Sonponna

He feasts with the father of the household, but he strikes down his son in the doorway. That one day, the day of the yam festival, Sònpònná wasn’t dancing. He has a cane, after all, and he’d drunk as much palm wine as anyone else. But they wouldn’t stop bothering him, so he eventually got up and got down — not well, but at least he tried, right? So it was not cool when someone crashed into him, he fell down, and everyone saw his wooden leg under the raffia cape that conceals his disease-scarred figure. They pointed. They laughed. Someone improvised a song about it. Sònpònná lashed out at the dancers around him with his cudgel…and soon after, they came down with smallpox. For that, Obàtálá banished him to the forest, which he wanders to this day. Yet the Òrìshà close ranks around Sònpònná every time an angry mob or witch hunt seeks to cast him down. Let the other pantheons throw shade and whisper all they want. He’s no Titan, he’s our brother.

Sònpònná wields smallpox and other epidemics. Some say Olódùmarè originally cursed him with disease for his sexual promiscuity, that he died and Òshun had to bribe God to bring him back. His Incarnations show his face never, his body rarely. He might be a hazmat-suited doctor or researcher, or a Fuke Zen monk with a straw hood and shakuhachi. His popularity among mortals nevertheless rivals Òshun’s: congregations, capoeira schools, and popular songs bear his name.

Sònpònná’s Scions are scary. They’re unafraid of seeing the worst of the World: war, disease, pollution, Australian wildlife, you name it. They’re at home in shadows and wilderness. They go to places no one else dares, to solve problems no one else wants to think about.