Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The King Did Not Hang Himself

Question: Shango was the king of the Loa, but who rules the Orisha?

Still Shango!

Possible the most important thing about Shango is the fact that he is The King. Most of his myths revolve around his kingship, either threats to it, laws imposed by it or extending it to conquer other territories, and he absolutely suffers no challenges to his authority. In fact, Shango's identity as a monarch is so strong that that's the entire reason he was also considered king of the Loa, despite the fact that he's of lesser importance in some of the New World religions than he was in the ancient Yoruba one.

There are other figures of authority among the Orisha, of course. Ogun may not be king right now, but he was for a very brief period of time (or, at the very least, challenged Shango fairly evenly for it before giving it up) and has several stories in which the other Orisha ask him to take the throne, perhaps hoping he'd be less insane than Shango when it comes to divine administration. Obatala, whose most common epithet is King of the White Cloth, has never officially been the pantheon's leader but nevertheless wields enormous influence and political power as the oldest among the gods and the one who most often directly works for Olodumare. And Olodumare, of course, is the ultimate authority over the gods, though he doesn't directly rule or interact with them much and leaves questions of law and enforcement to his children to sort out for themselves.

Someone else is only going to get power over this pantheon by prying it from Shango's clenched and dead hands, and even then they'd probably better beware - he has a habit of getting back up after that sort of thing.

6 comments:

  1. Shango always feels like political satire to me.

    He feels like the embodiment of someone telling a story about how political leaders do terribly stupid things, but if you point it out to them they will murder you so fast it is not even funny.

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    1. Ha ha, it's true. Yoruba theology paints Shango as the vengeful hammer of justice; while the concept of justice itself is embodied by the all-powerful Olodumare, he's too benevolent and remote to actually visit it on anyone, so Shango is in charge of administering it with all due fury on whomever needs it. He has five dots of Vengeance and he is IN NO MOOD, AFRICA.

      It's an interesting contrast with pantheons like the Dodekatheon, Yazata or Anunna - they have personality quirks, but their people generally regarded them as benevolent, wise and all-powerful. The Yoruba (and many other religions in sub-Saharan Africa) didn't believe their gods were infallible, and as a result there's a lot of rampant punking and bad decisions going on among them.

      Europe tends toward "the powers of the universe support and maintain it". Africa tends toward "the powers of the universe are batshit crazy, man".

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  2. I imagine Shango is in the same position Huitzilopochtli is in; sure they're both the kings and leaders of their respective pantheons, but there are other deities of equal influence within. In fact in some cases it would be easier to talk to one of the... more stable gods.

    I wonder if that would bother them?

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    1. Probably. Kings usually have their pride.

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