Osain oil

How to Use It

Santería & Lucumí

• Dress a green candle with the oil and set it at the foot of a tree or beside your potted herbs when asking Osain for help with a spiritual healing.
• Touch a drop to the leaves before you pick them for a bath or cleansing, asking his permission and leaving a small offering of rum or tobacco in return.
• Anoint the neck of a gourd or a bundle of dried herbs kept on the altar as a home for his presence.

Witchcraft & Folk Magick

• Add three drops to a cleansing bath made from fresh garden herbs, poured over the body from the neck down.
• Rub a little on your palms before working in the garden or wildcrafting, to work with the plants rather than simply take them.

A Simple Working

• Gather a handful of fresh green herbs from your garden or market, such as basil, rosemary and mint.
• Tear them into a basin of cool water, saying plainly what you want washed away.
• Add three drops of Osain oil and stir with your hand.
• Dress a green chime candle with the oil from middle to ends and light it beside the basin.
• Strain the water and pour it over yourself from the neck down after your normal bath.
• Return the spent herbs to the earth at the base of a tree.

Pairs Well With

• A green chime candle: the colour most often used for Osain’s work.
• Rum: a traditional offering to leave when taking leaves from the wild.
• Fresh basil: a common bath herb for cleansing work.
• A dried gourd: to keep as a seat for his presence on the altar.

What You Receive

Osain oil, available in 2 dram, 1 oz and 16 oz.

Origin & Lore

Osain (Osanyin in Yorubaland) is the orisha of herbs, medicine and the forest. In Lucumí practice nothing sacred happens without leaves: the herbal waters used to wash beads, stones and initiates draw on his knowledge, and his specialists, the osainistas, gather and prepare plants in his name. This oil is a botánica preparation used to honour him and to bring his herbal power into everyday work.

Osain is pictured with one leg, one arm and one eye, a lone figure of the deep bush who knows the secret name and power of every plant that grows.

A Yoruba saying sums up his importance: “Kò sí ewé, kò sí òrìṣà”, without leaves there is no orisha. In one well-known patakí, Osain kept all the herbs in a gourd hung from a tree; Shango complained, and Oya whipped up a wind with her skirts that tore the gourd open and scattered the leaves, so that each orisha could claim their own plants.