Iyami Oshoronga

Iyami Oxorongá (in the scholarly tonal spelling Ìyámi Òṣòròngà, also revered under the euphemistic titles Ìyá Nlá, “The Great Mother”, Àwọn Ìyá Wa, “Our Mothers”, or Ẹlẹ́yẹ, “The Owners of the Birds”) is the collective and transcendent personification of ancestral feminine power, of the fertility of gestational blood, and of infallible cosmic justice in Yoruba metaphysics. Far from being a conventional deity subject to trance or spirit mediumship in the terreiros, Iyami embodies the primordial matrix of biological and spiritual creation, without whose consent no harvest flourishes, no male orisha manifests his àṣẹ, and no human lineage manages to perpetuate itself. In the foundational narrative of the Odu Òsá Méjì recorded by Professor Wande Abimbola and by Pierre Verger, when the orishas came down to earth and tried to organize society by excluding female leadership, Iyami withdrew fertility from the world, drying up springs, rendering wombs barren and rotting seeds, until the gods acknowledged her irrevocable sovereignty. In West Africa and in Ketu and Jeje Candomblé in Brazil, the cult of Iyami is surrounded by the deepest dread and sacred respect, and she is appeased through discreet nocturnal rites such as the propitiatory ìpèsè banquet and the solemn Gèlèdé mask festivals.

7 min read · Reviewed on September 30, 2026 · How we research

The night bird, the gourd, the menstrual blood and the night

Primary sources

• Pierre Fatumbi Verger, Grandeur et Décadence du Culte de Ìyámi Òṣòròngà. translation: Journal de la Société des Africanistes, vol. 35, no. 1 (1965), pp. 141–243.
• Wande Abimbola, An Exposition of Ifá Literary Corpus. translation: Ibadan: Oxford University Press (1976), chapters on Òsá Méjì and myths of the Mothers.
• Pierre Fatumbi Verger, Ewé: O Uso das Plantas na Sociedade Iorubá. translation: São Paulo: Companhia das Letras (1995), liturgy and botanical formulas for the Ẹlẹ́yẹ.

Studies

• Juana Elbein dos Santos, Os Nàgô e a Morte: Pàdà, Àṣẹ e Èjè no Candomblé. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes (1976), the feminine principle and the blood of Iyami, 1976.
• Henry John Drewal, Gelede: Art and Female Power among the Yoruba. Bloomington: Indiana University Press (1983), study of art and pacifying masks, 1983.
• Babatunde Lawal, The Gèlèdé Spectacle: Art, Gender, and Social Harmony in an African Culture. Seattle: University of Washington Press (1996), analysis of society and festivals, 1996.
• Reginaldo Prandi, Mitologia dos Orixás: Contos Canônicos. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras (2001), itans of Iyami Oxorongá, 2001.