Aganju

A leopard lived in the king’s house at Oyo, and it was tame. Snakes whose bite should have killed a man crawled over the king who kept them, and he let them. That king was Aganju, and when the Reverend Samuel Johnson wrote down what Oyo remembered of its rulers, he opened a new chapter with him and called it “Historical Kings”. Johnson finished his History of the Yorubas in 1897, and it reached print in Lagos in 1921. On the far side of the Atlantic the same name belongs to something much larger: Agayú Solá, the giant of the Cuban orishas, father of Changó and master of the lava under the earth. Between the leopard-keeping king and the volcano there is a long road, and most of it went by sea.

Johnson’s account of the succession is brisk. Shango, the thunder king, left no heir, and so the crown passed without any quarrel to Aganju, the son of Shango’s brother Ajaka. That makes Aganju Shango’s nephew in the Oyo king list. Other tellings disagree. Some practitioners who follow Oyo tradition call him Shango’s younger brother, and in Cuba he is Shango’s father. Depending on who is speaking, Aganju is Shango’s nephew, his brother or his father, which covers every generation there is to cover.

His reign, Johnson says, was long and very prosperous. He had a gift for taming wild animals, and the venomous reptiles he kept could be seen crawling around him. He rebuilt the palace in style, adding piazzas, open verandahs, to the front and back and lining them with rows of brass posts, and he began the custom of hanging the palace with cloth on state occasions. Johnson calls him a sovereign of accomplished taste. Oyo’s own memory agrees. A praise-song recorded by the art historian R. O. Rom Kalilu in 1992 says that no king had ever made such verandahs in Oyo until King Aganju, who set up posts inside and outside the house and built a hundred and twenty of them. On a festival day the brass would have caught the savanna sun, and the hangings would have moved in the hot wind between the posts.

The trouble came at the end, and it came through a woman. Aganju wanted to marry Iyayun, the daughter of a lesser ruler who happened to share his name, Aganju the Onisambo. The Onisambo refused. The king of Oyo went to war over the refusal, captured the Onisambo together with his allies the Onitede, the Onimeri and the Alagbona, destroyed their towns and took the bride by force. Then his only son, Lubegò, was discovered with Iyayun. The father sentenced his son to the full penalty of the law, and the sentence was carried out. Aganju died of grief not long after, before his heir was even born. The war was for a woman, and so was the grief.

He did not vanish when he died. Johnson records the formula by which a nobleman of Oyo who had forfeited the king’s favour was condemned. The words named the living ruler first and then the dead: “The ancient Kings Oduduwa, Orañyan, Aganju, and others, reject you.” A man who heard that sentence was expected to take poison and die. Aganju had become one of the founding dead whose judgement could not be appealed, and Johnson notes that many Oyo kings were actually deified. Whether Aganju was ever a living man at all is another question. Because he carries the name of a deity, and because some Oyo traditions make the king the origin of the god, later historians have doubted him, and Babatunde Agiri, writing on early Oyo history in 1975, treated him as mythical.

In Brazil he kept his place beside Shango, and lost some of his edges. The French ethnographer Pierre Verger, listing the twelve Xangôs honoured in the Candomblé houses of Bahia, included Aganju among them and noted the muddle in the list, since Aganju was really one of Xangô’s successors on the throne. In Bahia he is worshipped as a form, or quality, of Xangô himself, the king absorbed into the god he followed.

Cuba made him enormous. In the Lucumí practice of the island he is Agayú Solá, an orisha mayor, a senior orisha, and the Cuban ethnologist Natalia Bolívar, in her book Los Orishas en Cuba, describes him as the giant of the Ocha and the father of Changó. He is the orisha of the dry earth and the desert. His powers are the powers that move ground: the force of rivers that cut one territory from another, the lava that bores up through the crust, the earthquake, and the impulse that keeps the earth turning. His mother is named Oroiña. Neither Cuba nor the Yoruba country has an active volcano, and the volcano belongs to the Cuban development of the orisha rather than to the Oyo king.

He is not a comfortable giant. Bolívar calls his temper warlike and choleric. Yet the same tradition gives him a gentle habit. He walks with long strides, lifting his legs high, and he likes to swing a child up onto his shoulders and carry it. That habit, and the river, brought him his Catholic double. Saint Christopher was the giant who carried travellers across a wide and dangerous river, and who once carried the Christ Child across it, and in Cuba Agayú is identified with him. Cuban houses describe Agayú as the boatman who takes people over the current. Saint Christopher is also the patron of Havana, which made Agayú, by the logic of the saints, a guardian of the capital. He is also claimed by truck drivers, dockworkers, chauffeurs and aviators, everyone whose work is carrying things across distances.

His strength follows from what he is. The Oyo king’s gift was mastery of dangerous animals and of builders, the power to order a court and a palace; the Cuban orisha commands the forces under the ground and the current of the river, and he can carry what others cannot. The limits follow too. The king who could lie down among snakes could not govern his own house, and a single betrayal ended both his son and himself. The orisha’s anger is the flaw every telling mentions, and even the giant needs somewhere to go. When Agayú finds himself in trouble, Cuban tradition says, he takes refuge in the palm.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Aganju in Yoruba tradition?

Aganju is a legendary Alaafin, or king, of Old Oyo who was later honoured as a sacred ancestor and deity. Samuel Johnson’s History of the Yorubas says he inherited the throne from Shango’s line as the son of Shango’s brother Ajaka. His name was invoked with Oduduwa and Orañyan among the ancient kings whose judgement condemned disgraced nobles.

Is Aganju Shango’s father or his brother?

Aganju’s relationship to Shango changes with the tradition. In Johnson’s Oyo king list Aganju is Shango’s nephew, some practitioners of Oyo tradition call him Shango’s younger brother, and in Cuban Lucumí practice Agayú Solá is Changó’s father. In Brazilian Candomblé Aganju is treated as a form of Xangô himself.

Why is Aganju associated with volcanoes?

The volcano belongs to the Cuban form of the orisha, Agayú Solá, who rules the lava under the earth, earthquakes, the dry earth and the desert. Neither Cuba nor the Yoruba homeland has an active volcano, and the Oyo record of King Aganju says nothing about one. The association grew in Cuba as the orisha became the master of the ground’s hidden forces.

What happened to King Aganju of Oyo?

King Aganju went to war to take Iyayun, the daughter of the Onisambo, as his bride. When his only son Lubegò was discovered with Iyayun, Aganju had the son put to death under the law. Johnson records that the king died of grief soon afterwards, before his heir was born.

Why is Aganju linked with Saint Christopher?

In Cuba, Agayú Solá is identified with Saint Christopher, the giant who carried travellers across a dangerous river and once carried the Christ Child. Agayú is also said to love carrying children on his shoulders and is described as the boatman who takes people across the river’s current. Because Saint Christopher is the patron of Havana, Agayú is counted among the city’s protectors.

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Shango, Oya, Oduduwa, Olodumare (Olorun), Obatala, Yemọja, Oshun, Ogun, Eshu, Oba, Egungun, Babalú-Ayé, Pele, Vulcan