Immo Eulenberger: Reflections of violence in Orisha religion and mythology
Scholars dealing with Orisha mythology often came to the conclusion - or admitted at least implicitly - that it contains peculiar yet interesting readings and interpretations of fundamental themes of human existence. While there is hardly any systematic analysis of single and particular such themes in this ‘transnational semantic field’, the explanation of its individual figures, i.e. in first place the Orishas themselves, is largely imbued by this approach. In my paper I try to sort out some central and characteristic motives in the view of violence as a part of human and ‘cosmic’ order as transported by Orisha mythology in form of characters and stories. They are thereby understood as culturally specific products of historic experience processed in a trans-local discourse, as conventionalized insights transported by narration and rite, and despite of their particularity instructive for other cultural contexts and social systems, including science. Apart from that, they shed light on essential characteristics of their cultures of origin and on the ‘philosophy of life’ that both permeates and expresses the worldview of those in close contact - permeating it insofar as they provide cognitive matrixes for the interpretation of situations and a set of respective ‘logic’ behaviour, and expressing it insofar as these interpretations are at the same time flexible and the reflection of internalised value systems.