ORUN

God

Orun designates, in Yoruba cosmology, the spiritual and celestial world, at once the dwelling of the deities and the beyond where the souls reside. The term derives from a root evoking origin: Orun is the place from which the souls come and to which humans return after death. Yoruba thought represents the universe as a calabash whose upper half, Orun, the invisible world, is opposed to the lower half, Aye, the visible world of the living. Created and governed by Olodumare, the supreme Being, Orun shelters the orishas, the ancestors and the ori, the spiritual principle of each person before incarnation. The visible sky is sometimes called oju orun, the face of Orun. It is a cosmological concept and not a personified deity, and the sources attribute to it no particular solar function.