Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [204]
How did a suicidal king become a god and end up in the Supreme Court?
Along with the trickster tales of Hare and Anansi the Spider, a great many other gods made the terrible transatlantic crossing known as the Middle Passage from Africa to the New World. Once settled in the fertile grounds of the Caribbean and the Americas, these African gods didn’t just disappear. Myth—and belief—are hard things to break. Many of the gods and traditions of the Yoruba and Fon, in particular, crossed the Atlantic with the people taken from West Africa, and found a home in the New World. Among the many gods who were given new lives and new meaning was Shango, the powerful storm god of Yoruba.
Possibly based on an actual mortal king, Shango was famed for his abilities as both a warrior and a powerful magician. While dabbling in magic, Shango causes lightning to strike his palace, killing some of his many wives and children. Overcome by grief, he hangs himself. When his enemies scorn the dead king, they are destroyed by storms, and Shango is declared to be a god who controls the thunder and lightning. That’s one version. In another telling of his legend, Shango is an oppressive ruler, and when his people rebel, he is exiled to the forest, where he hangs himself from a tree. Those who remain loyal to Shango refuse to believe that he committed suicide, and say he has gone to heaven to become god of rain and thunder, symbolized by a twin-headed ax. No matter which version of his life and death his believers accept, Shango is always revered as a great source of magic and a sexual dynamo.
When Shango’s devoted followers were taken as slaves to the Americas, they continued to worship him, along with most of the other gods of the Yoruban and West African pantheon. Many of these gods emerged in new religions that fused African traditions with the Christianity that the slaves were forced to accept along with their chains. Few aspects of African-American or Afro-Caribbean culture have been more mythologized or grossly stereotyped—especially by Hollywood—than the traditions that emerged as voodoo and Santeria.
•“Voodoo”
Although commonly called voodoo, this New World religion traces its roots to the African traditional religion Vodun (also Vodoun, Voudou), a word meaning “spirit.” Vodun was recognized as the official religion of Benin in 1996, is practiced by many in Haiti, and can be found in many large cities. One estimate is that 60 million people worldwide worship Vodun. Its followers, called Voduns, are concentrated in Benin, Ghana, Haiti, and in the United States, largely in the American South and wherever Haitian refugees have settled. Also practiced by the West African Yorubans, Vodun may have roots that stretch back thousands of years.
During the colonial slave-trading era, slaves brought Vodun with them to Haiti and other islands in the West Indies, where, upon arriving, they were baptized as Catholics, and slave masters and priests tried to suppress the African Vodun belief. Its priests were killed or imprisoned, which forced the slaves to create underground societies to secretly worship their gods and venerate their ancestors. While attending Mass, as required by their masters, slaves simply continued to follow their original faith. An influential 1884 book called Haiti, or the Black Republic, by S. St. John, described Vodun as an “evil religion,” falsely alleging that it included human sacrifice and cannibalism. Unfortunately, the image has stuck.
Vodun has many traditions based on Yoruban religion, including the belief that Olorun, the chief god, is remote and unknowable. Olorun authorizes a lesser god, named Obtala, to create earth and its life forms. The pantheon of Vodun spirits called “Loa” includes Aida-Wedo (the rainbow spirit based on