{"id":1613,"date":"2007-12-23T12:56:12","date_gmt":"2007-12-23T20:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/willdoherty.org\/wordpress\/?p=1613"},"modified":"2024-09-22T03:33:39","modified_gmt":"2024-09-22T03:33:39","slug":"in-oshogbo-nigeria-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/?p=1613","title":{"rendered":"Osun Sacred Forest in Oshogbo, Nigeria"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Oshogbo (or Osogbo), the “city of peace” never dominated by foreign rulers, has a river that runs through it which the residents worship as the Yoruba goddess Osun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I saw this amazing sacred forest, the Osun Sacred Grove, reportedly the original settlement of the founders of Oshogbo starting more than 400 years ago. Now a long-term Oshogbo resident in her 90s, Austrian artist Suzanne Wenger (or Susanne Wenger?) helped over the years to restore the grove with fantastic Yoruba sculptures and was ordained as a priestess of the cult of the deity Obatala – the god of creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Toward the end of the visit at the main grove, I returned to the area by the Osun River and near the ceremonial dwelling, which was a kind of palace. The residents didn’t want me to take pictures unless I paid lots of baksheesh. I had already paid to take pictures when I paid the admission fee, so I decided to let the pictures of the palace go and take pictures of everything else instead. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I found some more sculptures and shrines on my way back to the entrance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At the entrance to the grove, I found out there is another whole area down the street that I hadn’t seen, so I broke out some more baksheesh to see the place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After leaving the portion of the grove, I saw lots of sculptures alongside the access road on the way out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I have located a place in Lagos to replace my lost laptop power adapter, so… Life is good! More after I get my laptop working again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oshogbo (or Osogbo), the “city of peace” never dominated by foreign rulers, has a river that runs through it which the residents worship as the Yoruba goddess Osun. I saw this amazing sacred forest, the Osun Sacred Grove, reportedly the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,12,157,211,228],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-art","category-nigeria","category-spirituality","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1613"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15443,"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613\/revisions\/15443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardustdoherty.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}