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Not wanting to come the pedant, but there seems to be an awful lot of blurring going on between Legba, Ellegua and Eshu in this thread as well... Before we even get into the links with Shiva...
I think, at one level, they do tend to blur into one another in terms of role, broad personality type and proclivities, but I'd also say that they are three distinct personalities from three distinct religions and shouldn't necessarily be treat as the same thing. Even if they are rooted in the same African Elegbara source God, the experience of talking to Legba Atibon is a different deal from speaking to Eshu on full devil road.
For instance, I'm not sure to what extent I'd consider Pomba Gira as Papa Legba's wife... Since She's a female counterpart of Eshu in Candomble and doesn't really appear in Haitian Vodou at all. It depends on how slippery you consider the boundaries between these religions. I tend not to blur them that much, and prefer to approach each religion on its own terms and with its own integrity. They really are quite different. It's easy, from a western perspective, to just bundle them all together into an amorphous mass – but the complexities of Candomble are hugely different from the complexities of Haitian Vodou.
I think that if you overlook that, you end up losing out on the nuances and subtleties of each, and it's exactly this kind of complex internal consistency that makes these living magico-religious traditions so potent in comparison with modern day reconstructions of comparable ancient magico-religious trads that often lack this kind of depth.
I think the more you blur things, the more of a dumbed-down understanding you can end up with. It's the whole recurrent 'hanging chakras on the tree of life' scenario all over again. For instance, you could arguably make a case that Pomba Gira does sort of exist in Haiti as Papa Legba's lover, if you were to see Her reflected in one of the more volatile Erzulies. In a certain broad sense, that statement is thematically plausible if you reduce it down to "The Crossroads" and "Babalon" as general archetypes, but you would be losing all of the specific Mysteries of the unique personalities involved. Which is throwing the baby out with the bathwater to say the least.
I'm really not trying to have a go at anyone here (for once...), but this stuff does interest me and I do think its important to recognise the differences between Gods and Goddesses as much as it is important to notice the parallels and similarities.
I think there probably are a few very broad parallels between Shiva and Legba, but there are probably more differences as well, and I'm not sure how valuable it is to discuss what they have in common without also considering the points at which they diverge. I've never worked with Shiva myself, but the obvious connection with the Crossroads Gods is the Phallus as a metaphor for consciousness, which is reflected in both the lingam and Legba's cane. But to focus on that would be to neglect huge swathes of the role and persona of both Gods. For instance, there are a lot of aspects of Legba that you can see better reflected in Ganesh, as the remover of obstacles and opener of roads.
i don't believe that all deity is a radiation from one uber-god, and certainly experience communication/guidance from gods as distinct entities.
I think that both of these positions are simultaneously correct. I find the point that Lucky Liquid makes about the Hindu Gods being activites or expressions of a certain God-Reality fascinating. This concept does seem to exist in religions like Haitian Vodou and Cuban Santeria as well, whilst they are hugely polytheistic and the Gods and Powers are considered independent beings and distinct personalities, there is also the sense - depending on who you speak to/read - that everything is an emanation of a monotheistic God. Bon Dieu Bon. Olofi. Oludumare. The Lwa (or 'Laws', with usual caveats on interpretation from Creole) and the Orisha, or Saints, are created by GOD to have governance over certain areas and aspects of reality.
You can maybe see the same idea reflected in the Quabalistic Tree of Life, with the individual Sephiroth fulfilling a similar function to the Gods and Goddesses in other models. The Sephiroth, Kether to Malkuth, describe aspects of our reality but are in fact emanations from the Ain Soph – and the whole thing considered together in its entirety might well be considered GOD. Which is not to say that the Lwa or Hindu Gods can be conveniently matched up with Quabbalistic Sephiroth, anymore than Shiva "is the same as" Ellegua or anyone else. I think it's more a case of different cultures attempting to describe the same general processes but attributing a different emphasis according to the immediate concerns of their environment and social context. You can learn a lot from looking at them comparatively, but sometimes you can understand more from observing the differences than the similarities. |
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