The com­ing of the rainy sea­son nor­mal­ly marks the ad­vent of Shango Fes­ti­val in the Or­isha cos­mol­o­gy. Egbe On­isin Ele­du­mare in as­so­ci­a­tion with the world­wide Is­ese Agabye presents its an­nu­al Shango Fes­ti­val–Ase Odun San­gode–from Ju­ly 23 to 25. The rit­u­al, part of the fes­ti­val, will be­gin with a riv­er cer­e­mo­ny which will be held on Fri­day at the D'Eaublanc Riv­er, Diego Mar­tin. The cer­e­mo­ni­al group will leave from the shrine ("kpaale"�pro­nounced "palais") at 12 First Av­enue, Spar­row Dri­ve, Sime­on?Road, Pe­tit Val­ley, at 6 am. On the fol­low­ing days–Ju­ly 24 and 25–there will be lec­tures, film shows, dance, drum­ming, po­et­ry and ca­lyp­so at venues to be an­nounced.

In Yor�b� re­li­gion, Shango is one of the most pop­u­lar Or­isha.

In the Or­isha re­li­gion there is one God who is called Ele­du­mare–who is the full sum of the uni­verse. Be­tween God and man there are a num­ber of in­ter­me­di­ary pow­ers called Or­isha. Shango is con­sid­ered the god of thun­der and light­ning, dance, mu­sic and di­vine jus­tice. In a larg­er con­text Shango is con­sid­ered the very elec­tri­cal force of life it­self. Shango was a roy­al an­ces­tor of the Yoru­ba as he was the third king of the Oyo King­dom in Nige­ria. In the sur­viv­ing Or­isha re­li­gions of the Caribbean, Shango's cer­e­monies be­came a cen­tre point as it was one of the rit­u­als that re­mained in­tact from Africa.

Many of the ma­jor ini­ti­a­tion cer­e­monies (as per­formed in Cu­ba, Puer­to Ri­co and Venezuela for the last few hun­dred years) are based on the tra­di­tion­al Shango cer­e­mo­ny of An­cient Oyo in Nige­ria. This cer­e­mo­ny sur­vived the Trans-At­lantic slave trade mid­dle pas­sage and is con­sid­ered to be the most com­plete to have ar­rived on West­ern shores. Shango has al­so be­come a ma­jor sym­bol of African re­sis­tance against an en­slav­ing Eu­ro­pean cul­ture. He rules the colour red and white and his sym­bol is the os­he (dou­ble-head­ed axe) which rep­re­sents swift and bal­anced jus­tice. His dom­i­nance is over male sex­u­al­i­ty and hu­man vi­tal­i­ty in gen­er­al.

He is own­er of the Ba­ta (three dou­ble-head­ed drums), as well as the arts of mu­sic, dance and en­ter­tain­ment. Shango can al­so be de­duced to be the essence of "strat­e­gy"–which is the pow­er of log­ic and pas­sion pre­cise­ly drawn and fash­ioned to achieve an end. Egbe On­isin Ele­du­mare has been cel­e­brat­ing Shango Fes­ti­val for over 15 years. The Egbe is an African?spir­i­tu­al or­gan­i­sa­tion func­tion­al in Ile-Iere, Re­pub­lic Trinidad and To­ba­go since 1971 and is led by Olakela Mas­se­tun­gi.

More in­fo

For more in­fo on this year's Shango Fes­ti­val, call: San­gode 727-3712 or Oloye 380-9382 or vis­it the Web site at: www.yorubasa­cred­science­cen­tre.word­press.com