By: OMOLAJA MAKINEE
PART 1: The First Descent
In a quiet village nestled along the Ogun River, a boy was born beneath the waxing moon—his cries slicing through the humid air like a sharp knife through woven cloth. His mother wept with both joy and fear. Joy, for she had birthed the first male heir in the lineage of her husband, a respected elder of the village. Fear, for she had already heard whispers from the Babaláwo—the Ifá priest who divined the destiny of every newborn in the village.
The Ifá oracle delivered its message plainly: “Ẹ̀mí rẹ̀ jẹ́ olè”—His soul’s path is that of a thief“. This is not a calling toward righteousness or peace as defined by human morality. The divination revealed a soul mired in spiritual debt—a being returning to the earthly plane, dragging the weighty, rusted chains of a past life steeped in theft, greed, and betrayal. Yet his journey doesn’t end there. Rather, it is that of a cosmic crusader: he seeks to reclaim a righteous cause in order to restore balance across his soul lineage. Though the world may condemn him as someone who takes what does not belong to him, his deeper calling is to recalibrate the scales of universal justice.
“This world will judge him as one who steal what is not his,” the Babaláwo warned, his cowrie shells spread wide like the wings of a vulture. “He will take joy in mischief, but not from wickedness—rather, from the thrill of disturbing stagnant patterns. His soul did not corrupt the vessel before birth; it imprinted it with the burden of a lineage left unresolved. He returns not to persist in error, but to walk a path that appears flawed to human eyes—yet is sacred in the divine calculus of balance and restoration. It is a heavy karmic burden to carry, but he is bound by the burden bags.”
The villagers were disturbed. His parents, though heavy-hearted, accepted fate—the Yoruba way. For in Yoruba cosmology, one does not argue with Òrúnmìlà (the Orisha of wisdom and fate) when he has spoken.
As the boy grew, subtle signs emerged. He hoarded food, lied compulsively, and struck other children when he was barely two. Another day, his mother found a goat’s tongue under his mattress, stolen from the market and hidden in eerie silence.
But the boy never reached his fourth birthday.
Three days before turning four, the child fell suddenly ill after dinner—frothing at the mouth and collapsing into convulsions. Nothing the herbalists tried worked. He died within hours. The grief that followed was catastrophic. His mother, heavily pregnant with her second child, sank into inconsolable mourning. The first male heir—dead.
Rumour, suspicion, and rage filled the compound. Accusation turned to the boy’s stepmother—the first wife of the household—who had only birthed two daughters and held long-standing envy toward the boy’s mother. Ifá divination confirmed what many already believed: “Obìnrin na ni ọwọ̀ nínú rẹ̀.” The woman had poisoned the child. The first wife denied it, but her protest meant little in the face of divination. The husband, shattered by the loss, cast her out. Divorce was swift. His grief was a storm he could not quiet.
That Friday, just four days after the boy’s burial, the mother gave birth again—another son. The women of the compound praised the gods. “Olódùmarè has not abandoned her,” they said. The cries of the newborn were strong, almost defiant, as though he had come into the world bearing the weight of sorrow not his own.
But this was not the soul of the dead boy.
The Ifá divination was clear: “This one is different. This soul is gentle, slow to anger. He is not a thief. He is not burdened by past lifetimes. He comes to bring calm, not chaos.”
He was given a different oríkì (praise name), one that honoured peace, harmony, and clarity of mind. The mother, though relieved by the child’s safe birth, still mourned her first son. She often looked into her new son’s eyes searching for familiarity—for a spark, a flicker of the soul she had lost. But it was not there.
Years passed. The new child grew with a quiet spirit. He was introspective, often sitting under the mango tree with his fingers tracing the grooves of fallen leaves. He asked questions of the stars and mimicked the chants of the elders. Even the Babaláwo said, “He is old in wisdom but young in karma. He does not carry the same debts as his deceased brother.”
The Babaláwo had spoken again, this time with even deeper certainty: “The soul of the first child is coming back. It has not finished its journey. It will return through your womb.”
PART 2: The Cleansing of the Path
The prophecy had broken the mother’s spirit.
To birth a child only for Ifá to declare him a thief—condemned to a life of deception, greed, and violence—was a fate too heavy for any mother to bear. Though she had accepted it at first, bound by the old wisdom that “one does not fight fate, only adapts to it,” her grief after his death kindled a different kind of fire.
The mother remembered the child she had lost—his erratic nature, his shadowed aura. Could she carry that burden again? Would the soul corrupt her womb, or will the gates of Òrún (the invisible world) reshaped its path?
But the mother refused to let that soul return as it once was.
She was raised in the deep traditions of Yoruba polytheism, honouring the Orisha, keeping shrines for Ọ̀ṣun and Yemoja, and pouring libations at the roots of sacred trees. But now, desperate and broken, she crossed boundaries of belief. She joined a monotheistic movement that had arrived in the village decades prior—one that spoke of a single, all-powerful Creator whose mercy could overwrite any destiny.
Night after night, she prayed with both the psalms and the òríkì. She poured oil on the floor where the boy had drawn his last breath. She fasted every market day. She took nothing for herself until she had first lit candles before the Creator’s altar.
But the most powerful ritual she performed was at his grave.
At dusk on the first anniversary of his death, she returned to the forest where her son had been buried. She wore white, the cloth of purification, and brought with her four items:
- A calabash of honey,
- A bowl of water from three rivers,
- A small mirror,
- And a clay figurine she had crafted in his likeness.
She poured the honey into the earth and said: “Let the bitterness of your karmic burden detach from your soul path. Let sweetness follow you into your next path.”
She poured the river water over his grave and whispered: “May your soul lineage be washed clean by the waters of Ọ̀ṣun, Ọ̀gùn, and baba ńlá. May they carry all your unfavourable karmic burdens into the deep soul of the one who took you unjustly from your previous life path.”
She placed the mirror on the soil and spoke: “Look upon yourself, my son, and see who you must now become. Not a thief. Not a taker. But a giver. A man of honour.”
And she buried the clay figure into the ground beside him, declaring:
“Let this be your old self—sealed in the dust. May only what is true return.”
Three days later, she dreamt of him.
He stood by the river, no longer in shadow. His eyes were calm. He did not speak. He only nodded—as if to say he understood.
Then, she waited. The dream faded. Life returned to its rhythm. Until one morning, three years after his death, she felt the unmistakable morning sickness of pregnancy. The stirring in her belly gradually emerged.
She was pregnant.
This pregnancy was expected. She had planned it, the father has made long-held ceremonial offerings for more children. Yet the dreams re-occurred. First, the mother dreamt of her deceased son—sitting at the edge of her bed, staring at her in silence, as if waiting. Then came the dream of the river, where the same boy stood waist-deep in water, reaching out to her, whispering: “I am not done.”
The Babaláwo was summoned once again.
The oracle confirmed the vision: “The soul that left returns. It has waited. It has watched. It has chosen its time. This next child carries the memory of that which was lost. It is the same soul, but something has changed. He returns no more to steal, but to give. The one who poisoned him in his previous life had indeed inherited his karmic burden, and now he return with a renewed path—one of great honour.“
The villagers were stunned. The mother was both afraid and humbled.
And so, under the eye of the full moon, the soul made its comeback—three years after its first exit, and now with purpose sharpened by death and detour.
The child was born in silence. No crying. No wailing. Only wide, open eyes that blinked slowly at the flame of the lamp beside the mother’s bed. It was said among the elders that children like this remembered everything—the transition, the return, and the life they had left behind.
And so began the second arrival—but this time, his path would cross with something greater than the karmic burden from his previous soul path. When she looked into his face, her hands trembled. He looked exactly like the boy she had buried—same lips, same nose, even the same birthmarks on his body.
And the Ifá divination confirmed it:
“This is the same soul. But he is no longer what he once was. He returns with a different map—a cleansed heart. His path has shifted. He has chosen honour. He will be a man of wisdom, a builder of people, a voice among leaders. He has come to repair, not to destroy.”
The villagers called it a miracle. The elders whispered of àtúnwá—the rebirth of a soul with a changed destiny.
But the mother knew better. It was not just fate that brought him back.
It was intervention.
It was ritual.
It was a mother’s defiant love that refused to let a soul rot in the burden of unfavourable karmic repetition as defined by human morality.