Oggún

Cuban Santería · deity · Cuban Santería traditional religion; continuing · deity

Oggún is the oricha of iron, war, metallurgy, and the labor of the forest, the solitary blacksmith who owns every blade and machine. Because all sacrifice is made with a knife, no offering is completed without him, and his presence pervades the smithy, the surgeon's steel, the automobile, and the railroad. He is a tireless and violent worker who clears roads through the bush with his machete, and Cuban patakí picture him withdrawing alone into the deep forest, clad in a fringe of frayed palm (mariwó). His colors are green and black, his emblems the miniature iron tools kept in a three-legged cauldron. With Elegguá and Ochosi he forms los Guerreros, the Warriors, sharing a cauldron with the hunter whose arrows rest among his tools. A patakí makes him the rival of Changó, who won away his companion Oyá. In Cuba he is syncretized with Saint Peter (San Pedro).

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