I finally got my hands on a book of Yoruba mythology, as has been a vague goal of mine for a few months now, and everything is beautiful.
ORISHAS, ASSEMBLE!
OLORUN, the supreme sky god.
AGEMO, his pet chameleon who helped him cheat out of a weaving fight with the ocean once.
ORUNMILA, the god of divination and also getting bothered by the other gods over and over, Orunmila give me poweeeeeeers, Orunmila what does Olorun have to saaaaaaay, Orunmilaaaaaaa, heeeeeeelp
OBATALA, the god who created land by descending all the way from the sky on a gold chain only to go “Hey, chicken. You distribute this sand. If I let go of this chain, I’ll fall into the ocean.” Which I guess means that in southwest Nigeria, chickens can walk on water.
ODUDUWA, who in Ife tradition was the dude who did everything Obatala did.
OGUN, the god of iron, who gets bullied by all the orishas for dressing in the skins of the things he killed. This seems to me like a dangerous thing to heckle someone about, but it’s okay because Ogun’s not a dick like Shango and doesn’t devise the dooms of other people for upstaging him.
ESHU, the god of being a dick, having a dick, and cunning linguists. No, seriously, it’s right there in the book—Olorun’s Linguist. His life basically consists of hiding at crossroads and ruining people’s days, having a laugh about it in every single language, and then inexplicably coming to these same people’s aid when someone else fucks up their day worse. And then maybe getting laid, because he has magical power over boners.
SHANGO, the god of BEING AN UNMITIGATED ASSHOLE and lightning.
OSHUN, Shango’s wife, who fucked Eshu once because Obatala needed his clothes back, and also cut off her ears because Oya trolled her into using them in her own fucking cooking by telling her they would make the food taste better. She’s kind of a dumbass.
OYA, Shango’s other wife, who’s also kind of an asshole but in a funnier way than Shango because seriously, Oshun, who cooks with ears? Who does that?
SHONPONNO, whose life didn’t suck enough when he just had a wooden leg, so he also got stuck with being the orisha of fucking smallpox.That’s all. Nothing cooler than that. He’s not even the god of death. Just smallpox.
OLOKUN, who may or may not be a man or a woman, but who definitely lives in the ocean and fills the Vengeful Sea God/dess role in the Yoruba pantheon by once kind of ineffectually trying to flood the earth, a little.
ORISHA-OKO, god of farmers.
OLU-IGBO, god of the jungle.
OSANYIN, god of medicine.
YEMOYA, who may or may not be Ogun’s wife but is definitely an ocean goddess.
ORANMIYAN, the god of being so badass that not even dying stopped him from killing things.
I may or may not be posting additional reactions to/reviews of stories every once in a while, because Eshu is such a glorious dick and his brohood with Orunmila is really sweet and Shango is SUCH A DOUCHE becuase TIMI AND GBONKA AND FEELINGS AND WHYYYYYYY WOULD YOU DO THAT.
