But she is very humble about her achievements.
Bent double by age, the high-priestess of Nigeria’s Yoruba spirit-world shuffles forward from under the trees, reaching out a http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4415, blotchy hand in welcome.
Half a lifetime ago, Susanne Wenger dedicated herself to reviving the traditions of the pre-Christian Yoruba gods, “the orishas”, and left Austria to make Nigeria her home.
The frail 94-year-old artist, with one seeing eye, has been a driving force in Osogbo town, where she is in charge of the sacred grove, a place where spirits of the river and trees are said to live.
In an upstairs room of her house, surrounded by carved wooden figures of the gods, she receives well-wishers and devotees, who she blesses in fluent Yoruba.
When she arrived here, she found traditional culture in abeyance, all but destroyed by missionaries who branded it “black http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3011 tradition’s most sacred sites.
“Osogbo is a creative place, it is that by itself, it didn’t need me,” she says.
Followers say she has channelled the river-god Osun into her body, learning the knowledge of pre-Christian deities like no other European has ever done.
Orisha worship is a controversial belief. In the past it involved human sacrifice and there are rumours that still happens at secret shrines elsewhere in the country.
Devotees of the orishas can worship either good or evil gods in order to get what they want.
But thanks to Mrs Wenger, the town’s annual festival of Osun has grown in size and popularity and thousands of Yorubas come every August to renew their dedication to the river-god.
Mrs Wenger arrived in Nigeria in 1950 with her then husband, the linguist Ulli Beier and travelled widely in south-western Nigeria.
In 1957, she fell ill with tuberculosis in an epidemic in which many thousands died.
Friend Ajani Adigun Davies says Mrs Wenger believes the illness was a kind of sacrifice, in return for the knowledge she was receiving about the gods.
“The Yoruba beliefs all depend on sacrifice, that you must give something of value to get something of value, you must suffer pain to gain knowledge,” he says.
In her early years in Nigeria she met Adjagemo, a high-priest of creator-god Obatala.
“He took me by the hand and led me into the spirit world,” Mrs Wenger told a French documentary maker in 2005.
“I did not speak Yoruba, and he did not speak English, our only intercourse was the language of the trees.”
She divorced her husband and moved in with Adjagemo in Osogbo, where she resolved to live for the rest of her life.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7595841.stm