Lovely Lady of the Waves

Question: In Brazil, Iemanjá is perharps the most widely worshiped Orisha. Do you guys consider she's Legend 11 or 10, or is it more like in the Core where she's just an aspect of the water Titan Mami Wata?

Oh, we would definitely say she's much too important to be only Legend 10 or 11. Yemaja (or Iemanja, or Yemaya, or about ten other variations on her name) is a pivotally important figure in Orisha mythology and religions like Candomble that descended from it, and the mother of half the pantheon to boot.

We're most inclined to treat Yemanja as a Titan. She's definitely of the older generations of the Orisha, and while that doesn't automatically mean she has to be a Titan (after all, Obatala isn't!), it does position her as a primordial mother figure to many of the other gods, a role that Titans often fill. In addition, in Yoruba mythology she has a very troubled relationship with the rest of the Orisha thanks to her assault and rape by her son Orungan, after which she gave birth to most of the other major Orisha (including Ogun, Shango, Oshun and Oya) in the midst of her trauma (or, depending on the interpretation of the myth, as a result of committing suicide to escape Orungan). Being assaulted by her children and then giving birth to the rest of them as a direct result of that assault is not likely to make her be very invested in wanting to be a part of the pantheon, and she has more than enough reason to act toward them in enmity, or at least indifference to their problems.

There's a lot of interesting historical discussion going on about exactly what happened with Yemanja and her cult in the African diaspora. She was a fairly important, but not all-important, goddess in pre-slavery Yoruba society; she did have her shrines and worshipers, but as the older mother-goddess she was more of a figure of story than a currently active power, and the prevalence of other local river-goddesses made her less necessary as a major water functionary. When large numbers of Yoruba people were captured and taken as slaves across the Atlantic Ocean, Yemanja, as the mother goddess of water, was possibly called upon to intercede for them or help take care of them during the journey, and it's possible that she became much more important for those who had to cross the ocean and thrive in a new land under terrible conditions than she had been for those in the motherland for whom the status quo had not changed so drastically. Because there was also an ocean god in play - Olokun, who later probably became Agwe - it's also likely that Yemanja and Olokun shared some legendary aspects during the crossing and affected one anothers' cults, leading to Yemanja rising in supremacy while Olokun diminished in the New World. Yemanja therefore has an importance in South America that she perhaps didn't have in Africa, which results in more worship there than she might have had in traditional Yorube religion.

However, we've never liked calling her just a part of Mami Wata. While Mami Wata figures are widespread across various West African cultures and their diaspora peoples, they often represent water goddesses that have been heavily altered by syncretization or lost to historical omission of previous religions, and that doesn't apply much to the Orisha, who not only have and remember Yemanja quite well but also other major water deities like Oshun, Oya, Oba or Erinle (indeed, Mami Wata is a figure borrowed from other coastal African peoples, not a native Yoruba figure). Mami Wata is a comparatively younger creature as well as a more narrow interpretation of what a water goddess might do and represent (i.e., often she is a siren-like bombshell but lacks Yemanja's connotations of motherhood or sustenance of life), and with Yemanja having such a central and important place in Yoruba mythology, it doesn't make much sense to us to remove her and replace her with an only somewhat-related figure who isn't really from the same culture in the first place.

So we do consider Yemanja to probably be a Titan, but she doesn't necessarily have all that much to do with the original books' Mami Wata. If anything, Mami Wata would be an aspect of Yemanja and not the other way around.

Fire, Water and Iron

Question: Considering Yemaja is the wife of Aganju, what was the fallout from her failed seduction of Ogun? I would think that he would either murder Yemaja for cheating on him or murder Ogun for beating her after after her failed seduction. And considering her role as Aganju's wife and her place on the chart, isn't she an older goddess, higher on the totem pole than Ogun anyway?

Ah, the thorny wilds of African and diaspora mythology. There are at least five versions of this story, each with its own problems and possibilities, and Storytellers will have to choose which ones they want to use before they have any hope of figuring out what's going on.

In Yoruba mythology, Yemaja and Ogoun actually aren't the couple with improper relationship issues; it's her first and only son with Aganju, Orungan, that poses the problem. When he had grown to adulthood, he was overcome with lust for his mother and propositioned her; when she refused, he raped her while Aganju was gone and then chased her relentlessly all over the world. It was after this assault that Yemaja spontaneously gave birth to most of the other orisha, including Ogoun, and in doing so destroyed most of her own body.

It's in the more recent religion of Candomble (and its other related diaspora religions in South and Central America) that we find the myth of Ogoun and Yemaja, which appears to have taken the place of the old one about Orungan. In it, it's Yemaja who's overcome with inappropriate lust for her son and who attempts to seduce him until he figures out what she's doing and rebuffs her, which is probably a cultural reaction to the gradual change in Ogoun from a somewhat terrifying monster in African myth to a more potent, sexual figure in the New World. In most endings of this version of the myth, Ogoun decides not to out his mother's shame to anyone, and presumably family dinners are just slightly more secretly awkward.

In another popular variation, Ogoun doesn't resist Yemaja's advances and carries on a clandestine affair with her for quite some time. When he finds himself in danger of being discovered (or is actually discovered), he runs away into the forest to seal himself off from the other gods for a self-imposed exile of shame. In yet another version, he rapes her (more similar to the African myth with Orungan) and then does the same thing. What Yemaja and Aganju do about it afterward is not discussed in either version.

Finally, in another more originally African story, Ogoun and Yemaja are actually legitimately married and there seems to be no worry from anyone that this isn't okay. Since many Yoruba legends change slightly depending on geographical location, it's possible that either Yemaja wasn't considered married to anyone else there, that Ogoun wasn't considered her son there, or both or neither. The myth in that case involves the two of them discovering that they simply can't get along thanks to Ogoun's clumsiness and temper, and Yemaja turns herself into a river and leaves him at the end.

So you can see that there's plenty of mileage for pretty much any way you want to run with this myth, depending on whether you prefer African or New World stories and how badly behaved you want particular people to be. Yoruba mythology does a lot of this sort of thing, because while it certainly assigns exploits and qualities to its gods, it also sometimes tends to treat them rather fluidly in terms of relationships and genders. It's even more pronounced when you factor in the African diaspora religions, as different groups of Yoruba people went to different places, were influenced by different factors and cultures and altered or invented different myths about their gods as a result.

As for what everyone is doing in the fallout of this situation in Scion, it largely depends on which version you've chosen to run with, but you're right, no matter which it is, Aganju's likely to be pretty pissy about it. He's not particularly renowned for his calm personality or forgiving nature, and I suspect Ogoun (and/or Orungan) would be well-served to avoid him in the future. Actually, Ogoun's position as god of the forge - that is, fire harnessed to benefit humanity - may be at least in part motivated by this myth, as he is directly competing with Aganju for control of the fiery element.

Ogoun generally feels bad about the whole situation no matter which way you decide it panned out, so I doubt he ever brings it up, and he would probably be in a pretty smitey mood if someone else did (these Yoruba gods and their tempers!). He's often mentioned in modern myths as closely accompanying Yemaja, but you could just as easily rule that he avoids her like the plague.

As for Yemaja herself, we haven't done our Yoruba rewrite yet (though I see it's coming on the poll over there!) but I suspect that, like Aganju, she will probably end up being a Titan. You're right that she's an older figure in the pantheon and represents more elemental, primal powers, and most of the other major gods are her children rather than her peers. How she feels about Ogoun would of course depend on what version of the myth you used - she might still be in love with him, might hate him for raping her, might be uncomfortable and embarrassed around him if he rejected her, or any number of other things. I doubt very much that Aganju did all that much to her, however; she's an equivalent power to him and of an opposing element to boot, making it difficult for him to really try to punish her, and in many of these situations she could be seen as the victim instead of the aggressor anyway.

There's also an issue of goddesses occasionally having more than one spouse in Yoruba myth, something you almost never see in other cultures' stories (for example, Oshun's married to like three people, and while they're certainly jealous of one another, none of them get on her case about it); we're used to the divine husbands of Europe going batshit when their wives have lovers other than themselves, but it's less of an instant trigger for violence among the orisha, and it's more likely that the dudes would just go head to head if they got mad about it and leave the lady out of it. The major problem with most of the myths above is not that Yemaja's already married and therefore couldn't have a lover, but that the lover in question is her son; it's a problem of incest, not marital fidelity. In the original myth with Orungan, he even offers to be her second husband, implying that this is a fairly normal practice for the gods, though she of course refuses him because he's still her son. In most of the myths above, it's probably Ogoun or Orungan that Aganju is really pissed off at, not Yemaja herself (though of course he still might be pissy with her; the fact that it's technically legal for women to have multiple husbands doesn't mean he has to like it).

And, well, Aganju's a Titan, so the fact that he probably wants to melt Ogoun's face off is pretty convenient that way.