A Trinity of Inspiration: Oshun, Ezili, and Beyoncé

By Camille

All good things come in threes, Destiney's Child; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; birth, life, death; and in this blog, Ezili, Beyoncé, and Oshun the Orisha of Yoruba-based religions located in West Africa.

It is not anything new that I love Beyoncé. Beyoncé was my childhood with Destiney's Child, she was my teenagehood, and she remains in my adulthood as I am developing critical thought about the possibilities of traditional doctrine that can make way for creative interventions and Beyoncé. The minute I learned about Black Queer Religion, a descriptor for a new language that made it easier to articulate my passions and added fluidity to the things that encompass my identity, I became eager to learn more, to draw more connections, to apply these intersecting concepts to my worldview. From Oshun, a supreme spiritual being to the existence of Ezili, a Haitian African spirit of womanism and a manifestation of divine love, stems a wonderful artist  Beyoncé, who is a trailblazer for Afrofuturism in the soundscapes of fantasy, the looks that are out of this world, science fiction personified, and is of African cultural heritage.

In my world of imagination, Ezili and Oshun surround Beyoncé. Their blend of creativity, spirituality, sensuality, empowerment, individuality, and grown womanhood continue to defy the normative in their emotive divine femininity that transcends simplistic thoughts about gender roles, propriety, and stereotypes about black women. Together Ezili and Oshun are a magnificent river force flowing with an endless abundance of celestial tenacity.

This magnificent river of force makes its way to all beings to inspire, provide humanitarian efforts, to mother the children of this Earth by promoting sustainable practices, inspiring equity, fostering a global community, and infusing creativity and passion into social justice. As Ezili nurtures the natural resources of the environment in Haiti,  Beyoncé utilizes music and performance to bring together diverse identities to break stereotypes against a community that is demonized and abjected to endless societal damnation, and Oshun is the orisha of the rivers, represents the source of life, connectivity, shared resources, economic vitality, and reinforcement of all humans to nature and vice versa. This also emphasizes the importance of not holding humans above the preseverence of nature as humans are destructive to what is naturally cultivated by the Earth and the circle of life. 

One may wonder how is any of this important and what does this mean to us? But that is the point of imagination. Imagination does not mean the absence of fact or reality, imagination is the power to take your life, the things around you, the place you are currently sitting, and you transform them into something that is new, meaningful, and plentiful to your future. Without imagination, it becomes difficult to understand the array of gender and sexual identities, it makes it difficult to conceptualize systemic injustices that are repeated from generation to generation because of racial prejudice, and it makes it difficult to empathize with marginalized communities and our lived realities. Imagination allows us to see beyond the scope of ourselves. Imagination empowers us to envision a more inclusive and equitable world and to work towards making that vision a reality.

There is no imagination without an understanding of art, music, literature, and any creative means of dissemination that provide the raw material from which we construct our dreams, aspirations, and visions of the world. These are grown within the communities that we reside in, the geographical location that we tread, cosmology, environment, and the varying forms of knowledge acquisition. This unity of Oshun, Ezili, and  Beyoncé is ascribed such because of their shared nature and attributes that resonate across cultural realms and coexist with other spiritual associations and conduits. This is all about creativity, using the imagination, assuming new positions in viewpoints, and just cultivating a space that invites the weird, the unconventional, the marginalized, and the overlooked.

Think of other unconventional ways that world issues could be solved. How can we harness the power of creativity, empathy, and collaboration to forge new paths forward and create a brighter, more sustainable future for generations to come? If you lead with your imagination and creativity, how would you implement them for salvific reasons? If you could press restart, and it meant that your worldviews and thoughts would invent the new populations and environments and societies, what would that look like? Would you truly use your imagination as a power of social justice or social degradation? How does the pervasive influence of individualism hinder our ability to harness creativity, empathy, and collaboration to address global challenges and realize a more sustainable and equitable future? Could the idea of imagination as a source of social justice and world justice be considered wishful thinking that has no real-world implications for effective, non-damning change? 

There is a lot to consider when it comes to bringing forth our imagination as a source of salvific powers beneficial to all humanity and existence. We have a natural, self-serving disposition, so at what point does the pursuit of equality falter, overshadowed by the egos and biases of individual actors?

Thank you for reading my blog!

Works Cited:

Stewart, Dianne M. Obeah, Orisa and Religious Identity in Trinidad. Duke University Press, 2022. 

Tinsley, Omise'eke Natasha. Ezili's Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders. Duke University Press, 2018. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/book/70042.