Life After Life

Question: What is the Underworld for the Orisha?

It looks like an easy question to answer, but this is actually a subject fraught with confusion and lack of information. Opinions range from the assertion that the traditional Yoruba religion believes in a dual heaven and hell to the idea that it doesn't have an underworld at all. Neither is entirely correct, but the Yoruba conception of an underworld is very different from the way Scion usually uses the idea.

We don't have a lot of information on the ancient beliefs of the Yoruba; they were pre-literate and preserved their beliefs through oral retellings and ceremonial ritual reenactments. This means we don't have a lot of convenient records telling us what their vision of the cosmos looked like, and thus most of our information comes after the introduction of Christianity and Islam from various conquerors, missionaries and visitors, which naturally colored it. If they had a formal Underworld, as in a known place that dead people were thought to go after their lives ended, we don't know what it was, which is one of the reasons there are very few death gods among the Orisha (and none that could truly be termed a ruler of an underworld).

That doesn't mean they didn't have an afterlife, however. The spirits of ancestors are an important force in the Yoruba religion, so much so that the egungun festivals, elaborate religious celebrations involving dancing, performance and offerings, are dedicated solely in their honor to provide them with continuing attention and power. The spirits of ancestors are honored and respected powers who may still affect their descendants' lives, and it's believed that particularly strong and accomplished ancestors may even contribute some of their spirit to their children, becoming part of their ori. But where the ancestors dwell, exactly, isn't really explained other than some vague assertions that the dead go "beneath the ground".

A poorly-understood concept called orun occupies the underworld "slot" for the Orisha; some scholars have posited that it might be an underworld in the classical sense as a destination for the spirits of the departed. However, the word is ambiguous and represents a lot of different ideas and concepts. It's often translated as "heaven", but sometimes in a sense as in an afterlife (like the Heaven of Christianity) and sometimes in a sense as in an overworld abode of the gods. It's also sometimes translated as "otherworld", a general term for the parallel world alongside humanity's in which all spirits and magical things are intertwined with reality. And even further, sometimes the word is used to refer to Olodumare, the great creator god who began the world and the Orisha themselves.

Add to that the fact that there's no real description of what orun might be like even if it is an underworld - not so much as even the slightest idea of what it looks like or contains - and you can see why people are hesitant to try to stuff it into the same box with Hades and Yomi. It obviously isn't the same kind of underworld, if it's even an "underworld" at all, and it would be outright inaccurate to try to make it one.

Scion, of course, likes to use that good old classical model - an Overworld, an Underworld, and the World sandwiched in the middle. The Orisha, lacking the same kind of structure, are one of those pantheons that flummox that easy system. If you're looking for an Underworld in the same tradition as the other pantheons of Scion, you'll have to get creative. You could try to build Orun into an underworld proper, though doing so would involve inventing a lot from whole cloth thanks to the total dearth of details. Since the Orisha are also the gods of their diaspora religions in the Americas, you also have your pick of the underworlds of those faiths, which have developed them thanks to the need for a more concrete afterlife and influence from other religions (especially monotheistic ones). Guinee, the vodun concept of the watery realm of the ancestors where the dead return to their African roots, or modern Santeria's and Candomble's adoption and syncretization of similar realms to the Christian Heaven and Hell. Whatever you choose, embrace it; the Orisha are gods who have spawned many syncretic religions and serve many disparate peoples, and their cosmology might be more fluid than that of other pantheons.

The Orisha are far from the only pantheon in the world that doesn't follow the simple Scion world setup, but they're the first one to make it to the website (for those of you using the extra pantheon supplements on the Downloads page, the Alihah are similarly mold-breaking) as part of the regular cast. Every game will have to decide how it wants to handle their attitudes toward death and the spirits of the departed.

The Orisha dead, they never do lie quiet.