Seventh Annual Orisa Rain Festival
This festival took place in the Shrine Gardens, Upper Gasparillo Rd., Santa Cruz, Trinidad. Participants from the U.S., Jamaica, Cuba, Bermuda, Mexico and Trinidad and Tobago also took part in this Orisa festival.
About the Festival
The Rain Festival brings people together to celebrate rebirth, commitment, understanding and responsibility in a physical and spiritual sense. The Rain Cycle serves to sensitise the entire nation of the importance and sacredness of the rain.
It is a period for reflection, thanksgiving, cleansing and preparation. It also signals the annual cultivation of lands and the inundation of the rivers, which brings the necessary alluvial deposits for the riverbanks and seashores among other things.
The Festival is primarily to ask for the blessing of the deities. The rain is analogous of Sango’s semen fertility. The earth is considered the womb. The rain or semen impregnates the Earth making it bountiful as it provides water, food, shelter, beauty and happiness. The Earth’s resources contribute immensely to our National well-being and that of the universe as a whole.
Sango/Osun Rain Festival in pictures:
www.triniview.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=125404