Olodumare

Olodumare, also called Olorun, "owner of the sky", is the supreme being of the Yoruba tradition of West Africa and of the African-diaspora religions descended from it: the one source of all that exists and of ashe, the vital power or life-force that runs through the whole of creation. Olodumare is the origin and sustainer of everything, the ultimate authority above the orisha (the many divine powers) and the ancestors, and the one to whom, in Yoruba thought, all destinies finally answer.

The theologian E. Bolaji Idowu, whose study of Yoruba belief takes Olodumare for its very title, argued that the Yoruba tradition is at bottom a form of diffused monotheism: a single supreme God at the head of a hierarchy of subordinate divine powers who carry out the divine will in the world. Olodumare is understood as transcendent, remote, wise and utterly just, the judge of character to whom each person is finally accountable.

What is most striking about Olodumare is that, though he is supreme, he receives almost no direct worship. There are no temples to Olodumare, no priesthood, no images, and no regular sacrifices offered to him as there are to the orisha; the supreme being is felt to be too great and too far removed from the daily affairs of the world to be approached directly, and it is the orisha, Obatala, Ogun, Shango, Yemoja, Oshun and the rest, who are served in the shrines and who mediate between humanity and the source. This is a pattern found widely across West African religion, sometimes called the "withdrawn high god": the creator acknowledged as the origin of all things yet worshipped, if at all, only through the nearer powers he set over the world. It should not be mistaken for indifference or for polytheism without a centre; the Yoruba invoke Olodumare constantly in speech, proverb and blessing, and everything the orisha do is understood to be done by his authority and with his power.

Carried across the Atlantic by enslaved Yoruba, Olodumare endures in the diaspora religions of Cuba (Lucumi or Santeria) and Brazil (Candomble) as Olofi/Olofin and Olorun, the distant supreme God above the orisha. These are living religions, practised with devotion today across West Africa and the Americas, and Olodumare stands at the head of them all, the owner of the sky, the source of the life-force, worshipped through the orisha rather than approached alone.