2012 Predictions: The Year of Oya

The beginning of a new calendar year usually means a flurry of predictions. These prognostications can be educated guesses, fervent hopes, pessimistic fears, or, in some cases, spiritual messages via divination, omens, or other supernatural methods. One widely reported instance of a yearly divination tradition is the Ifá predictions from Cuba’s Santeria priests, who’ve been gathering for 26 years to make predictions and recommendations. Last year they were eerily accurate in their readings, predicting “abrupt changes in political systems”, intense drought, and “dangers of war and conflicts.” This year the reigning deity is Oya, and they are predicting a year of “war and confrontation, social, political, and economic change, and a dangerous increase in temperature.” However, the mainstream press seems to have positioned this as a Babalawos vs Mayas prophesy-off thanks to the ubiquity of New Age “Mayan Prophesy” books that predict a great ending/beginning in 2012.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=215OLyndNHI

Believers around the world have furthered the theory, which stems from a stone tablet discovered in the 1960s at the archaeological site of Tortuguero in the Gulf of Mexico state of Tabasco that describes the return of a Mayan god on that date, similar to the story of Judgment Day. But Cuba’s priests say that “what needs to die is not the world itself, but rather the ways in which the world has lived until now: confrontations, wars, misery and discrimination,” said Lazaro Cuesta, one of the island’s leading Santeria priests, or babalawo. “For us, an old world must end so that a new world is born …. It is not a physical end.”

Despite the Mayan “2012” theory being debunked again, and again, and again, and again, and again, some still think something momentous will happen when that calendar runs out. As Mayan Elder Apolinario Chile Pixtun says, “I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff”. I suppose the popularity of 2012 as an end-date made such a comparison inevitable, but still, I would have liked to see more on the Ifá predictions instead of having them comment on the popular Mayan trend. In any case, here are their events of social concern for 2012.

1. This is a sign of war and confrontation.
2. This is a sign of transition, and social, political, and economic change.
3. Loss through old age (aging population).
4. Increase in seismic movement.
5. You should pay attention to all household issues.
6. Serious marital problems.
7. Seek nimble solutions to any existing problem.
8. Dangerous increase in temperature.

And here are the recommendations from the 2012 reading.

1. Improve hygiene in hospitals.
2. Improve apprenticeship in the manual trades.
3. Special attention to agriculture and the organized distribution of products.
4. Attention to your children.
5. Grant consideration to women in every aspect.
6. Better the organization of public economic management.
7. Use music as social therapy.
8. Organize a campaign of general sanitation against environmental contamination in order to avoid epidemics.
9. Make offerings to ASOJUANO.
10. Take advantage of the properties of the following plants for their respective uses: albahaca (basil), hierba de la sangre (blood plant), caisimón, quita maldición (remove curse), ciruela (plum), algodón (cotton) and bledo blanco.
11. Control the increase in promiscuity.
12. Preserve the environment.
13. Avoid false accusations and defamations.
14. Change and revise penal laws, bringing them up to date.

As for good omens from other sources, I would like to think launching of a new Pagan community center in Washington DC is a particularly good one. What omens, predictions, and visions do you have for the year of Oya?