Deity · Yoruba · c. 1500 CE
Oya
Also called Oiya, Yansan
The Yoruba orisha of wind and storm, wife of Shango and keeper of the gate between the living and the dead — the one who goes ahead of the thunder.
Single lineage
She holds two offices that other pantheons keep apart: the weather that arrives before a storm, and the threshold of the cemetery. Neither makes her an enemy of the living. The corpus keeps her because the pairing is exactly the pairing that gets a goddess reclassified elsewhere — wind, the dead, a woman with a whip of horsehair — and here it produces a figure who is asked for protection rather than warded off, which is a useful control on the site's own argument about how demonisation works.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
The Niger, which carries her name in Yoruba, and the towns along it
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- Rank
- Owner of the Wind
- Pantheon
- Yoruba
- Order
- Yoruba pantheon
- Base of operations
- The Niger, which carries her name in Yoruba, and the towns along it
- Era
- c. 1500 CE
- Traditions
- Yoruba & Diaspora
Traits
- Domain
- Wind, storm, the Niger, the boundary of the dead
- Traditional form
- In nine colours, with a horsetail whisk
Stats
Known connections
Chain of command
4 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 4 offices attributed to Oya, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- martial2
- malefic1
- transformation1
martial
malefic
transformation
2 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 2 texts that names Oya, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
2 texts, all inside a single century
Where the texts differ
- Rank: given as Wife of Shango; Owner of the wind
Recorded as Shango's wife and identified with the Niger, in the history that places both of them in the dynastic account of Oyo.
The storm that precedes Shango's thunder, and the orisha addressed at the boundary of the dead in the odu that concern burial and inheritance.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Oya?
What rank is Oya?
How else is Oya spelled?
What is Oya said to do?
How old is Oya?
Nearest in the corpus
If Oya is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Eshu
Divine Messenger · Yoruba
Messenger between humanity and the orisha, addressed first in any rite. Missionaries met a trickster at a crossroads and called him Satan, and the mistake has proved very hard to undo.
Obatala
King of the White Cloth · Yoruba
The Yoruba orisha who moulds human bodies before birth, and who made the disabled ones while drunk on palm wine — which is why he is owed to them and why his worship forbids the drink.
Ogun
Orisha of Iron · Yoruba
Orisha of iron and of the tools made from it — patron of smiths, surgeons and soldiers alike, since all three cut.
Olodumare
The Supreme Being · Yoruba
The Yoruba supreme being, who has no images, no temples and no priests of his own — the orisha are the ones addressed, and the corpus's clearest example of a high god who is not worshipped directly.
Orunmila
Witness to Destiny · Yoruba
The Yoruba orisha of divination, who was present when each person chose their destiny and is consulted to find out what was chosen — the figure the whole Ifá corpus belongs to.
Shango
Orisha of Thunder · Yoruba
Thunder-orisha and a remembered king of Oyo — a historical ruler who became a god, which is euhemerism running the other way.
The books behind Oya
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
The History of the Yorubas
Samuel Johnson; edited by O. Johnson · Written 1897, published 1921 · English
Read The History of the Yorubas in full ↗The Odu Ifá
Oral; transmitted by babalawo · Oral tradition, first transcribed 19th-20th c. · Yoruba
Read The Odu Ifá in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Toluaye · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.