Ogun

Also Known As: Ògún; also Ogum and Gu in Brazil, Ogún or Oggun in Cuba, Ogou in Haiti, Gu or Egu among the Fon and Ewe; praise names Osin Imole, Olulana, Lakaaye, Onire
Region/Culture: West Africa
Mythos: Yoruba Mythology, Dahomey/Fon/Ewe Mythology, Brazilian Mythology, Caribbean Mythology, West African Mythologies
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He owns iron and everything made from it, which gives him the power to open a road, win a war, seal an oath, and kill without warning.
Role in Mythos: He is the orisha who came down first and cut the path the other divinities travelled, and he remains the patron of hunters, blacksmiths, warriors, and every later trade that took up an edged tool.
Relation to Humans: Blacksmiths, hunters, soldiers, surgeons, mechanics and drivers all count themselves his people, and in traditional Yoruba practice a witness can swear to tell the truth by kissing a piece of iron in his name. He protects them and he is dangerous to them in the same breath, since the iron that clears a field is the iron that kills a child at play.

In a Yoruba court the oath is not always sworn on a book. A witness may be handed a piece of iron instead, cold and heavier than it looks, and told to put it to his lips. What happens afterwards, if he lies, is no longer the judge’s business. It is between him and Ogun, and Ogun is in the iron.

He is the orisha of iron, war and hunting, and by inheritance of everything iron has since become. The blacksmith is his, and so is the soldier, the barber, the butcher, the surgeon, the mechanic under a bonnet in Lagos traffic and the driver who keeps a small charm of his somewhere near the wheel. One of his praise names is Osin Imole, first of the primordial divinities to reach the earth. Another is Olulana, the one who opens the road, and it is meant literally. The story is that the sky people found the way down choked with bush and impassable, and that Ogun went ahead of them with a machete and a dog and cut through it until the rest could follow. Because the knife is made of iron, he eats first at sacrifice, before any other divinity.

Where he came from before that depends on who is telling it. In the Ile-Ife account he belongs to the founding family of the Yoruba world, a son of Oduduwa. In Ekiti they say he was a stranger who came into Yorubaland from elsewhere, and local histories name his father Tabutu and his mother Orororiran and even give him a lifespan in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a precision the wider tradition does not share. There is a further set of stories in which he made a bid for the throne of Ife after Obatala, was pushed out by Obalufon and driven into exile. The accounts disagree, and they have disagreed for a very long time.

The record dresses him rather than describes him. Worshippers at his festivals tie mariwo, the young pale fronds of the oil palm, around the neck, the chest, the waist and the arms, and say that this was what he wore when he walked about on earth. They hang chains of miniature iron tools. In Haiti he carries a saber and wears a red sash and is said to be covered with iron so that nothing his enemies do can reach him. The praise singers give a bloody cap and ask, not very hopefully, to be allowed to see the red of his eye. Beyond that he is mostly a silhouette of implements. Nobody seems to have pinned down his face, and after a while it becomes clear that nobody needed to.

At a forge before the day is hot, the bar comes out of the charcoal the colour of the inside of a wound and the hammer starts, and every ring of it carries across the compound. What leaves the anvil is a hoe for somebody’s yams, a cutlass for somebody’s hunting, a blade for somebody’s argument. That is Ogun working, and it is also the reason the festivals look the way they do. When his day comes round, households bring out the iron they actually use and set it down together to be washed and fed with palm oil and palm wine: knives, guns, blacksmiths’ tongs, scissors, wrenches, the tools of whatever anyone happens to do for a living.

The most consequential thing he ever did, he did to his own people. Returning to Ire and looking for a town that had moved, he came on a gathering holding a silent meeting where speech was forbidden. Nobody greeted him. Nobody offered him palm wine. He drew his sword and killed a great many of them where they sat. He killed them all in silence, because none of them were permitted to speak. When the rage went out of him he understood what he had done, turned back the way he had come, and met a man who put roasted yam and palm wine in front of him. That man was afterwards called Elepe, the one who appeased. Ogun told the survivors how to call him and promised to come whenever they did. Then he drove his sword into the ground at a place called Iju, crouched on it, and let the earth take him. His people are careful about the wording. He did not die. He sank.

Because he went into the ground rather than out of the world, he is available, and he is plural. A hunters’ chant counts seven Oguns and gives each his own diet: the Ogun of Alara takes a dog, the Ogun of Ire takes a ram, the Ogun of Onikola takes a snail, the Ogun of the woodcarvers drinks the sap of trees, another eats roasted yam, another the horn of a ram, another the flesh of a tortoise. The ram at Ire is explained simply, since a son worships his father with a ram, and the kings of Ire are held to be his descendants. The hare is never offered there at all. An Ifa verse remembers that when Ogun and his son had fallen out, the dog failed to reconcile them, and the ram failed, and the cock failed, and only the hare succeeded.

The praise poetry does not soften any of this. He kills on the right and destroys on the right, and kills on the left and destroys on the left. He kills suddenly in the house and suddenly in the field. He kills the child with the iron with which it plays. He kills the thief and the owner of the stolen goods together, and the owner of the house, and paints the hearth with his blood. The same poem then says he gives all his clothes away to beggars, and calls him a mad god who will ask his questions seven hundred and eighty years late, and asks him, politely, not to. Ulli Beier printed that version in English in 1970 and it has been quoted ever since, usually by people who noticed that it does not resolve.

His festivals still run. Ire-Ekiti holds Ogun Onire in August and it comes first in the year, before Ondo in September and Irun Akoko in October. At Ile-Ife the Olojo festival brings the Ooni out after seven days of seclusion wearing the Aare crown, which is shown in public once a year and not otherwise. Meanwhile the god himself went with the ships. Among the Fon and Ewe he is Gu, sent down to make the earth fit to live on and not yet finished with the job. In Brazil he is Ogum, matched with Saint George in Rio and with Saint Sebastian or Saint Anthony in Bahia, and a study of Candomblé houses in Pernambuco and Paraíba found the dog offered to him and to nobody else. In Cuba he is Ogún, standing behind Saint Peter. In Haiti he is not one spirit but a company of them, Ogou Feray and Ogou Badagri and the rest, who guard the badji and take white rum, sometimes set alight in a dish so that they can wash the hands of the faithful. The song says: I am iron, I am covered with iron. The body of Feray is covered with knives.

Wole Soyinka took him up in the poem Idanre in 1967 and in the lectures published as Myth, Literature and the African World in 1976, and made him the patron of the artist, the one who goes first into the dangerous gap and comes back with something. That reading is Soyinka’s, and modern, and it has been so influential that it is often mistaken for the ancient one. The older material is blunter about the arrangement. Ogun’s power is that he goes first and cuts, and his limitation is that he is not able to stop, and cannot be relied upon to know whose throat is in front of him. He is not appeased by argument. He is appeased by roasted yam, palm wine, and being addressed correctly, which is a low bar and also the only one there is.

The descendants of Elepe kept the site at Iju, and by the terms of it they never look on the king of Ire again.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Ogun in Yoruba religion?

Ogun is the Yoruba orisha of iron, war, hunting and metalwork, and by extension the patron of every trade that uses an edged or metal tool, including blacksmiths, hunters, soldiers, surgeons, mechanics and drivers. He is called Osin Imole, the first of the primordial divinities to reach the earth, because he is said to have cleared the path the other orisha travelled down. Since the knife is made of iron, he receives the first share at sacrifice.

How did Ogun die?

Ogun’s followers hold that he did not die. After killing many of his own people at Ire in a rage, he drove his sword into the ground at a place called Iju, crouched on it and sank into the earth, promising to come to the aid of anyone who called on him. The Yoruba phrase used is that he sank into the ground rather than that he died.

What are Ogun’s symbols?

Iron is his primary emblem, alongside the dog and the palm frond. Worshippers tie fresh pale palm fronds, called mariwo, around the neck, chest, waist and arms, and his shrines and festivals display working iron objects: cutlasses, knives, guns, blacksmiths’ tools, scissors and wrenches.

Is Ogun the same as Ogou in Haitian Vodou?

Yes, Ogou in Haitian Vodou descends directly from the Yoruba Ogun, though he arrived in the Caribbean and became a family of spirits rather than one. Ogou Feray, Ogou Badagri and the others guard the badji, the temple’s sacred altar, carry an iron saber, wear red, and are offered white rum. He appears in Brazil as Ogum, in Cuba as Ogún, and among the Fon and Ewe as Gu.

Why is Ogun given a dog?

The dog is the traditional companion of the hunter, and Ogun’s character is itself described as doglike: aggressive, fearless, direct. Not every Ogun receives one, since a hunters’ chant counts seven Oguns with seven different offerings, and the Ogun of Ire takes a ram rather than a dog because a son worships his father with a ram.