Yoruba Mythology

Yoruba mythology is the living belief-world of the Yoruba people of the Gulf of Guinea, carried today by tens of millions in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo, and by one of the largest religious diasporas on earth. It has no ancient written canon; its scripture is memory. The 256 odu of Ifa divination each head a corpus of verses, while oriki praise poetry, festivals, drumming, and masquerade do the work of books. Only from the late nineteenth century did Samuel Johnson's History of the Yorubas and the studies of Idowu, Bascom, and Abimbola begin fixing the oral world in print.

At the summit stands Olodumare, the remote high god without temples, who leaves the world to the orishas — 401 of them, tradition says. Each has a portfolio, colors, taboos, and drum rhythms: Obatala shapes human bodies, Ogun clears the road, Shango wields thunder, Oshun, Yemoja, and Oya each command a river, and the trickster Eshu keeps the crossroads, ferrying offerings and messages between heaven and earth. Relations between people and gods are practical: sacrifice buys protection, divination settles a course, and destiny, chosen on one's knees before birth, is worked out with ase, the power that makes things happen. The holy city of Ile-Ife is where the land began, and every royal line runs back to Oduduwa, who made it.

The Atlantic slave trade carried the whole system across the ocean: Cuban Santeria, Brazilian Candomble, and Trinidad's Orisha religion are built on orisha worship, and on New Year's Eve millions in Rio cast white flowers into the sea for Yemoja. Since 2005 the Ifa divination system and the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove have entered UNESCO's heritage lists, while Tutuola, Soyinka, and Okri wrote the palm-wine ghosts, Ogun, and the abiku spirit child into world literature.