Osun-Osogbo — the grove festival

The Osun-Osogbo festival runs for about two weeks each August, a sequence of rites that renews the bond between Osogbo and its goddess. It opens with the Iwopopo, the ritual cleansing of the town, followed by the lighting of the sixteen-point Ina Olojumerindinlogun, an ancient lamp, and the Ibroriade, the assembly of the crowns of past Ataojas — the kings of Osogbo — for the reigning Ataoja's blessing. The climax is the procession of the Arugba: a young woman of the royal house, a virgin, who carries on her head a sealed calabash holding the sacrifice and the prayers of the whole community, and walks from the palace through the streets and into the Sacred Grove to the river, the entire town following. She bears the hopes of Osogbo for the year, and people press to touch or be near her as she passes; at the river the priestesses make the offering to Osun and the goddess's favour — children, health, prosperity — is sought and her blessings, in the form of sacred water, returned to the people. The Grove itself, saved and adorned through the twentieth century and listed by UNESCO in 2005, is the living temple in which it all takes place. The festival draws the Yoruba of Nigeria and the diaspora of the Americas, for whom Osun lives on as a major orisha in Candomblé, Santería and related faiths, home to a source of their devotion. It is a working religious rite, not a pageant.