OGUNDA MASA
He did not choose this early, and he did not choose it easily. That is worth knowing before you sit down with him.
He was a troubled kid. That is the plain version, and he does not dress it up. What he could not explain to anyone at the time was that things kept happening around him — things he felt before they arrived, things he knew without being told. He had no framework for any of it. No elder, no house, no language. So it frightened him, and he did what frightened people do with a gift they cannot name: he pushed it away and got on with his life.
Spirituality did not accept the dismissal. It followed him. Through the years he spent building something else, through the work, through the ordinary business of getting older, it stayed at the edge of the room and waited.
The something else was real estate. He learned how property is valued and how it is financed. He learned what a credit file does to a person's options, how a deal is structured, where the margin sits and who is taking it. He built a working knowledge of the material world that most people never acquire — and he built it before he had any spiritual training at all.
Then he came near death. And when there was nothing else on the table, the answer that came back was Ifá — not as an interest, but as the road, and the priesthood as the walk.
He took it. That was eighteen years ago. Since then he has served as a babaláwo, and the sign he received at itá — Ogundá Masa — is the one this house is named for.
What that history produced is unusual. Most people who can read for you cannot read a settlement statement. Most people who can read a settlement statement have nothing to say about your orí. Ramon spent years in each world, in that order, and can move between them without confusing the two — which matters, because they are not the same thing and must never be sold as if they were.
He can also take someone the whole distance. From a first reading, through the receiving of elekes and the warriors, to Orula, and — where Ifá indicates it and the person is truly ready — through initiation into the priesthood itself. Not everyone is meant for that road. He will tell you honestly which part of it is yours.