Yoruba Religion and Myth (Continued)

Among these orisha, the Yoruba see the god Ogun as among the most important. The god of war, of the hunt, and of ironworking, Ogun serves as the patron deity of blacksmiths, warriors, and all who use metal in their occupations. He also presides over deals and contracts; in fact, in Yoruba courts, devotees of the faith swear to tell the truth by kissing a machete sacred to Ogun. The Yoruba consider Ogun fearsome and terrible in his revenge; they believe that if one breaks a pact made in his name, swift retribution will follow. A legend that illustrates Ogun's importance tells of the orisha trying to carve a road through dense jungle; Ogun was the only one with the proper implements for the task and so won the right to be king of the orisha. He did not, however, care for the position, and it went to Obatala.
Some regions combine Ogun with the trickster god, Esu. Eshu, or Elegbara as he is also known, has mistakenly been identified by Europeans with with the Devil in the past.


The Yoruba pantheon, however, has no evil gods; a more accurate comparison would be between Eshu and the Satan of the Book of Job, to whom God assigns the task of trying men's faith. One myth dealing with Eshu illustrates his mischieviousness: Eshu, posing as a merchant, alternately sold increasingly magnificent gifts to each of a man's two wives; the ensuing battle for the husband's favor tore the family apart. Surprisingly, Eshu also serves as the guardian of houses and villages. When worshipped in this tutelary position, his followers call him Baba ("father"). Eshu also serves as the god of Ifa, a sophisticated and complex geomantic divinatory tool which uses nuts, signs, and increasing squares of the number four to predict all facets of the future. Geoffrey Parrinder claims that Ifa is the "only instance of writing practised in modern times among the pagan and non-Islamic peoples." It has remained enormously popular, and still today many Yoruba do not make any major life decision without consulting it.
Shanpona, the god of smallpox, apparently became an important god in the smallpox plagues that were transmitted by various inter-tribal wars; the Yoruba also blamed Shanpona's wrath for high temperatures, carbuncles, boils, and other diseases that resemble small-pox symptoms. Shanpona once terrified some Yoruba so greatly that they feared to say his name; they used instead such names as Elegbana ("hot earth") and A-soro-peleerun ("one whose name it is not propitious to call during the dry season"). Priests of Shanpona wielded immense power; it was believed that they could bring the plague down on their enemies, and in fact the priests sometimes made a potion from the powdered scabs and dry skin of those who died from small-pox. They would pour the potion in an enemy's house or a neighboring village to spread the disease. Today, however, smallpox has been all but eradicated; the priests of Shanpona have lost power and the cult has vanished.
Some gods, such as Olokun, appear only in certain regions. Olokun ("owner of the sea"), alternately a god or a goddess, lives under the sea with his (or her) soldiers and mermaids; a popular legend tells of Olokun trying to conquer the earth by means of a great flood. The worship of Olokun occurs, predictably, in the southern coastal regions.
The Yoruba treat their ancestors with great respect, as might be expected in a culture with only oral records of the past, but anthropologists debate as to whether the rituals dealing with ancestry are religious in nature, or simply respectful. At least a few groups believe that ancestors, after death, become demigods, but only once they have assumed the persona of a true deity. This resembles another facet of the Yoruba faith, the phenomenon of possession, in which mediums take on the characteristics of one or another of the gods. The characteristics of each god are so well stereotyped that mediums as far off as Haiti loll back their heads and cross their legs in the same way when possessed by the lightning god.