Nigeria & The Responsibility of My Saturn Line
After leaving Colombia, I was ready for winter. Yes, I hate the cold, but I am always so grateful for the space to slow down and recalibrate. After a few weeks home, I was inspired to focus my next stints on this travel adventure on carnival throughout the diaspora. Here we’re talking carnival related to Blackness and its history of bucking back against plantation owners while combining indigenous themes and artistry.
My known ancestry is American, and I have never experienced carnival before. It wasn’t so much the feathers and endless parties that drew me in, but the sacred history of Black people’s ability to hold onto our ancestral knowledge of dancing, singing, masquerading to embody spirits until daybreak to symbolize renewed joy and hope, no matter the circumstances - yeahhhhhh, I needed to see that shit up close.
I had mapped it out! There are various events happening around the world all throughout the year, and I was ready to navigate these carnival streets both alone and with different friends who were down to meet me along the way. And then, Ifa called, and my responsibility to my practice as an Iyanifa and Olorisa took precedence, leading to a trip to Nigeria at the beginning of March.
This was my fourth trip to Nigeria over the past three years, and I was a quick study in terms of what would be required to prepare, as it’s not a relatively easy trip for various reasons. The Lagos airport sits directly in between my Mars and Saturn lines, but the specific compound and Ifa lineage that called me home in Osun land sits snuggly under my Saturn line.
Big Daddy Saturn! Typically, people don’t have the best things to say about traveling your Saturn line lol. Saturn runs a strict program, confronting us with questions like, Are you who you say you are? What systems support that? Do these systems actually support your wellbeing and authenticity, or the facade of it all? Who gave you these systems, and did you question them AT ALL along the way to building your life around them?
To me, Saturn is the course corrector. As someone who’s on the tail end of their Saturn Return, this is something I’ve been experiencing first hand lately.
Saturn is a planet of delayed gratification, and how discipline (which I talk about in my workbook and with my clients) is on a sliding scale with pleasure, meaning the amount of pleasure we have the capacity to experience is directly related to doing our due diligence, the hard things, and showing up consistently to reap the harvest of our labor.
This microwave society that we live in says the opposite of that. Why wait when you can have everything you want at the push of a button and a bajillion afterpay options? But this is why our ancestral practices are calling us home, because in our reliance upon convenience, we’ve lost the plot and our ability to maintain discipline, and therefore pleasure.
I look forward to future leisure trips to Nigeria, especially to see their art scene, as my previous times have not been that lol. After connecting with my ancestors, they led me to the specific ase and energy of Yorubaland, Nigeria. With no DNA test, my ancestors swiftly opened the door to my next level of understanding of self by connecting me with their ancestral practice. My experience is a true testament to what I’ve been referring to in the Holy in Between:
Ori, the deity that embodies our purpose and personal destiny, the study of our Ancestors, who we come from, their experiences, and how their decisions impact our DNA and upbringing, and then allowing them to guide us to the Land associated with our specific ase, juju, and magic. I’m talking regionally, the specific land mass in which the nature ecosystem knows us by our lineage.
I want to make it as clear as possible - my ancestors opened the road and led me to the indigenous practice of Yorubaland; it was not of my own vindication. It was not me scrolling through the internet streets or dabbling in spiritual shit that I ain’t have no business getting myself involved in. How do I know this?
Because of the ease I experienced on my path towards learning more about this tradition.
Because of the comfort and ancestral support I felt every step of the way.
Because of the resources that seemed to have fallen out of the sky to ensure that I had open roads to every single rite of passage I needed in my spiritual toolbox.
They say alignment happens quick quick, and that it’s up to us to be ready when God opens the floodgates of heaven. This was my experience when coming home to Ifa, and my prayer for those deciding to reclaim their ancestral practices.
I pray you sharpen your discernment and know your own voice better than anyone else’s. I pray that your relationship with your ancestors is strong, and as a result, that your knowledge of self is supported through understanding of who you come from and the specific magic associated with your bloodline. I pray that your ancestors are relentless in ensuring you have all the tools necessary to be prosperous in this lifetime, and that they stand with any Orisa, deity, angel, fairy, literally whatever spiritual manifestation of the energy of your ancestral land, strongly and in unison.
Because alignment is quick quick, but taking the time to study, meditate, and grow in our practice is not. Sometimes it is delayed gratification and a lifetime of getting it right. Sometimes it is learning how to sit down and hush, and be on the receiving side of goodness and sweetness and wholeness instead of pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps as we’ve been taught. Sometimes it is praying and fasting for days and nights on end until the time is right for action. Sometimes it is watching the whole bloodline being taken care of first before your prayers can be answered because YOU were the first to get energy moving, and elders and babies come first.
Being the first Iyanifa and Olorisa that I know of in my family lineage has not been an easy task. My Saturn line being on Yorubaland is a twisted joke that I’m still trying to find funny lol. It’s hard conversations with family members who couldn’t fathom you practicing anything other than the Abrahamic religion they raised you in. It’s unearthing and alchemizing the trauma in the family that’s been swept under the rug for generations, so we can finally clean house and move forward. It’s a lot of unlearning and having compassion for oneself as you expand beyond what this society and media deem acceptable. It’s managing internal deaths and rebirths while still having to get up every day and make shit shake in a collapsing, unsustainable society.
Plus, traveling to Nigeria in and of itself is a whole situation. Obtaining a visa, overpriced flights to the motherland compared to Europe, obtaining cash, and figuring out monetary transfers as the country navigates its economic changes, the wild roads, and access to the countryside are one big ol' lesson of patience! But just as we do our due diligence of taking our malaria pills daily, there is always a reward sitting on the other side of our consistency.
Your Saturn line will gently (or not so gently) tap that ass when we fall out of line with our routine, just as is the case with our spiritual practices and hygiene. So I give thanks to Zaddy Saturn. Nothing was going to deter me from the responsibility of my birthright to practice Ifa for the betterment of myself and my family, even if the road was long and tedious.
This trip did put my overall travel adventure into perspective as I was being called to move differently, which inevitably put an end to this way of life. It was time to take my ass home and put roots to all that I had seen and done during my time away, as I had all the supporting evidence needed for the bigger projects that I’m working on.
I did get to experience carnival, though, so in my next entry, that’s what we’ll kiki about. It’ll be the last of the astrocartography series, in which we’ll discuss traveling the ever-changing waters of the moon line.
Until soon,
Janiece Ifasooto