…coming soon: Study of the Yoruba Orisha Pantheon
It’s a brand-new year! 2022!
And this is calling for new, well, everything. To kick off this new space for my work and play, storytelling, poetry, and general artistry, I’m re-invigorating a study I did many MANY moons ago about the deities of the Yoruba orisha pantheon.
Now, there are a few things to note as you join me on this journey of this dynamic pantheon:
I am not a practitioner, worshipper or follower of the orisha tradition or any of the other traditions (santerìa, lukumi, candomblé, etc.) that have been born throughout the African diaspora. While I am Nigerian, the research I conduct is purely out of curiosity, and intrigue for a pantheon that is just as robust and full of folklore and mythology as any of the other god/goddess pantheons in other cultures (Roman, Greek, Viking, Hindu, etc.).
This study is an amalgamation of what I find online. My sources (I provide a reference list at the end of each post) range from Wikipedia to the blogs and articles of practitioners and seekers. Therefore, there will be a ton of overlapping and even opposing information. Just like fables, fairy tales, and folklore, the extent of accuracy is dependent on the storyteller.
While many articles online will call orisha male or female, it should be understood that because these beings are divine in nature and often take the human form of a man or a woman, orishas are largely androgynous. They are neither male nor female. So don’t get too hung up on gender in this study.
This study does not focus on how to engage and connect with these deities. As such, you will not find information about orisha colours, sacred objects, their methods of worship, etc. That is not my ministry.
Yoruba is beautifully melodic language that I do not speak. Hence, letter accents and translations of the language throughout this study may be slightly off or downright incorrect. As such, I’ve opened up the comments section (help me, fadda) of posts to allow for lively discussion of Yoruba semantics and linguistics. This whole study is about curiosity and learning, after all.
Please have fun with this! Shoot, feel free to disagree. This is a labour of love and a space to read about these mighty beings as they appear throughout the African diaspora - from Yorubaland in Nigeria, largely their birthplace, to New Orleans in the USA to various regions in Latin America and the Caribbean. I find it fascinating how the trans-Atlantic slave trade connected my people, despite a grotesque era in human experience.
The list of orishas I cover is by NO MEANS exhaustive. I selected the orishas for this study based upon the photography of James C Lewis. When I stumbled upon his striking and evocative photoset lifetimes ago, I couldn’t help but desire to curate the storytelling of photography with the various stories out there into one home: my blog.
So stay tuned, won’t you?
(all images are used with permission by photographer James C Lewis)
