Olódùmarè

Palm oil goes onto the shrine stone, a kola nut splits into four, and the air carries the iron smell of a bird just killed. The prayer that rises over it does not stop where the offering stops. *Olódùmarè gb’ẹbọ wa*, may Olodumare receive our sacrifice: the words go straight past Ògún or Ṣàngó or whoever owns the shrine, past the thatch, and up to a god who has no shrine anywhere in Yorubaland.

That absence is the first fact about him, and the most stubborn. Geoffrey Parrinder put it flatly: the Yoruba Supreme Deity has no temples and no priests, is not called an òrìṣà at all, and stands above and beyond all the gods. No mask carries him. No drum rhythm calls him down into a dancer’s head. No feast day belongs to him, no praise-singer is employed on his account, no cloth is worn in his colours. Nobody has ever carved his face. Nor is there a sex to carve: he is conceived without sexual identity, and the masculine pronoun that English cannot avoid arrived with the missionaries who did the first translating.

Even his name resists handling. Bolaji Idowu broke it into three pieces, a prefix of ownership, *odù* for a vastness that is full to the brim, and *mà rè* for that which does not move or go, giving something like the owner of a fullness that never drains. Omosade Awolalu was more honest about the difficulty: the origin of the word cannot be determined, and the attempts to cut it into syllables have not worked. What the tradition agrees on is the sense rather than the parts, a superlative and everlasting greatness that a person can lean their weight against.

Samuel Johnson, writing the great Yoruba chronicle in the early twentieth century, does not use that name at all. He calls him Ọlọ́run, Lord of Heaven, maker of heaven and earth but too exalted to concern himself directly with people, which is why there are òrìṣà to stand between. Idowu argued the other way round: that Olódùmarè is the older title, that he could quote songs and proverbs nobody had written down before to prove it, and that the popularity of Ọlọ́run grew with Christian and Muslim influence precisely because it sounds so clean and so monotheistic. The name that reads most like “God” in English may be the newer one.

The world he presides over is imagined as a closed calabash, the visible half where people live pressed tight against the invisible half where the dead, the spirits and the gods are, or else as the flat centre of a diviner’s tray inside its carved rim. Four hundred and one òrìṣà line the road to heaven. He created them, or created the conditions in which they came to be, and then handed out the work. As Ẹlẹ́dàá he is the maker. As Ẹlẹ́mìí he is the owner of the breath in a chest, which is a colder title than it looks, because an owner may take back what is his.

The making of solid ground was subcontracted. Ọbàtálá held the commission to fashion the earth and the bodies on it, and Odùduwà took it from him, and the ground came up at Ilé-Ifẹ̀. The town of Itapa stages the quarrel in the annual festival of Ọbàtálá: the battle, Ọbàtálá beaten and sent away, and then the rejoicing among gods and people when Odùduwà invites him back. The Ọyọ Yoruba keep a separate story about the same ancient king, in which Ṣàngó imprisons him for nothing at all, and famine in the fields and barrenness in the houses follow until he is let go. Idowu’s version of the creation account keeps the shape that matters: divinities were commissioned, one of them failed, others finished the job, and the report had to be carried back up to Olodumare, who learned how it had gone by being told.

He is not always watching. In the Ifá corpus he sends for Ọ̀rúnmìlà because a worshipper has come to him complaining, and hears that the man’s own chosen destiny had made every effort on his behalf useless, and the verse ends with Olodumare pleased that he had not passed judgement on one side of the story. Another verse has him perplexed over some grave matter, with all the divinities failing to name the cause and only Ọ̀rúnmìlà putting a finger on it. In Ìwòrì Òsá the whole world is at his door crying *Bàbá, save us*, and his answer is not thunder but exasperation: those to whom he gave power have refused to use it, those to whom he gave wisdom have refused to use it. John Bewaji, reading these verses against the theology built over them, points out what they plainly say. The wisdom Olodumare turns to at these moments is a wisdom he made himself and then entrusted to somebody else.

He is deathless, and even that was arranged rather than assumed. Idowu records a myth in which Olodumare himself went looking for the means of immortality, was told to make sacrifice and to provide a great piece of white cloth, and when the rite was finished the cloth was spread over him until he was entirely covered, and from that time he did not die. The Ifá verse that carries it says the young never hear that cloth is dead, only that cloth wears old to shreds, and the young never hear that Olodumare is dead. Another verse has Korofo, the diviner of the underground, consulted about Olodumare and declaring that his death would never be heard of, though read the other way round the one doing the consulting is Olodumare himself. A third line has him rubbing his head with the divining powder until his whole head has gone hoary with it.

What he holds is total in a way that is easy to state and awkward to translate. The word for it is aṣẹ, the power by which a thing said becomes a thing done, and it runs out of him into gods, ancestors, people, animals, plants, stones, rivers and voiced words. Every power in the world is therefore on loan: the authority of kings, the strength of medicine, the reach of witches, the specialisms of the òrìṣà, all of it limited and revocable. He is the judge of character, and in Yoruba belief that judgement has already begun here, on the ground, without waiting for anywhere else. Good and evil both come out of the one source, which is why the problem that has tormented Christian theology never arrives in this system at all. A being who can do anything is not diminished by being able to do harm. He is diminished by being unable to.

The limits are limits of reach and of vocabulary. The classical language of omniscience does not fit him: things happen without his direct awareness, in the world and in heaven both, and he has recourse to Ifá, a wisdom he made and then had to consult. The parts of the world he handed over have stayed handed over. Most of what reaches English readers about him comes through Idowu’s 1962 book, whose primary material is superb and whose framing, John Pemberton wrote, is compromised by an uncritical use of Christian theological concepts and categories. Emmanuel Ofuasia goes further and argues that the god of the Ifá verses is not a monotheist’s god at all but something nearer to panentheism, an entity that reasons and negotiates and depends on the world it made. The verses are older than the argument about them, and one of them blames Olodumare’s forgetfulness for the fact that a duck’s feet were never separated.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Olodumare?

Olodumare is the supreme being of Yoruba religion, the source of creation, of the breath in living bodies and of every power the other divinities hold. He is also called Ọlọ́run, owner of the sky, and Ẹlẹ́dàá, the creator. Unlike the òrìṣà, he is not counted among the gods but placed above and beyond them.

Does Olodumare have shrines or priests?

He has no temple and no priesthood of his own, and Geoffrey Parrinder noted that he is not even counted as an òrìṣà. Prayers reach him through the òrìṣà, who do have shrines, and worshippers making an offering at any shrine will ask Olodumare to receive it. Idowu disputed the further claim that he therefore goes unworshipped, and he can be addressed directly, anywhere, without a priest.

What does the name Olodumare mean?

The meaning is disputed and no explanation has settled it. Bolaji Idowu read the name as a prefix of ownership plus *odù*, a brimming vastness, plus *mà rè*, that which does not go, so roughly the owner of a fullness that never empties. Omosade Awolalu concluded that the origin of the word simply cannot be determined and that attempts to break it into syllables have failed.

Is Olodumare the same as Olorun?

In Yoruba usage the two names refer to the same supreme being, and people commonly say Ọlọ́run Olódùmarè in one breath. Idowu argued that Olódùmarè is the older title and that Ọlọ́run became the more popular one under Christian and Muslim influence, because its meaning is transparent and unmistakably monotheistic. In Cuban Lucumí practice, as George Brandon describes it, Olorun and Olofin (Olofi) are treated as two manifestations of Olodumare rather than plain synonyms.

Did Olodumare create the world himself?

Not directly. He commissioned the work and supervised it, giving Ọbàtálá the task of making the solid earth and the bodies on it, and the commission passed to Odùduwà, which is how the ground came up at Ilé-Ifẹ̀. In one account preserved by Idowu, a divinity failed, others completed the job, and the finished report had to be carried back up to Olodumare.

Related Entries

Obatala, Oduduwa, Orunmila, Ori, Eshu, Ajogun, Egungun, Ogun, Shango, Yemọja, Amma, Nyame, Mawu-Lisa, Nzambi a Mpungu, Unkulunkulu