Ayyaana

In ganna, the long rains, the rivers of the Oromo country run thick and brown. They carry dead animals, broken branches and drifting logs, and the water smells of mud. Nobody goes down to such a river to give thanks to Waaqa. The reason, as Oromo worshippers explain it, is simple: the river’s ayyaana is not there. Clear water has one. So does a living tree. A dry tree, a dead animal, a fouled stream has lost it, and it is no place for prayer until the water runs clean again.

Ayyaana is the Oromo word for the spirit-like beings that Waaqa, the one sky-god of the indigenous Oromo religion now called Waaqeffannaa, assigns to everything he creates. The anthropologist Gemechu Jemal Geda, whose 2013 Bayreuth study of the Arsi Oromo rests on interviews with lifelong Waaqeffataa, records the belief in plain terms: Waaqa made every creature, human, animal or nonliving thing, with its own ayyaana. People, cattle, plants, mountains and rivers each have one. The dictionaries reach for different words. Gene Gragg’s 1982 Oromo dictionary calls it a kind of spirit, while Tilahun Gamta’s 1989 dictionary calls it a deity or divinity believed to bring death, disease and happiness. The two definitions sit uneasily together, and the tradition itself explains why.

There are good ayyaana and evil ones. The good kind are treated as beings in their own right and as something of Waaqa, a share of the god’s own presence. Lambert Bartels, whose Oromo Religion (1983) is the standard study of the Macha Oromo of western Ethiopia, reports that evil ayyaana are a different order altogether: superhuman, unscrupulous, and not of Waaqa at all. They do not attack at random. They go after wrongdoers whom Waaqa has stopped protecting.

That is the hinge of the whole idea. Waaqa, the Oromo say, has a sea-belly. He is patient and slow to anger, and in Waaqeffannaa there is no story of him burning sinners or punishing their children. He does not strike. He withdraws. When someone breaks safuu, the moral order that Gemetchu Megerssa described as the ethical basis of all right action, Waaqa removes that person’s protective ayyaana. Nothing else is needed. Sickness, misfortune and the evil ayyaana find their own way in. A herdsman who lies, cheats or shames his father does not wait for a thunderbolt; he wakes one morning without the guardian he never saw, and the trouble that follows is the proof it has gone.

The ayyaana also run through the Oromo account of how religious office began. In a tradition Geda recorded, the people sent the Abbaa Gadaa, the elected leader of the generation-grade system, to beg Waaqa to come back to them. He set out with a qaalluu, a pregnant woman and a wise man. The qaalluu stopped in a village to drink coffee and smoke tobacco. The woman stayed behind to give birth, and the wise man rested under an odaa tree. Only the Abbaa Gadaa caught up with the departing god. Waaqa sent back instructions for each straggler, and the qaalluu, called in the telling ayyaanticha, a title built on the same word, was told to stay in the village, speak only the truth, mediate, and work on Waaqa’s behalf. The same root names the Ayyaantuu, the female spiritual leader who walks near the head of the Irreecha procession to the water, behind the Abbaa Malkaa, the father of the river.

Whether an ayyaana ever enters a human body is where the record splits. Geda’s informants and Bartels both draw a hard line: devils, setana or shaytaana, roam the earth on their own will and can seize people, who must then go to priests to have them driven out, while ayyaana come from above, from Waaqa, and never possess anyone. Both men also note that the devil itself looks borrowed from Islam and Christianity, and the ethnologist Haberland argued in 1963 that the old religion had room for nothing besides God and that spirit possession was foreign to it. Lifelong followers of Waaqeffannaa told Geda flatly that the devil does not exist, and that the only devils are killers, robbers, liars and cheats.

In the far south the word means something else again. Among the Borana Oromo, ayana is the name for the days of the calendar. The anthropologist Marco Bassi, working with the Borana calendar expert Bante and publishing in 1988, showed that each day takes its name from whichever of eight stars the moon stands beside on its circuit of the sky, and that a given day recurs whenever the moon comes back into conjunction with its star.

The Borana are also the source of the most vivid account of ayana as living, travelling spirits, and of the possession that the western tradition denies. In the 1960s an ayana possession cult spread from Borana country to the Hor, Arbore-speaking agro-pastoralists of the South Omo Zone, carried by Waata men who had lived among the Borana. The anthropologist Yukio Miyawaki, writing in 2009, found that more than eight in ten of its members were women. The Hor call the ayana the wind of the god and the errand of the god, and say it brings prosperity. A medium’s corner holds an ankase, a wooden staff about a metre and a half long with a steel point at one end and three or four branches at the other, hung with gourds, fragrant woods and offerings; it is the place where the spirits come down. Each ayana has its own favourite grasses. At a seance it reveals its name and where it comes from, and more and more of them, the mediums report, are strangers: Amhara highlanders, white foreigners, even Somali spirits.

The power is real, and so is the danger. An ayana arriving in a new medium for the first time brings high fever, and sometimes death. Then it settles, and through the medium it heals, divines and curses. Its limits follow from where it comes from. An ayyaana guards only for as long as Waaqa allows, and is gone the moment the moral order it protects is broken. It cannot be called back by force, only by setting right what was broken, and by waiting, like the people on the riverbank, for the water to clear.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is ayyaana in Oromo religion?

Ayyaana are spirit-like beings that Waaqa, the sky-god of the traditional Oromo religion Waaqeffannaa, assigns to every creature and thing he made. People, animals, plants, rivers and mountains each have their own ayyaana. The good ayyaana are regarded as something of Waaqa himself and act as protectors.

What happens when a person loses their ayyaana?

In Oromo belief, Waaqa removes a person’s protective ayyaana when they break safuu, the moral code. Waaqa does not punish directly; he withdraws his protection. Without its ayyaana, the person is exposed to evil ayyaana, which attack wrongdoers and bring misfortune and illness.

Are there good and evil ayyaana?

Yes. The Oromo distinguish good ayyaana, which come from Waaqa and protect, from evil ayyaana, which Lambert Bartels describes as unscrupulous superhuman beings that are not of Waaqa. Evil ayyaana are used to explain suffering and adversity, and they target people whom Waaqa has stopped protecting.

Do ayyaana possess people?

The sources disagree. Oromo informants studied by Gemechu Jemal Geda and the ethnographer Lambert Bartels say ayyaana come from Waaqa and never possess people, while possession is the work of devils. Among the Borana, and the Hor of South Omo who adopted a Borana cult in the 1960s, ayana spirits do possess mediums, mostly women, who heal and divine through them.

Why don’t Oromo people give thanks at rivers in the rainy season?

During ganna, the rainy season, rivers run muddy and carry dead animals and debris, and the Oromo say a river in that state has lost its ayyaana. For that reason the thanksgiving festival of Irreecha is held only at clear water, after the rains. The belief reflects the wider idea that a living, clean thing has its ayyaana and a dead or fouled one does not.

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