II. I have allowed myself this historical
introduction because the cult to the orishas or entities
mythical yorubás had its definitive conformation in
clear sincrethysm processes and lost of cultures,
successive or coincident, so much among a stronger
culture represented by the oyoes or yorubás that were
the akús that dominated the metals and groups of smaller
development (without knowing these techniques) as
the nagós, lucumíes and ibós; but also with neighboring
cultures in relative equality of forces and such development
the adjas, ewes, and fong dahomeyanos or the nupes,
takuas or empés that habitin the northwest of Nigeria
(3). It is notorious that at the same time of the
occupation that carried out by the oyoes or yorubás
and consolidated with the foundation of important
cities like the Oyó, Ogbomoso, Abeokuta, Ifé, Ilesha,
Iponda, Osogbo, Ejigbó, Aramoko, Iré and Ibadam, we
see happen a process of establishment of local cults
where the divinities of origin ibó and lucumí are
supplanted by the yorubás, subtracting prints from
the mentioned incorporated substitutions, occasionally
not very peaceful, to the forms and practical liturgical
of the new gods. To exemplify, we will mention some
very well-known orichas in the Rule of Ocha or Cuban
Santería: The cult to Oddúdduá in Ifé relegated to
a second plane the one that paid in that region to
Orisanlá-Obaigbó, of origin Ibó like is reflected
in the second name. However, the priests of the primary
divinity were linked some rites and ceremonials characteristic
of the " oní " or king of the city. Another case is
the cult to Sámpónná, also called Obaluáyé that substituted
to the lucumí Naná Burukú Akitikata like protective
against the pock and other contagious illnesses and
whose devotion This also extended toward the in territory
dahomeyano until the old Malhi. To have been less
spectacular, doesn't stop to have especiall importance
the fatigued cult to Oshún that swept with many cults
smaller than root ibó, among groups that habited near
the ibús or deep places of the river Ochún. When the
oyoes or yorubás narrow and they perfect their commercial,
political and cultural relationships with the Kingdom
of Empé, we also attend modifications would originate
them beliefs akú. As example it is possible to present
the ancestral removal that the yorubás felt toward
twins, had as omens of fatalities and characteristic
of miserable people"; but everything changed it when
they left deepening their bonds with the nupes or
takuas for who twins and jimaguas were sacred. For
that mutation it was necessary the creation of new
orichas, the igbegis or idbeyis (Taiwó-Korné-Bomboché-Kainde-praise-Idou),
and also the institution of remarkable social privileges
in benefit to the mothers that had childbirths of
twins , such as allowing them to sing and to dance
to obtain money in the markets and public squares
(6). After established the third migratory wave of
the akú in Nigeria a definitive process should happen
for its traditional beliefs. At the same time that
the springs characteristic of the cult to the ancestors
went to the most notorious characters in the group,
commanders that had directed the migration and the
conquests of the territories where they settled and
who had some sanguine bond with the leader Oddúdduá
Olofi in its immense majority he/she Heard, as well
as the descendants of them until a third generation.
Such new gods substitute those that formerly existed
with identical attributions to those that now granted
them in the busy places where they begin their cults,
as well as the most remarkable aspects in the precedent
liturgies, when they are not rejected for incompatible
with the new rite, they are incorporate to those characteristic
of the new mysteries. In strict sense the term orisha
should be reserved only and exclusively for Obbatalá
and to the group of divinities that you/they integrate
its cult (Orishas Fun Fun or White Orishas), while
the correct appellative for the other masculine gods
turned out to be ebolas, the term imolé that Empega
uses would embrace to the entirety of the gods yorubás;
but the habit has sanctified the error, generalizing
in such a way the employment of the term orisha that
to attempt a rectification, besides a pedantry, it
is already practically impossible. It is never of
more to reiterate, against what many investigators
have sustained in different moments that there is
only a god, only and supreme, called Oloddúmaré, of
the one who you/they emanate all the powers and the
orishas middlemen inside this religion only constitutes
between that Oloddúmaré and the men, because to the
Supreme God they don't interest him for anything the
human problems and it stops their attention creó to
the orishas. Then, these " gods " or orishas don't
become in almighty beings, neither even immortal as
the divinities semitas, Greek or Germanic, on the
contrary, their anthropomorphous condition is not
circunscripta to a physical appearance, but rather
it copies the entirety of the human thing and they
are this way able to feel all the characteristic of
the man, because they hate, they fear, they love,
they are born, they live and they die. According to
the essential character that you/they present the
relative attributions of each orisha that were preserved
in their American transculturaciones in good measure,
these they can be contained in three different types:
to) Cosmological Orishas. - They are those that are
intimately related with the creation of the world,
the nature, the man, and therefore with the time.
The above-mentioned takes to establish a subdivision
inside the group, because we would have creative orishas"
that they are those of more hierarchy inside the vault
yoruba, like it is the case of Obbatalá and the Fun
Fun; next and the " oracles " like Orumla Ifá and
the orishas of the nature like Osaín are in an equivalent
plane. If we analyze the essential characteristics
attentively in the operation of the Religion of the
Orishas he/she can it turns as the same marrow of
this belief it gravitates on these three orishas subgrupos,
because the creators grant the full essence of the
faith; the oracles bequeath the main mechanisms of
the communication between the divinities and their
believers, without that which cannot exist any religion
type, and the natural orishas properly they contribute
the liturgical techniques. b) Economic Orishas. -
Here those should be included to who are attributed
them the patronazgos on the such fundamental economic
functions as the hunt, fishing, agriculture and cattle
raising, as well as others derived of the previous
ones which the public order, the trade and the communications.
However, as the importance or weight of these divinities
is directly linked with the importance that has this
specific economic action for a certain society or
region; when the American transculturaciones takes
place the paper of these orishas inside the new systems
of beliefs it will be very closely related with the
relevance of keeping those functions in the new socioeconomic
means and the participation that in they have it their
believers. But the black slaves and later the libertos,
had very little participation like proprietors in
the American societies, in a such way that their own
existence, I save in the cimarronaje and the fences,
it didn't depend on the practice of the hunt, fishing,
agriculture or cattle raising, and when they were
in charge of of these works it was as helots or precarious
salaried whose maintenance didn't really depend of
themselves or, at least, the product of the work didn't
go directly to their hands, for it the patron orishas
of those activities was very diminished to the transculturation,
remaining like the new systems magic-religious's part
by virtue of their bonds with the divination or for
the participation that you/they had ancestrally inside
the mythical biographies and, in the specific liturgies
of other orishas. Some were so modified that their
attributions acquire a sense absolutely contrary to
that of the original system. An example is the case
of Ochossi, the boss of the hunt. As in the societies
of hunters they are these those that the functions
of " policemen " or " guardians " exercise, when taking
care at nights the villages, to such they are estimated
as the representatives of the order. However, in the
new realities of the pro-slavery and discriminatory
societies that found those slaves and their descendants
in America, the order was them certainly adverse,
as characteristic of a socioeconomic mark that spread
to squash them, for it was necessary that one of its
deities assumed the attribution of protecting them
against that " order " and in that way Ochossi became,
at least in the Cuban Santería, as boss of the jails
and protective against the police. c) daily Orishas.
- They are those that are in charge of of aspects
so common in the human life as the own existence or
the death, the love or the hate, the fire or the water,
the maternity or the marriage, the music or the dance,
the prosperity or the misery, the health or the illnesses,
the age or the childhood, So much etc. in the system
native as in their transculturaciones this orishas
type raises tamaña popular devotion that not few times
it surpasses the own limits of the religious system
to become in a feature of identity.