When it comes to plants, healing, and magic, Osanyin (occasionally called Osain) is the orisha of all of them. Strong wizard and master of all spells discovered in the wilderness, he is well-respected for his abilities and abilities.
Medicinal plants and herbs are highly prized for their spiritual as well as physical health advantages. Plants are supposed to contain a portion of the “as’e” (universal driving power). Plant-life knowledge and its power can be used to unlock the as’e for those who possess this ability. Osanyin’s flora and herbs are essential to the Yoruba faith’s rituals. Other orisha shrines are conjured with his magic. He is the only one who can make the rituals happen.
One eye, one hand, and one foot are features on Osanyin. One ear is tiny and can hear a pin drop, whereas the other ear is enormous and hears nothing. Everything that he knows about magic is kept in a calabash high in a tree that is out of his reach.
On one occasion, Osanyin and Sango met in the bush. He offered him a gourd that lets him breathe fire. In the instant that Sango accepted the gourd, his destiny as an Orisha of Fire and Lightning was revealed. Osanyin became the godfather and guide for Sango.
As he passes through a village, Sango witnessed folks pursuing and tossing water on a leper, and he stopped. He noticed it was Osanyin in disguise when Sango went to save the leper. Sango used herbs to treat Osanyin. As a gesture of thanks, he knelt at Sango’s feet.
Asked about this by the town’s residents, Osanyin responded, “I may be older in age, but Sango is older in wisdom.” In the sacred scriptures of the Ifa, Osanyin’s knowledge and dominance over plant life are often recounted and retold.
Osanyin was a crippled orisha who was missing a limb and an arm, as well as being partially blind in his right eye.
Nevertheless, his older brother, Orunmila wanted Osanyin to feel deserving, so he had Osanyin work on the farm early one morning with instructions to clear weeds from between rows of crops.
Orunmila returned in the evening to find his younger brother weeping in the midst of the field without having picked a single weed.
Asking his brother why he was crying and why he hadn’t finished his duty, Osanyin replied: “You instructed me to remove the weeds yet there is not a single weed here. It was a plant that he pointed to and said, “You want me to destroy this, yet this would cure heart diseases.”
As he pointed out many additional plants, he explained their spiritual aspects and therapeutic benefits in detail. Orunmila was astonished by his brother’s knowledge. To provide medicine for children and infants, Osanyin was the doctor, a divinely appointed figure with extensive knowledge of plants as well as human ailments.
He is the only deity capable of using cornmeal oil to make a medical ointment. All plants are assigned to this deity because of his primary position in the planetary system, which is the basis for his worship.
