Orisha: The Gods of Yorubaland

Some of the mystery of gods can be explored by turning within, by examining the inner worlds of you, of me, of poets, artists, mystics, of madmen and anonymous myth makers. Here supernatural forces have left their traces, that, like symbols painted on prehistoric cavern walls, we can learn to decipher. The orisha participate in the world and in human consciousness as a group. Some cultures have narrowed the gods down to one, to whom many attributes are given (the all-wise, the compassionate, judge of the wicked, etc.) and this is widely assumed to denote progress. But there remain peoples and individuals for whom the gods must always be many, people for whom a life that does not involve the play of diverse forces is unreal, fictitious. The orisha of Yorubaland are many. And yet, for all their African names and manners, the orisha who appear briefly on these pages may suddenly strike you as familiar: like magnified versions of characters of your acquaintance, like natural forces or elements as you have experienced them on stormy nights, or while coming to grips with materials at a work bench, or while swimming, ascending a hill, pounding the streets or walking softly through the forest. One of them may remind you particularly of yourself, of your emotions in an extreme state: you in love; you as you would be if you weren’t required to control your temper; you creating out of smudges of color—a landscape! Although the worship of the orisha is limited, for the most part, to communities of Yoruba and far-flung descendants of Yoruba, they have much to tell us about the human personality. They are like immense magnifying mirrors in which we behold ourselves as potentialities. To those who believe in them, the orisha are guardians through whom one lives a more intense life vicariously, guides whose excess of energy leads their devotees to a more placid, a more balanced existence. If this last sentence seems full of contradictions, blame it on the subtlety and depth of Yoruba psychology!