Osun is a brilliant deity whose imagery and worldwide devotion demand broad and deep scholarly reflection. The purpose of collecting the essays for this volume is not only to document the historical and cultural significance of Yoruba traditions, but to emphasize their plural nature, their multivocality both in Africa and the Americas. We hope the effect will be prismatic, freeing the representation of Yoruba religion in general and Osun traditions in particular from the constricting views which have prevailed. Most previous accounts of Yoruba traditions have been content to characterize Osun as “river Goddess,” “fertility Goddess,” “the African Venus.” These ethnocentric and reductive views fail to reflect the centrality and authority of Osun in Yoruba religious thought and practice. Neither do they convey the multidimensionality of her power: political, economic, divinatory, maternal, natural, therapeutic. This volume reveals the diversity of aspects of O.` s .un layered in any single tradition as well as the multiple traditions of Osun thriving in Yorubaland and the Americas.
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