To balance man's mortality, Old, Old One teaches humans about fertility rites, marriage, healing, and other basics of civilization. He also provides the dead with a dwelling place in the sky, and the stars are thought to be the eyes of the dead looking down upon the world.

Tricksters and Animal Gods No matter what he is called, people everywhere love a trickster. To Shakespeare, he is the playful sprite Puck, who makes trouble in A Midsummer Night's Dream, or the whimsical spirit Ariel working his mischief in The Tempest. To generations of children, he is the magical boy Peter Pan who never grows up and knows how to fly, or the "wascally wabbit" Bugs Bunny, who constantly bedevils Elmer Fudd. In silent movies, he is Charlie Chaplin, sticking a wrench in the cogs of Modern Times to outwit the high and mighty. In Star Wars, he is Han Solo, the likable rogue out for himself. More recently, he is Seinfeld's Kramer, who can create manic upheaval and disorder in less than thirty minutes.

Described as the "sacred clown," the trickster can be found in every mythology. Looking to put over a con, cause chaos, or get something for nothing, the trickster is a lovable loner who is almost always outside the ring of "civilized" behavior. As Jungian authority Dr. Joseph Henderson writes in Man and His Symbols, "Trickster corresponds to the earliest and least developed period of life. Trickster is a figure whose physical appetites dominate his behavior; he has the mentality of an infant. Lacking any purpose beyond the gratification of his primary needs, he is cruel, cynical, and unfeeling.... This figure, which at the outset assumes the form of an animal, passes from one mischievous exploit to another. But, as he does so, a change comes over him. At the end of his rogue's progress, he is beginning to take on the physical likeness of a grown man."

While the trickster's mischief can sometimes benefit humans-Prometheus in Greek mythology, for instance, tricks Zeus and brings fire to mankind-more typically, his amusing diversions bring discord and disorder to the world, making him an unwelcome member of the community. In African myths and legends-as well as in the mythology of the Native Americans-the trickster is an especially vivid character, most often appearing as an animal and always a male. Perhaps the trickster began simply as a way to explain the sudden, unexplained little mysteries of life-the food missing from the table, the muddied well-water, the vegetables filched from the garden-as well as the bigger anxieties, like the hint of a stranger in the marital bed, or the unexplained disappearance of a child.

Animals such as the chameleon, praying mantis, hare, tortoise, and spider take part in every area of African legend, from the Creation to the coming of death to humans. But probably the most common role of animals in African myth is that of the trickster. This list includes some of the most significant of them.

Anansi Perhaps the most famous character in African myth is "Mr. Spider," who is called Anansi in West Africa (and Ture in the Congo). Known for his cleverness, Anansi is a Creator god in some traditions, including the Ashanti, while in others, he is a man who gets kicked into a thousand pieces and becomes a spider because of his cunning tricks. A scoundrel and shape-shifter known for assuming disguises, Anansi is able to dupe other animals and even humans.

In one popular tale, Anansi makes a rather curious request-he says he wants to own all tribal myths that belong to the Ashanti's Creator sky god, Nyame.

The sky god tells Anansi that to get the stories, he must capture three things: hornets, the great python, and the leopard. Setting about his challenges, Anansi cuts a small hole in a gourd, throws some water on himself, sits inside the gourd, escapes, and tells the hornets to get in so they will not get wet. Once the hornets are inside the gourd, Anansi plugs up the hole with some grass, and takes the hornet-filled gourd to Nyame.

Next, Anansi cuts down a long bamboo pole and some strong vines. When he comes upon the python, he tells the snake that he has been arguing with his wife about what is longer-the python or the pole. The vain python allows himself to be measured by the clever spider, who then ties the serpent to the pole with the vines. Now caught, the python is delivered to Nyame.

Only the leopard is left. Digging a pit and covering it with brush, Anansi next traps the leopard, who is eventually strung up in the air by rope and killed. When Nyame sees the leopard's body, he is so impressed that he gives all his stories to Anansi, and they became known as the "spider's stories."

When anyone wants to tell one of the sky god's stories, he must pay homage to Anansi, who owns them all. Today, we would call this "copyright protection."

Eshu (Yoruba of Nigeria) Unlike many other African tricksters, Eshu is a god, not an animal. Capable of shape-shifting, and being both large and small at the same time, Eshu confuses men and drives them to madness, but also acts as a go-between for the mortals and the gods. The bringer of chaos and cause of all arguments, Eshu once persuaded the sun and moon to trade places, causing universal disorder. He also got the high god of humans to leave earth for heaven. For his tricks, Eshu is ordered to become the messenger who links heaven and earth and reports every day on what is happening on earth.

In a tale with several variations, Eshu walks between two neighbors, wearing a hat with different colors on each side. The neighbors eventually argue over what color the hat is, and come to blows. When their dispute lands in court, Eshu resolves the argument and teaches people that the way in which one sees the world can alter his perception of reality. In other versions of this tale, Eshu is far less benevolent, and the argument over the colored hat leads to complete annihilation of the tribe, which only amuses Eshu, who says, "Bringing strife is my greatest joy."

Among the Fon of Benin, which neighbors Nigeria, the trickster god Eshu appears as Legba, an attendant of the supreme god. Legba's job is to do all the harmful things to people that god wants done. When Legba tires of this role, he asks god why he must always do the dirty work and get all the blame. The high god tells him that the ruler of a kingdom ought to get credit for all the good things while his servants take the rap for all the evil. Talk about archetypal!

In one story, Legba steals the god's sandals, puts them on, and goes into the yam garden and steals all the yams. This time, the people are angry at god for stealing their yams. When the god realizes that Legba has tricked him, the deity decides to leave the world and instructs Legba to come to the sky every night and report on what happens on earth.

In another story, Legba asks an old woman to throw her dirty washing water into the sky. God is annoyed by the dirty water's constantly being thrown in his face, so he moves away, where he can't be bothered so easily. Again, he leaves Legba behind to report, which is why there is a shrine dedicated to Legba in many African houses and villages.

Legba's counterbalance is Fa (or Ifa), the god of fate and destiny, who teaches healing and prophecy. To the Fon, everything is fated to happen, nothing is left to chance, and Fa represents every person's fate. Divination or magic can help one discover their Fa. Whenever beginning work or starting a business, it is customary for the Fon to make an offering of food to Fa, but first give a taste to Eshu, to ensure that things go smoothly. The religions of Benin later influenced voodoo, one of the principal offshoots of the convergence of traditional African religions and Christianity in the Caribbean (see below).

Hare Alongside Spider, Africa's most popular animal trickster is Hare, about whom stories are told all over the continent. One typical story tells how Hare challenges an elephant and a hippopotamus to a tug-of-war. But instead of tugging, Hare ties the ends of the rope to each of the animals. As they pull against each other, Hare's land is plowed, which is exactly the job Hare was supposed to do for his wife.

Another story tells how Hare mixes up a message he has been given to deliver, and loses immortality for humans. When the moon sends Hare to tell people that they will die and then rise again, just like the moon, Hare confuses the message and tells people only that they will die. When the moon finds out what Hare has said, she beats him on the nose with a stick. Since that day Hare's nose has been split.

The Hare stories made the transatlantic crossing with the many Africans taken as slaves to the Americas. Mingling with many similar Native American tales of trickster rabbits, the Hare stories became best known in America as the Br'er (short for "Brother") Rabbit stories.

Having heard these stories told on a plantation, Joel Chandler Harris (18481908), a writer for the Atlanta Constitution, later collected them in a book called Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1881). The character of Uncle Remus is a former slave who becomes a beloved servant of a Southern household and entertains the family's young son by telling him traditional animal fables, using a Southern African-American dialect. Besides Br'er Rabbit, the best-known characters of the stories are Br'er Fox, Br'er Bear, and Br'er Wolf. Most folklorists today agree that the Br'er Rabbit tales are thinly veiled racial allegories.* More than just a trickster, Br'er Rabbit represents the clever slave who could outwit his master.

Yurugu (Dogon of Mali) The child of the Dogon Creator, Amma, and the earth is Yurugu, a rebellious god and trickster. While in the cosmic egg, Yurugu steals the yolk, because he thinks his sister-or mother, in some versions-is inside, and he wants to mate with her. His incestuous behavior brings mischief and disorder into the world and makes some of the world's land arid. Amma turns Yurugu into a jackal, and he sires the many evil spirits of the bush.

How did a suicidal king become a god and end up in the Supreme Court?

Along with the trickster tales of Hare and Anansi the Spider, a great many other gods made the terrible transatlantic crossing known as the Middle Passage from Africa to the New World. Once settled in the fertile grounds of the Caribbean and the Americas, these African gods didn't just disappear. Myth-and belief-are hard things to break. Many of the gods and traditions of the Yoruba and Fon, in particular, crossed the Atlantic with the people taken from West Africa, and found a home in the New World. Among the many gods who were given new lives and new meaning was Shango, the powerful storm god of Yoruba.

Possibly based on an actual mortal king, Shango was famed for his abilities as both a warrior and a powerful magician. While dabbling in magic, Shango causes lightning to strike his palace, killing some of his many wives and children. Overcome by grief, he hangs himself. When his enemies scorn the dead king, they are destroyed by storms, and Shango is declared to be a god who controls the thunder and lightning. That's one version. In another telling of his legend, Shango is an oppressive ruler, and when his people rebel, he is exiled to the forest, where he hangs himself from a tree. Those who remain loyal to Shango refuse to believe that he committed suicide, and say he has gone to heaven to become god of rain and thunder, symbolized by a twin-headed ax. No matter which version of his life and death his believers accept, Shango is always revered as a great source of magic and a sexual dynamo.

When Shango's devoted followers were taken as slaves to the Americas, they continued to worship him, along with most of the other gods of the Yoruban and West African pantheon. Many of these gods emerged in new religions that fused African traditions with the Christianity that the slaves were forced to accept along with their chains. Few aspects of African-American or Afro-Caribbean culture have been more mythologized or grossly stereotyped-especially by Hollywood-than the traditions that emerged as voodoo and Santeria.

*"Voodoo"

Although commonly called voodoo, this New World religion traces its roots to the African traditional religion Vodun (also Vodoun, Voudou), a word meaning "spirit." Vodun was recognized as the official religion of Benin in 1996, is practiced by many in Haiti, and can be found in many large cities. One estimate is that 60 million people worldwide worship Vodun. Its followers, called Voduns, are concentrated in Benin, Ghana, Haiti, and in the United States, largely in the American South and wherever Haitian refugees have settled. Also practiced by the West African Yorubans, Vodun may have roots that stretch back thousands of years.

During the colonial slave-trading era, slaves brought Vodun with them to Haiti and other islands in the West Indies, where, upon arriving, they were baptized as Catholics, and slave masters and priests tried to suppress the African Vodun belief. Its priests were killed or imprisoned, which forced the slaves to create underground societies to secretly worship their gods and venerate their ancestors. While attending Mass, as required by their masters, slaves simply continued to follow their original faith. An influential 1884 book called Haiti, or the Black Republic, by S. St. John, described Vodun as an "evil religion," falsely alleging that it included human sacrifice and cannibalism. Unfortunately, the image has stuck.

Vodun has many traditions based on Yoruban religion, including the belief that Olorun, the chief god, is remote and unknowable. Olorun authorizes a lesser god, named Obtala, to create earth and its life forms. The pantheon of Vodun spirits called "Loa" includes Aida-Wedo (the rainbow spirit based on the creation serpent Aido-Hwedo), and Shango (also known as Sango).

*Santeria Also called Le Regia Lucumi or the Rule of Osha, Santeria originated in Cuba as a combination of West African Yoruba religion and Catholicism. There, as in Haiti and elsewhere, slaves were forced to follow Roman Catholic practices, which contradicted their native beliefs. But finding parallels between their own religion and Catholicism, and in order to please their slave masters while disguising the worship of their own gods, they, too, created a secret religion. Santeria uses Catholic saints and personalities as "fronts" for the traditional African god and his spiritual emissaries, the orishas of the original Yoruba religion. Santeria spread quickly among these West African slaves, and even when the slave trade was abolished, Santeria flourished, its African-based religious traditions continuing to evolve and fuse with Christian ideas, native Cuban traditions, and, later, Enlightenment ideas brought from France.

Santeria has no sacred texts, and has been passed on orally to initiates for hundreds of years. Today it continues in small numbers in many countries, including the United States, where it is still practiced-in New York and Florida, in particular.

Like voodoo, much of Santeria corresponds to Yoruban religious traditions and mythical stories. The supreme god is Olodumare (or Olorun), who is the source of all energy in the universe, and is equated with Christianity's Jesus Christ. Olorun's emissaries, the orishas, are equated with specific Roman Catholic saints. Just as Legba is the messenger god in Africa, Legba (or Elegba) of Santeria acts as the intermediary between humans and the orishas. He is equated with the Catholic St. Anthony; nothing can be done without his intercession. Shango, who rules thunder and lightning, is called Chango in Santeria and is linked with Catholicism's St. Barbara. Demoted from the litany of saints in a 1969 reform of Roman Catholic liturgy that downgraded her along with many other notable martyrs, Barbara was said to have been beheaded by her own father for her Christian faith. When her father was killed by lightning, Barbara became associated with the force of lightning and with death that falls from the sky. That provides the connection to Chango, who is also a god of thunder, lightning, and martial power.

For five hundred years, the traditions of Santeria-including a set of Eleven Commandments, roughly equivalent to the biblical Ten Commandments, with the addition of a prohibition against cannibalism-have been maintained by its followers. These traditions include a belief in magical spells and trance possessions, which both play an integral part in Santeria. The trance possession occurs at shamanistic drumming parties, during which dancers try to attain a sacred state of consciousness and ecstasy.

While Santeria and voodoo share West African mythical and religious roots, there are differences between them as they now exist. Principally, the Santerians believe that Catholic saints and orishas are the same spirits, while voodoo believes that the two groups are distinct, and reveres both.

Finally, both religions have attracted attention because of animal sacrifice, which is probably the most controversial and publicized aspect of Santeria. The sacrificial animal, according to Santeria tradition, must be killed quickly and painlessly, and the meat eaten by participants in the service. In the early 1990s, the city of Hialeah, Florida, attempted to halt such practices, but a local branch of the Santeria church sued and-with the support of mainstream churches and Jewish organizations-won their case in the U.S. Supreme Court. In deciding the case of Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah in June 1993, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, "Though the practice of animal sacrifice may seem abhorrent to some, religious belief need not be acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible to others in order to merit First Amendment protection."

CHAPTER NINE.

SACRED HOOPS.

The Myths of the Americas and Pacific Islands For the forming of the earth they said "Earth." It arose suddenly, just like a cloud, like a mist, now forming, unfolding...

-Popol Vuh Screaming the night away With his great wing feathers Swooping the darkness up; I hear the Eagle bird Pulling the blanket back Off from the eastern sky.

-invitation song of the Hodenosaunees From the beginning of creation, We were placed here...we are This holy land...

-from a Navajo prayer While I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.

-Black Elk Speaks (1932), as told through John G. Neihardt In the 1990s, Indian religions are a hot item. It is the outward symbolic form that is most popular. Many people, Indian and non-Indian, have taken a few principles to heart, mostly those beliefs that require little in the way of changing one's lifestyle. Tribal religions have been trivialized beyond redemption by people sincerely wishing to learn about them. In isolated places on the reservations, however, a gathering of people is taking place and much of the substance of the old way of life is starting to emerge.

-Vine Deloria Jr., God Is Red (2003) How did Native American myth go up in smoke?

Is there an "American" mythology?