Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Articles

The Weaving Contest That Humbled the Sea

Articles

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Learn More
The Weaving Contest That Humbled the Sea

Yoruba narrative tradition tells of a single contest that settled, at least for the purposes of story, where Olokun's own considerable power stood relative to Olodumare's. Proud of a mastery of weaving and dyeing cloth that Olokun considered unmatched among the orisha, Olokun issued a challenge upward, to Olodumare directly, over which of the two could produce the finer cloth. Rather than answer the challenge in person, Olodumare sent a servant down to meet it, the chameleon Agemo, ordinarily counted among the least of the divine messengers rather than among its powers. Confident in a contest against so humble an opponent, Olokun brought out cloth after cloth, each more elaborate and more brilliantly dyed than the last, certain that nothing could match work of that quality. Agemo, true to a chameleon's own nature, simply matched every cloth Olokun produced, taking on its exact colour and pattern without effort and without any cloth of its own at all. Watching a mere messenger equal, apparently without strain, everything Olokun's genuine skill had produced, Olokun concluded that if Olodumare's servant alone could answer every challenge this easily, Olodumare's own power must be greater still, beyond any real contest at all, and conceded defeat without Olodumare ever having to act directly. Yoruba theology reads the story as a lesson less about weaving than about the limits of measuring one's own power against another's without first learning the true extent of what stands behind them, a caution particularly pointed for an orisha whose own domain, the ocean's unfathomed depth, is elsewhere described in exactly the same terms, vast, hidden and never fully shown.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Article On

Olokun, Figures
Source Olodumare: God in Yoruba BeliefE. Bolaji Idowu
Sources
Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief
E. Bolaji Idowu, Longmans, 1962Idowu's account of Olokun's weaving contest with Agemo the chameleonView the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.