slipped out my eyes while I sang and swayed to the harmonies, letting the song flow through.
Water is what makes it possible to live on this planet, as we are, inside and out. Water is what tempers the flames, what nourishes the soils, what enables us to feeds our families.
Yemaya Assessu, Assessu Yemaya
Yemaya Odolo, Olodo Yemaya
The song was in honor of her and the place where the rivers meet the ocean waters. The place where the sweetness of Oshun, the river Goddess, returns home, offering all she’s gathered to Yemaya, her mother.
It felt like such medicine and honey for these times.
Then, that weekend, I found myself dancing in an Afro-Brazilian class with the rhythms and motions that were honoring these goddesses as well.
Sweet synchronicity!
My body, naturally, loved it. Telling stories in reverence to these water goddesses, through rituals of movement and sound, felt generous, joyous, and very much needed.
We are storytellers after all, with every gesture, sound and movement we make.
This is the gift of ancestral shared stories. They can move us. They can open our imaginations, softening our bellies. In moments of emotional tunnel-vision and grip, like now—old, wise understandings can move us into a deeper resonance with ourselves, with nature.
What might Goddess Oshun have to offer us now?
Oshun, the Goddess of rivers, sweetness, and feminine power
A long, long time ago, Olodumare, the supreme being, tasked the Orishas (divine forces) with creating the world. Thrilled, the dozen+ male orishas got to work. They had all the plans, all the power, all the confidence. They structured, organized, and made something from all the nothing. Then they were done. They all agreed: they built such impressive things! Olodumare was sure to be proud. They took turns slapping each other on their backs congratulating each other.
And yet, it didn’t work. Everything failed.
Crops wouldn’t grow.
Rains wouldn’t fall.
Nothing could flourish.
They tried polishing it all up a bit more. They added some of this over there, and that over here. But nothing. They started blaming each other, complaining someone didn’t something it right. Someone threw a punch. Then a fist fight broke out. Finally, one of them huffed off to go find the supreme being to complain.
The others ran along with him, their collective growls growing.
Oshun, the lone female Orishi, saw this all from her porch, but said nothing.
And so they went. Olodumare, the all-knowing, seemed to be expecting them. They stomped and demanded: “What’s wrong? We did everything right!”
Olodumare, you might realize by now, already knew. He likely raised a caustic eyebrow at them and said, “Did you include Oshun?”
Many of the Orishis blanched. Maybe one blushed. Another perhaps grimaced and groaned. Another still looked sheepishly down and mumbled something. Another simply said, “Fuck...”
No. They definitely had not.
And yet, as they now understood, her presence was elemental for the world they built, for any world they would want to build.
Water, in Yoruba cosmology, is more than just a resource—it is a spiritual essence, a life force. You can’t make life without the essence of life. A flourishing earth is not possible without her.
Her inclusion was essential for life to thrive.
So, they went back, humbling themselves enough to invite Oshun to participate.
Naturally, as you might guess, once they included her into full partnership, it all worked. Suddenly—explosively—life appeared everywhere.
Her waters brought fertility.
Her beauty brought joy.
Her wisdom brought balance.
And not because she worked harder to prove her worth or was there to fix their mistakes.
Because life, creation, requires the feminine principle of relationship.
Without feminine energy, nothing reaches fullness. We can build structures galore through masculine action, but without flow, relationship, nurturing, and beauty, all efforts remain barren.
Our current world—built primarily through hierarchy, competition, and extraction; dismissing “soft” feminine values as impractical—proves Oshun’s truth. We’re literally living in the crops-won’t-grow, babies-won’t-birth phase of this story, wondering why it’s not working like we thought it should, everyone is fighting, and we’re living with various levels of constant anxiety and anger—despite all our impressive infrastructure.
The feminine has something key for us here.
It’s what I felt singing harmonies to the water goddesses. What I felt dancing to her, honoring her. It’s in the soft sway of Oshun’s hips, the beauty of her smile, the way her waters fill in the areas of hard, dry, structured masculine—life blossoms again.
Oshun embodies what’s missing to make life livable.
We’re so trained to think power means the ability to force outcomes, to control, to dominate. But, really—
What if real power is the ability to create conditions where life wants to flourish?
Where cooperation becomes more appealing than competition?
Where interdependence is recognized as how life thrives?
She demonstrates what becomes possible when feminine wisdom is honored.
The waters of Oshun create undeniable aliveness with beauty, pleasure, flow—all the things that make life worth living. She doesn’t have force. Control. Cajole. Seduce. When she is brought into right relationship, she makes collaboration attractive and so obviously life-giving, that doing things without her starts looking well, ridiculous.
She makes partnership irresistible and sensible.
So the question then is, for you, for each of us:
What would it look like to include Oshun now? To connect to the deep waters within so completely that you become a source point where life naturally flourishes?
If we learn to include the feminine energies, stop labeling them as “frivolous,” “unproductive,” or “less important” like the Orishis did, balance returns.
Life expands within us—our inner resources, reserves and creativity generously overflowing.
Find your song, feel your rhythm, own your gifts. Then pour them into your relationships, your work, your activism. Turn towards her—towards the life-giving waters of the feminine spirit within—and reclaim the soft sway of your own hips, letting the waters within you flow.
It might just be the thing that turns the whole world on, getting us all flowing in true, aligned partnership again.
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