The Vocabulary of Divinity.
Last night BellaCrow asked me what the difference is between "Powers" and "gods". I feel pushed to write out my answer and post it here, with the usual caveats that this is my understanding and perspective - it's an educated one, but nevertheless a biased one, etc. etc. blah blah.
The big difference between Orixa and Pagan gods is context. According to Orixa tradition, the word "God" only applies to Oludumare, the Creator. Oludumare is God with a capital-G. This is akin to God in the Abrahamic traditions, in the sense that the other various powers in the tradition aren't called "gods" no matter how powerful they are, because the concept and word are reserved.
The important thing to recognize is that according to this perspective, there are no other gods at all. The Pagan gods either don't exist, or are Powers like the Orixa - elevated ancestors and personified forces of nature, agents employed by the One God to interact with those of us who are too limited to connect directly with the Omnipotent and Omniscient God.
From most Pagan perspectives, the gods are lowercase-g gods, in that none of Them are Omnipotent or Omniscient. They're each limited in some manner, and there are many of Them. Again, They're personified forces of nature, elevated ancestors, divine agents who interact with us, and so forth - and depending on the mystery tradition, They may be connecting us with a greater Divine Whole that isn't considered "God", so much as Reality, the Universe, or some other less-personified word. From this perspective, the Orixa are gods.
From the Orixa tradition perspective, believing in lowercase-g gods at all is wrong. It's not just that calling the Orixa "gods" is wrong, it's that there are no other gods at all except the one God, Oludumare. From a Pagan perspective, there's no particular definitional reason not to call the Orixa "gods". We may avoid it out of respect for culture.
It's a bit like comparing "kings" between chess and checkers. In Chess, the king is the most important piece, but it doesn't move around much, and all the other pieces move to intervene on its behalf. The king's presence defines the game - without the king, the game is over. In Checkers, any piece can become a king, that king is autonomous from the other pieces, and is only more important than the other pieces because it's more powerful, not because its presence defines the game. The word "king" clearly doesn't mean the same thing between the two games. A Checkers "king" is more akin to a Chess "queen" in terms of movement, power, and significance to the game. It's easy to see the difference here because the word "king" isn't a loaded term that we expect to mean the same thing regardless of context. The change in significance between Checkers and Chess isn't confusing, because we understand that the two perspectives don't interact.
"God" and "god" are loaded words in our culture - if not every culture. What's more, the history that caused the African-Diaspora in the first place included a huge superiority complex on the part of the European Christians who had already concluded that Monotheism was the "most evolved" form of religion. (I run into this all the time in my religious studies classes, and it's really aggravating. Many scientists concluded that in fact Atheism was the most evolved. This argument is still taking place between some Theologians and Philosophers today.) The Missionaries took one look at the various African traditions and declared them all "primitive" and "polytheistic", never differentiating between ancestor reverence, spirit reverence, or various kinds of theism.
In order to hold their own in this context, absolutely everybody was obliged to figure out the ways in which they're actually Monotheistic. This isn't to say they weren't before - some were, some weren't I'm sure, depending on how you interpret the term. But the vocabulary was literally a different language - hundreds of different languages, actually - especially when you include India in the Imperialistic picture. When you get down to it, English doesn't actually have the appropriate words for the distinctions being made by these cultures. We've overlaid ours, carrying along our existing baggage, whether or not it applies.
A better question than whether or not the Orixa are "gods" is to leave the word aside in the case of both the Orixa and the Pagan entities under consideration, and to look at what the respective cultures consider the abilities and characteristics of such beings to be. In that context, the Orixa and the Pagan gods are generally fairly equivalent - in as much as any equivalency can be established in the first place.
That's why I tend to call all of Them "Powers".
--Ember--
The big difference between Orixa and Pagan gods is context. According to Orixa tradition, the word "God" only applies to Oludumare, the Creator. Oludumare is God with a capital-G. This is akin to God in the Abrahamic traditions, in the sense that the other various powers in the tradition aren't called "gods" no matter how powerful they are, because the concept and word are reserved.
The important thing to recognize is that according to this perspective, there are no other gods at all. The Pagan gods either don't exist, or are Powers like the Orixa - elevated ancestors and personified forces of nature, agents employed by the One God to interact with those of us who are too limited to connect directly with the Omnipotent and Omniscient God.
From most Pagan perspectives, the gods are lowercase-g gods, in that none of Them are Omnipotent or Omniscient. They're each limited in some manner, and there are many of Them. Again, They're personified forces of nature, elevated ancestors, divine agents who interact with us, and so forth - and depending on the mystery tradition, They may be connecting us with a greater Divine Whole that isn't considered "God", so much as Reality, the Universe, or some other less-personified word. From this perspective, the Orixa are gods.
From the Orixa tradition perspective, believing in lowercase-g gods at all is wrong. It's not just that calling the Orixa "gods" is wrong, it's that there are no other gods at all except the one God, Oludumare. From a Pagan perspective, there's no particular definitional reason not to call the Orixa "gods". We may avoid it out of respect for culture.
It's a bit like comparing "kings" between chess and checkers. In Chess, the king is the most important piece, but it doesn't move around much, and all the other pieces move to intervene on its behalf. The king's presence defines the game - without the king, the game is over. In Checkers, any piece can become a king, that king is autonomous from the other pieces, and is only more important than the other pieces because it's more powerful, not because its presence defines the game. The word "king" clearly doesn't mean the same thing between the two games. A Checkers "king" is more akin to a Chess "queen" in terms of movement, power, and significance to the game. It's easy to see the difference here because the word "king" isn't a loaded term that we expect to mean the same thing regardless of context. The change in significance between Checkers and Chess isn't confusing, because we understand that the two perspectives don't interact.
"God" and "god" are loaded words in our culture - if not every culture. What's more, the history that caused the African-Diaspora in the first place included a huge superiority complex on the part of the European Christians who had already concluded that Monotheism was the "most evolved" form of religion. (I run into this all the time in my religious studies classes, and it's really aggravating. Many scientists concluded that in fact Atheism was the most evolved. This argument is still taking place between some Theologians and Philosophers today.) The Missionaries took one look at the various African traditions and declared them all "primitive" and "polytheistic", never differentiating between ancestor reverence, spirit reverence, or various kinds of theism.
In order to hold their own in this context, absolutely everybody was obliged to figure out the ways in which they're actually Monotheistic. This isn't to say they weren't before - some were, some weren't I'm sure, depending on how you interpret the term. But the vocabulary was literally a different language - hundreds of different languages, actually - especially when you include India in the Imperialistic picture. When you get down to it, English doesn't actually have the appropriate words for the distinctions being made by these cultures. We've overlaid ours, carrying along our existing baggage, whether or not it applies.
A better question than whether or not the Orixa are "gods" is to leave the word aside in the case of both the Orixa and the Pagan entities under consideration, and to look at what the respective cultures consider the abilities and characteristics of such beings to be. In that context, the Orixa and the Pagan gods are generally fairly equivalent - in as much as any equivalency can be established in the first place.
That's why I tend to call all of Them "Powers".
--Ember--