Lukumi and Santeria Initiated Practitioner Eugene Edo

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Gravity Obatala Ofun and the Blinding Brilliant Light

Last night while watching the film Gravity with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock (great film by the way beautifully done and not only suspenseful but also insightful with a spiritual message highly recommend it) and being somewhat emotional and full of gratitude around the holidays for the life I have and this I love, my thoughts, of course turn to the most important one in my life, my santo, Obatala, but even more than that, as I am watching the film I realize that perhaps Obatala has his thoughts on me as well. Obatala is arguably one of the least understood Orishas of what we call the pillar Orishas ( pillar Orishas being those Orishas that are most well known to us and the ones that form Obatala World the pillar of our spiritual court). In fact even I have learned much about him / her since being initiated into his priesthood. I have included a gallery of various images from the internet because there are so many faces of Obatala and all those faces would be correct. There is so much to this energy we call Obatala because Obatala is present in everything there is and everything we do. He is male she is female he is white he is black he is young he is old. He represents all that is good , peaceful and serene but when provoked can be the worst force on earth to rectify. I think part of the reason that Obatala represents things like serenity, tranquility and peace is because Obatala has, over the course of time , been through it all. He has made every mistake. He has been a gangster and seen how it just didnt work in the end. Obatala is the one that we can come to with our

deepest secrets and know he will understand. When I was first learning about Obatala and found out that he was my guardian angel, if I am being completely honest, I was a little disappointed because I wanted one of the dark, mysterious, feared warrior Orishas. Little did I know, and to my satisfaction and great acceptance and embrace, that was exactly what I got. It has been said that the reason we ordain people to Obatala his because we can;t ordain people to satan LOL. Yes, its true there are very dark and mysterious things about Obatala and one aspect of Obatala (or camino or road) actually brought into being the most terrible thing we know on earth and is present when ever this thing is going on. war and guess what? This is my avatar of Obatala. Ajaguna. Does this make Obatala bad? No, but it does illustrate that Obatala is not always or just the laughing, gentle, forgiving, old man that he is made out to be, but rather a complex deity with many facets. People are even shocked to learn that Obatala can be a quite sexual energy and this is often evidenced by the people who are ordained to him. but i digress this is a topic for another post all together. In the course of learning about the Odu, the texts that support and make up the corpus of the religion its self, there are 16 major chapters that speak to every aspect of life and everything within it. Like the Orishas themselves, the Odu have many different facets, but over all they might speak of balance or the need for change or violence or sudden death, sweetness and love, motherhood, the ancestors and the dead and the list of themes goes on and on. Ofun is the name of one such chapter and it is one of two true homes of Obatala. It is also one of the most dreaded of the 16 chapters. The breath of this chapter known as Ofun is great, encompassing many many themes but one theme we will choose and look at in the notion of the blinding, dazzling, brilliant, cool white light. What could be wrong with that? Light is good and it illuminates our world and lives and brilliant is good too. We use the term to describe things of value and people who are smart or talented and if that light is bright like fire or the sun it gets hot and burns, but this is cool light so what could be wrong with it? It seems that it really is everything that is good in the universe, sort of like the impression people have of Obatala initially. This is heart of the problem. The brilliant cool light seems safe and spectacular and so we ask ourselves Why is everyone so cautious about looking deeper into this thing? and we move forward into it to see what is at the base of this spectacular thing. As we move in closer the light is getting brighter and brighter more and more spectacular drawing us and our curiosity all the more until we realize that we must go back to our ordinary lives and realize that we cant see anymore in this ordinary world. Its like we have been staring at the sun and our eyes take a long time to readjust to the world around us. Sometimes they never do. How many times as children have we looked right into the sun defiantly, just because the adults told us

not to and because they said it would make us go blind? Seemed unlikely to us so we did it only to learn that it is, in fact, a bad idea. The sun is a good thing. Without it we and everything around us would certainly die, but on the flip side of that we have radiation. Radiation that burns us on the beach, causes cancer, dries up the water supply, sometimes not giving any back to us, and treating huge unstoppable forest fires. Yes, as the sun is essential to life, it can also take it. Such is something else on a higher plane spirituality its self. How could spirituality be negative? It is like the bright light of Ofun and the sun, something essential to the good things in life, but something to be kept in perspective. Ofun speaks to us, warning us that while there are spectacular mysteries in the world and spectacular things to behold on the spiritual plane, not all things can be or should be known. How many people have we seen who, finding a place in the world and a sense of belonging through spirituality, become completely fanatical and obsessed with it like a drug addict addicted to drugs, and come to be destroyed by that very thing? How many people (and this is hard to say) learn some secrets of the magical arts and created their own destruction and the destruction of others in one way or another through their misuse of what they have learned? How many people of the world have died and or suffered by the hands of someone with charisma and an ability to inspire awe in people through spirituality like Jim Jones and The Peoples Temple for example? It is a snowy night you are driving your car along a dark road. Your headlights lighting the way for you. No problem at all. Then a speeding car coming from the other direction with his high beams on, comes right towards you. You are temporarily blinded by their headlights. You turn your head to avoid the bright light, veer off your course slightly, slide in the roads snow and crash right into the oncoming car with devastation following. This is a parallel to the dreaded feature of Ofun. So what are we to make of this? One interpretation is that we posses the light we have in the world to match the environment and conditions we live in. In a greedy world its not so uncommon for people to reason that, if some is good more is better. People use this same logic in the spiritual world as well using spirituality as a means to control people and grab power. Using spirituality as a place to hide so as not to look at their own spiritual or other personal problems. How many people start out with the best of intentions and end up being religious lunatics and fanatics eventually destroying everything good in their lives? Ofun and Obatala himself warns us here that not all that glitters is gold, that maintaing perspective and simple truths will take us further that those things that draw us in through their brilliance. That because something is good doesnt mean it is good ll the way through or that we should dedicate our lives to it to the exclusion of all else. In short that acceptance, humility and positive balance are the real goals we as spiritual people need to work for and idealize in our lives and inspire in the lives of others.

So whats this have to do with the movie Gravity? I dont want to spoil any part of the film i really enjoyed it but suffice it to say that it had me thinking about these themes and Obatala himself. Obatala is associated with higher planes, thus depicted with and by and on top of mountains. This has to do with his energy being on a higher plane and the notion that he came down to earth from a much higher place to create the world in, what was at the time, a grayish bog. In the film the characters are astronauts on a mission. Outer space is a place that is clearly not meant for us, but the lure of learning more about who we are and what lies beyond drives us to go further and further out. In the film the characters are in an outer space mission within the orbit of earth and something occurs which is one of the dangers inherent within this kind of exploration and leaves the characters dealing with the threat of being lost in space with absolutely no way for anyone to get them or otherwise save them. Floating until they suffocate or run out of resources. Such are the perils of uncharted areas of the spiritual realm.

Obatala

Obatala in the Sky

Obatala Near the Mountain Tops

Obatala After Dark

Obatala in an Elderly Aspect

Obatala Creating the World

A Dance Performance

An Obatala Shrine

Obatala Festival

Catholic Rendition of Obatala

Obatala World

Obatala in Africa Celebration

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This entry was posted in Orishas and tagged Ayagunna, George Clooney, Light, obatala, Obatala World, Olorun, orisanla, orisha, Peoples Temple, religion, Religion_Belief, Sandra Bullock, santeria, Spirituality, Sun, Yoruba culture, Yoruba deities, Yoruba divinities, Yoruba people on December 26, 2013 [http://ileido.com/main/2013/12/26/gravity-obatala-ofun-and-the-blinding-brilliant-light/] .

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