Question: I want to use your site as a resource for my games, but I've never heard of some of the gods on here and I don't really have time to research everything behind you. If I did, I wouldn't need the site. Are these all for real mythology?
Heh. For real mythology is usually what we do here, yes. We try very hard to make sure everything here has roots in the myths, primary sources and history of various cultures and their ancient religions. I'm not going to try to quote you all our sourcing because that would take eons, but we do have sourcing, and it is not Wikipedia. If you ever have specific questions about a given god, myth or other thing you don't recognize, you can always ask us and we'll be happy to explain where it came from!
I would like to point out, however, that this site is also for our games, so there are a few gods on our family trees that are not for real mythology - they're the gods that our PCs have become during their career as Scions. Those gods are Aiona, Eztli, Folkwardr, Jioni, Sowiljr, Sverrir, Terminus, Vala, Yoloxochitl and Zwazo Fou Fou, a motley crew of miscreants across the Aesir, Loa, Dodekatheon and Aztlanti family trees. However, they're very easy to tell apart from the legit mythological gods, because they have character sheets, theme music and other character-specific things on their pages, whereas the classic god-parents do not. If you see a god with a character sheet, it's always a PC.
Past that, everything should be about as you see it. Of course, we're actively running games and various mythologies have conflicting myths or figures involved, so we do have to make choices; sometimes our choice might not be the same as yours, so never be afraid to ask us about it or go off and find an alternative version that suits you better. In the meantime, we'll keep on trying to be a good resource, and we're glad you came by!
And they've really, really done their research - none of that made up stuff the books are guilty of from time to time.
ReplyDeleteSo props to their amazing work
Y'all are just trying to inflate our egos.
DeleteYou forgot Etzli.
ReplyDeleteAhaha, I did. Hilarious. I'll edit to include her.
Deletenonono, that's Anne's attempt to edit history
DeleteProbably doesn't really bleong here, but as you are already talking about your research: Could you name some of the books your using for the Loa/Orisha Overhaul? I'm seriously interested in Yoruba Mythology, but it seems most books on it are either long out of print (e.g. Courlander), or have dubious titles making them hard to tell apart from New Age stuff (I try to avoid Santeria too, if possible. Kind of a mythology-purist, I admit it). Especially some easy introduction would be nice (along the lines of the Handbooks on World Mythology by ABC Clio, which sadly don't include Sub-Saharan stuff). I've only read "Yoruba-Speaking Peoples" by Ellis, "Myths of Ife" by Wyndheim and "Yoruba Myths" by Beier yet and all they do is wildly contradict each other, especially regarding gender and genealogy of the deities. I would be very thankful for something to use as foundation for my research.
ReplyDeleteThere is a stack of 30 books behind me...ill go pick 3?
DeleteAnd yeah, I think there is a good chance that most of these are out of print. They look REALLY old.
The Religion of the Yoruba
by
The Venerable ArchDeacon J. Olumide Lucas
I promise you that is what it says. I think this might have been one of the bad ones...Anne do you remember? The author is so cocky that I feel it must be.
Yoruba Myths
Ulli Beier
This one was short and sweet.
The Hero with an African Face
Clyde W. Ford
I really like this book. Very awesome. Anne can probably explain its premise better then I though.
Past that though. Google them and research, its what we did, and typing them all up would be a pain.
Funny timing, as I'm writing a blog post about the Yoruba gods for next week right now. :)
DeleteI can't get you a complete list of everything we've looked at, but here's what we've got in our house right now:
Africa's Ogun: Old World and New by Sandra T. Barnes
The Cult of Ifá Among the Yoruba by E.M. McClelland
The Handbook of Yoruba Religious Concepts by Baba Ifa Karade
Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief by E. Bolaji Idowu
̀Ọṣun Across the Waters: a Yoruba Goddess in Africa and the Americas, edited by Joseph M. Murphy
The Religion of the Yorubas by Jonathan Olumide Lucas
Ṣàngó in Africa and the African Diaspora, edited by Joel E. Tishken
West African Rraditional Religion by T.N.O. Quarcoopome
Yoruba Beliefs and Sacrificial Rites by J. Ọmọṣade Awolalu
Yoruba Myths by Ulli Beier
Those are all Yoruba-specific; I know we also have a huge pile of general "traditional religions of Africa" books that can have some good stuff about the Yoruba gods in them, but their names escape me at the moment.
By the way, it's worth noting that it's not a failure of your source that they're contradictory about genealogy and gender; that's a characteristic of Yoruba mythology. Some of the gods are said to be one gender or the other (Oduduwa comes to mind) depending on what they do and what the local people believe about them. They don't really care what "gender" a god is, because it's a god, so really, what difference does it make? (There are some gods that seem gender-fixed, though, like Shango, and others that have to actively swap, like Obatala.) The geneaology being inconsistent is also a feature of the religion, as Yoruba mythology features a lot of stories that are retold in different villages with variations depending on the teller, so Yemanja might sometimes be Ogun's mother, sometimes his wife, or sometimes totally unrelated to him. And that's okay with them, because they're not sweating which version is "correct", so I wouldn't sweat it too much on your end, either. Pick the version you like the best or see the most often, and run with it.
Ahaha, good point, John, I meant to add that as a caveat: don't take the Venerable Archdeacon too seriously. He's old and crochety and full of seriously outdated theories. He's helpful for relaying information about the gods and myths from firsthand sources, but whenever he wanders off into explaining how that proves that all the Yoruba gods are really Egyptian, you can tune him out.
DeleteAlso, yes, The Hero with the African Face was written in response to the general lack of African stuff in Campbell's work, and it's seriously pretty awesome. It's fun to read on its own even if you don't want to research, and full of good information and insight.
Thank you very much! My local library even has some of them (cheers!) What about "Hail Orisha!" by Peter MacKenzie. They've got that one too. Do you know if it's any good?
DeleteI haven't read that one, so I couldn't say! What I can see from the Google Books preview looks pretty rad, though, so I'd definitely give it a shot.
DeleteMy policy is always that if it's free (i.e., from a library or a friend or something), give it a try. The worst that can happen is it's not useful, and that way you won't accidentally miss out on something that would have been a neat read.