THE STORY & ITS AFTERLIVES
Obatala, 'King of the White Cloth', also honored as Orishanla, the Great Orisha, is the shaper of human bodies. Everything about him is white: white cloth, white beads, powdered chalk, snails stewed in shea butter for his table. Olodumare assigned him to mold human figures from clay, into which the supreme god then breathes life.
His two central myths both turn on palm wine. In one, he drank while shaping humans and his hands slipped: hunchbacks, albinos, and the lame came from that day's work. On sobering he swore off palm wine forever and declared people born with such bodies eni orisha, his sacred charges; his devotees keep the same prohibition. In the Ife creation story he was sent to found the dry land but drank on the way and fell asleep, and Oduduwa took the snail shell of earth and finished the task; the festivals of Ife still carry traces of the two cults' rivalry and reconciliation.
His worshippers dress in white, and his principal temple stands at Ife. In Cuba he merged with Our Lady of Mercy; in Brazil he is Oxala, honored each January in Salvador when crowds in white wash the steps of the Bonfim church with scented water.
