Oshun

[Heather Duval]

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[Faklon]

Sounds and seems like whoresoon.

Probably modern Africans identify her with prostitutes is hiphop videos and when they weep for welfare.

[sean]

The Yoruba believed that some witches (called aje) would transform themselves into birds and fly by night to practice magic far from prying eyes. These witches were granted these powers by the great feminine spirits known as the Orisha. Oshun is preeminent among the female deities of the Yoruba (she was associated with Venus, given their parallels), she is sometimes shown as a black mermaid, probably from myths about the babies of pregnant African women who jumped overboard during the Middle Passage adapting and living underwater. Under the name of Erzulie Freda, she also figures in Haitian Voodoo as one of over 400 Orisha spirits.

A big interesting part of the foundation of indigenous African religions is being like the "gods" (which may be subsidiary to "God"), including following their ideals and their tastes and things. You go along with what they do. Another big part is power. If you cultivate a certain degree of energy, you get more powerful. It depends on region and religion, for example Aṣẹ is a combination of dignity and power, sometimes translated as authority. Someone with great ashe has a sort of inherent dignity, and also power, which could be sorcerous power or just charisma, depending on the situation. Now, you could also have the energy of a particular deity (orisha, loa, or any less famous group) by being like them.

So a mulatto woman who wears yellow and likes sweet things and murders in secret would be like Oshun, or a man who goes to war and is brash and forceful and plays baseball and has many women whether they consent or not would be like Shango. Someone who is wise and temperate could be said to be like Obatala. This "power" is primordial and the specifics are just expressions of it though, so the details don't have to line up, which is also why you can make substitutions in rituals, as long as you know what you're doing (of course as long as you divine it first).