Yeye Luisah Teish

Teacher, Author, Storyteller and Yoruba African High Priestess

Yeye Luisah Teish is a teacher, dancer, storyteller, and leading high priestess in the Yoruba tradition. She is the author of several books on African and African American Spiritual Culture. They include “Jambalaya: The Natural Woman’s Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals” a women’s spirituality classic, “Carnival of the Spirit: Seasonal Celebrations and Rites of Passage”; “Jump Up: Good Times Throughout the Seasons with Celebrations from Around the World”; and “What Don’t Kill Is Fattening Revisited: Twenty Years of Poetry, Prose, and Myth.”

Ms. Teish was a member of the Katherine Dunham Dance Company at The Performing Arts Training Center in E. St. Louis Illinois; and was the choreographer for The Black Artist Group in St. Louis, Missouri. Presently she is the Artistic Director of Ase Theater and “The Women in White Peace Performance Group” in Oakland.

Her film and television performance credits include, the Oprah Winfrey Show, the Rob Nelson Show, the Rosanne Barr show (with Eartha Kitt), the Other Side, “Not A Love Story” and the Goddess Remembered film series(Canadian film board).

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, her father was an African Methodist Episcopal and her mother was a Catholic, of Haitian, French, and Choctaw heritage. She was awarded a Ph.D. in Spiritual Therapeutics from Open International University’s School of Complementary Medicine in Colombo Sri Lanka in 1993. She holds an Inter-Faith minister’s license from the International Institute of Integral Human Sciences.

Yeye Teish is an Iyanifa and Oshun chief in Yoruba tradition. She is one of the most well known Yoruba priestesses worldwide, who is celebrated internationally as a speaker, writer and ritual-maker. She is a powerful and incredibly inspiring teacher spreading her message of love and hope across the globe.

“All roads lead to paradise when you know how to walk.” – Yeye Luisah Teish