Question: So, what's Shapona's place in the Orisha?
A nonexistent one; we're about 99.99999% sure Shapona is a Titan Avatar.
Shapona - or Shakpanna, or Sopona, or Babalu Aye, or Omolu and sundry other variations thereof - is just a seriously unpleasant and injurious dude. He is almost always depicted as grisly and hideous, covered in oozing sores, limping lamely and possessed of terrible chalk-white skin. He smites mortals with disease, originally specializing in smallpox but in the modern era branching out to become lord of more recent scourges such as AIDS, and is actively hidden from, driven away and avoided by mortals at all costs. He is also notoriously cranky and judgmental, which is a bad combination for a being that rains flesh-rot down on everyone who annoys him.
The stories of Shapona are uniformly antagonistic toward the rest of his pantheon. In one, he invents virulent disease and spreads it across the world in revenge after his fellow gods do not give him what he considers to be an equal share of their inheritance from Olodumare. In another, he responds to the gods laughing at his stumbling during a dance ritual by attempting to kill them all with diseases until Obatala succeeds in driving him away with a spear. In yet another he taunts Shango, saying that the thunder-god makes loud noises and flashy demonstrations to kill just one person while Shapona kills thousands without anyone knowing until he has succeeded, making him a more fearsome force, and in another Olodumare himself strikes him dead for breaking a taboo on sex. Basically, he does not like the Orisha and they do not like him, and none of their interactions end positively for anyone.
The interesting place where Shapona deviates from the usual Titan setup is in his strong and thriving mortal cult presence, which continues even into the present day. Most Titans don't have a strong presence in the World, but Shapona has shrines throughout west Africa and the Caribbean, which seems to make him more like a bad-tempered god. Shapona's cults, however, are completely batshit insane; most of them are dedicated to trying to convince him, either with misdirecting and begging prayers or bribery offerings at his shrines, to go away and not come around to scourge everyone with sickness and death. His priesthood has historically been prone to threatening the populace, demanding donations and special treatment lest they call down their patron on all and sundry, and furthermore they were rumored to actually intentionally spread smallpox when thwarted.
Of course, some worshipers of the god maintain that he's just getting a bad rap from British colonialists who didn't really understand the religion, and some of his aspects in the New World have moved from begging him not to give humanity diseases to believing that he can be called upon to heal diseases they already have. If a Storyteller wanted to run Shapona as a god instead of a Titan, he could probably be finessed into the role, but from our point of view he's got Titan written all over him.
In fact, McClelland goes so far as to call him "the embodiment of hatred directed against the whole pantheon and mankind as well". If that's not a definition of a Titan, we don't know what else would be.
I actually run him as the primary Titan antagonist for the Orishas under the name Babalu-Aye, with Aye itself as the Realm of Earth.
ReplyDeleteTwo of my players recently lead a small task force of Gods into Aye, confronted Babalu-Aye and distracted him with Tezcatlipoca performed a ritual to seal the Realm inside itself. It was fun.
Yeah, he's probably going to be our major antagonist for them, too, though I'm not sure he'll be aligned with Earth.
DeleteThe distinction between Earth/Beast/Life/Flora is still really blurry for my game. I haven't come up with any single scheme that I'm really satisfied with because each culture approaches that divide in a different way.
DeleteCool never considered him a titan. In my write up of him I view him more like maybe Ares or Hera in that he can be antagonistic and the other Gods don't really like him and shun him but he's still part of the pantheon anyway. Plus without him there's really no conflict within the pantheon everybody seems buddy except Eshu when he's in a trickster mood or Shango when he's in his wife beating mood
ReplyDeleteAre you nuts? Olokun has to be chained down to keep him from flooding the world because he's pissed about all this earth in his water, Eshu regularly not only pranks but tries to kill fellow gods and their servants, Shango is a rampant war-wager who fights with his brother Ogun, Oshun, Oya and Oba are in a constant state of insane fighting among themselves, Shango's tried to kill at least two of his current wives and succeeded with others, Erinle tried to steal Shango's wife, Shango accidentally threw Obatala in jail for several years, Oshosi shot his mother in the face, Oko and Olokun have been having a violent marital dispute for who knows how long and Ogun is prone to killing everybody.
DeleteThey're just about as dysfunctional and violent with one another as the Dodekatheon. These people are crazy.
Hmmm... maybe I did downplay their internal conflict a little. However, I would like to nominate Orungan as a great Titan choice though because attempting to rape your mother and then being foiled, beaten, and exiled by her spontaneous offspring can probably leave a guy with a serious grudge.
ReplyDeleteI agree he's a great choice for an antagonist, but probably not for a full Titan Avatar, more like a banished and thoroughly hated god. The problem is that he doesn't do or represent anything - I have no earthly idea what Titanrealm he would be part of because he doesn't do anything except go after his mother and, in another myth, become the first babalawo when he learns the secret of the palm nuts. A few scholars have tried to make him a representative of things, but it's mostly guesswork based on his name and comparisons to nearby Egypt. His lack of any associations makes it hard to make him the primordial representative of one, you know?
DeleteBut he's definitely not welcome around the Orisha, I'm sure, and probably very unpleasant. He sucks bigtime.