Subject: Er... you're sort of a bit wrong about that.
Author:
Posted on: 2015-04-29 14:06:00 UTC

((Not heard of James Lovegrove until you told me about his work. I'll check him out! I'll be interested to see what he did with the Nahua faith. =] ))

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The touchstone of the Yoruba faith is ase, the spark of life. It's basically humanity's ability for self-determination and it comes from Olorun. Directly. Which is... an interesting paradox. An alaase is someone who, through training and meditation and all that good stuff, is able to directly, consciously affect the life force of others, which would be an unusual powerset for a protagonist, especially one affiliated with Olokun.

Among the Yoruba, which patron orisha you get is up to your lineage - and it can be either maternal or paternal. The imori ceremony, or "knowing the head", is generally performed right after you're born, over which a diviner determines what lineage you have, whether it be your mother's, your father's, or directly traceable to an orisha. For the purposes of this story, we can... delay it a bit. After all, it's not like our protagonist would have been in a position to have it performed on them, what with growing up in a dirt-poor part of New Orleans. In any case, if you're part of a divine family tree, you undergo an initiation rite upon reaching adulthood, in which your thoughts are made the spiritual vessel for the ase of the relevant orisha.

That, I think, is the link between gods and mortals in the Yoruba pantheon - a direct connection, this spark of life that makes a human more than just a sack of offal and bones. That, I think, should be the source of the power of a Riordanesque protagonist. Becoming an alaase, finding yourself, working in harmony with the quintessence of the god that lies within... it's a powerful image. At least, it is to me. Dunno about anyone else. =]

Also, another thought; the Yoruba creation myth states that the world was originally a watery, marshy wasteland, before Olorun - who connected the Invisible World to the physical one by a great chain - summoned land into being atop it. Which is also how you build, say, Venice.

Or New Orleans.

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((And I'd totally forgotten about the Egyptian pantheon being a thing in Riordan's books. That objection is withdrawn. =] ))

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