Iyami & African Women’s Mysteries Course Package
Discover the teachings of the African Ancestral Mothers
East and West Africa Mega Course
Ten years after it was first taught, African Women’s Mysteries remains one of Ori Institute’s most extensive and timely course programs. Interest in Ìyáàmi, African female spiritual authority, ancestral mothers, women’s rites, and feminine cosmology has grown tremendously. Much of what circulates today is fragmented, removed from African cultural understanding, or interpreted through the voices of men and European women. This course offers the perspective of an Initiated African Woman. The teachings are presented through African history, cosmology, spiritual philosophy, ritual symbolism, and the lived knowledge.
The African Mothers hold some of the missing keys needed to understand other mystery systems. Long before many of the traditions now commonly studied, African women were keepers of birth, blood, healing, death, fertility, spiritual power, cosmic law, queenship, ancestral continuity, and the gateways between visible and invisible existence. Their knowledge shaped both women’s and men’s spiritual institutions. Yet the Mothers themselves have often been misunderstood, feared, reduced to goddesses, or separated from the cultures that gave their traditions meaning.
African Women’s Mysteries: East and West brings both courses together as one connected body of study. Rather than limiting African women’s traditions to one nation, one people, or one spiritual system, this program travels across the continent to examine the shared foundations and distinct expressions of female spiritual power.
The journey begins with East African Women’s Mysteries, where you will study some of Africa’s oldest documentable women-centered traditions. These lessons examine the Great Mothers of the East, the feminine Tree of Life, the Throne of Auset, Sekhmet and Hether, the Royal Arch of Heaven, Sati and Sirius, Ma’at, Seshat, the inner temple, and the mystery of the Goose and the Golden Egg. The course provides an early cosmological foundation for understanding the Mother as creator, ruler, healer, protector, keeper of order, and source of spiritual intelligence.
The study then continues into West African Women’s Mysteries, where the teachings move into the cosmology of Ìyáàmi Àjẹ́, the primordial Mothers, female Àṣẹ, Mami Wata, the Cosmic Calabash, the seven African Mothers, women’s gateways within the body, the womb of Odù, and the four blood mysteries. These lessons examine the laws, responsibilities, powers, and guiding principles connected to the Great Mothers from an initiated woman-centered perspective.
Together, the two courses allow you to recognize connections that may remain hidden when East and West African traditions are studied separately. You will see recurring symbols of the womb, throne, calabash, blood, egg, water, star, tree, serpent, bird, and cosmic Mother. You will also learn how these symbols change meaning within different African cultures and spiritual systems.
The complete program contains over 40 hours of original lecture instruction, including PowerPoint presentations and additional supplemental videos. You will also receive access to selected ebooks, articles, study materials, and research links that support the lessons. The recordings come from the original live classes, allowing you to experience the fuller teaching, explanation, and discussion of each subject.
Each course contains nine weeks of instruction. The complete bundle is released over 18 weeks, giving you time to sit with the information, study the supporting materials, and connect the teachings across both courses. Many individual lectures run between two and three hours because these subjects require historical context, spiritual interpretation, and careful explanation.
This program was created and taught by Oloye Ayele Kumari, PhD, an initiated Ìyánífá, Ìyálórìṣà, Oníṣègùn, author, professor, and teacher with decades of training and direct experience in African spiritual traditions. The instruction joins extensive research with priestly experience, women’s initiatory knowledge, cultural history, and years of teaching students throughout the African Diaspora.
The complete bundle is recommended for women who want a fuller foundation in African women’s spiritual traditions; women studying Ìyáàmi, Ifá, Òrìṣà, Kemetic traditions, African healing, ancestral traditions, priesthood, or female spiritual leadership; and women who sense that something has been missing from the way African spirituality has been explained to them.
These courses have served women for ten years. Today, as public interest in Ìyáàmi and African women’s traditions continues to grow, the original teachings remain highly relevant. This bundle gives you the opportunity to study the complete series in its intended order and understand the African Mothers across a much wider historical and cosmological framework.
Chief Abiye Ayele Kumari
Professional Bio
Website: Personal Website
Chief Dr. Ayele Kumari
A Spiritual Revolutionary and Cultural Trailblazer in the Ifa Orisa tradition
Oloye Dr. Ayele Kumari, also known as Chief Yele, is a pioneering force in African spiritual traditions, breaking barriers for women and advancing Isese Ifa Orisa devotion worldwide. A fully initiated and licensed Iyanifa, professor, Onisegun (traditional healer), and artist, she has dedicated over 30 years to mastering her craft and reclaiming ancestral wisdom for future generations.
Dr Kumari began as naturopath, lay healer. and bone diviner studying with numerous teachers and healers beginning with her grandmother. She expanded those natural skills in western education to become a professor and college director. Her world was shattered after a mysterious illness left her unable to walk. This disability moved her to become initiated to Ifa which led to her healing and walking again. She began to study under elder priests to become a priestess herself. Her rise to prominence came with her groundbreaking book, Iyanifa: Women of Wisdom, which shattered stereotypes that only recognized men Babalawo as Ifa priests. While she did not create the term “Iyanifa,” her book made it more widely known and respected, empowering women to embrace their spiritual inheritance. In her plight for African Womens Mysteries, she discovered that many women actually feared honoring their mothers’ traditions, even hesitating to say “Iyami” aloud due to deep-rooted stigmas. Recognizing the lack of accessible African spiritual teachings, she founded Ori Institute, an online school dedicated to preserving and teaching ancestral wisdom. Through her transformative 40-hour course on African Women’s Mysteries, she demystified the divine feminine in African spirituality, offering clarity and empowerment to countless seekers.
In 2018, after the passing of her mother, Chief Yele stepped into a new role as a spiritual matriarch, co founding Ashe Soul Global Village, a full-service Ifa Orisa temple and spiritual community.
Understanding the challenges faced by those new to African spirituality, she authored Isese Spirituality Workbook for beginners. She followed by Hand of Ifa for dedicated Ifa practitioners. To further support the community, she published Book of Odu, providing an affordable compilation of sacred verses for deeper study.
The widespread popularity of her book, her dedication to the teaching of Isese along with her support of schools in Nigeria earned her recognition and she was conferred chieftaincy titles in Ibadan as Iya Mode United States, Otun Amunifawuni, Iya Abiye Ogboni, and Oba Olokun Omilere.
A proud African American woman, Dr. Kumari grew up immersed in the soul-stirring sounds of gospel, R&B, and classic soul. Struggling to connect with practitioners Ayele Ifa music, she sought to bridge the gap by blending African spiritual chants with the music of her roots. This creative fusion led to the birth of Ashe Soul Music, a genre of Afrospiritual music that blends ancestral wisdom with contemporary soul, offering a transformative sound that heals the heart and soothes the ancestral soul.
Through her scholarship, spiritual leadership, and musical innovation, Dr. Ayele Kumari continues to inspire, educate, and uplift those on the path of ancestral reclamation and spiritual enlightenment.
