ÈSÙ IS NOT SATAN: BUT NEITHER IS HE THE SAINT WE ARE TRYING TO MAKE HIM_ BY ABIOLA EVELZ STORY

There is a conversation about Èṣù that I find increasingly fascinating, not because the argument that Èṣù is not the Christian Devil is particularly difficult to understand, but because of what sometimes follows from that correction. As a Yorùbá, I think it is imperative that we disentangle Èṣù from the theological imagination of Christianity without simultaneously sanitising him into a deity whose character bears little resemblance to the complexity of Èṣù in Yorùbá cosmology.

The first correction is necessary: Èṣù is not Satan. The Christian identification of Èṣù with the Devil belongs to a history of religious translation and cultural interpretation in which indigenous categories were frequently forced into European theological equivalents. Scholars of Yorùbá religion have repeatedly demonstrated that Èṣù occupies a much more complicated position within the indigenous cosmological order. He is described variously as a messenger of the òrìṣà, a trickster, a guardian of the crossroads, an agent of uncertainty and confusion, and an intermediary through whom communication between different realms is possible. 

Wole Soyinka has himself been particularly emphatic about this distinction. In discussing Yorùbá mythology, he describes the deities as profoundly humanised figures—capable of benevolence, malignity and mischievousness—and specifically identifies Èṣù with the trickster dimension of this divine world. 

That correction, however, raises another question: if Èṣù is not Satan, what exactly are we correcting him into?

This is where I become somewhat uncomfortable with some contemporary representations.

There appears to be an understandable eagerness to rescue Èṣù from centuries of Christian demonisation. But in attempting to liberate him from the category of “evil,” we sometimes seem to be placing him prematurely inside the category of “good.” I am not convinced that either description adequately accommodates him.

The problem may be that we are still allowing the Christian binary to determine the terms of the conversation. We reject “Devil,” and immediately search for its opposite: “benevolent,” “good,” “protector,” “messenger of good things.” But perhaps Èṣù does not require such rehabilitation. Perhaps what needs rehabilitation is our capacity to understand a divinity whose function cannot be comfortably contained within the moral binaries of good and evil.

Èṣù is unsettling precisely because he is not easily domesticated by moral simplicity.

He is the messenger, but he is also the mischief-maker. He facilitates communication, yet he is associated with confusion. He can open the road, but he can also complicate the journey. He mediates between worlds, but his mediation is not necessarily comforting. He can facilitate human aspirations while simultaneously exposing the consequences of human conduct. Some scholarship consequently characterises Èṣù as both benevolent and malevolent, rather than reducing him to either pole. 

This is why the description of Èṣù merely as a “messenger of good things” seems to me philosophically inadequate.

A messenger is not necessarily the moral content of the message he carries.

If a messenger carries news of sacrifice, consequence, punishment, opportunity or misfortune, does the messenger become evil because the message is unpleasant? Conversely, does he become good merely because the message produces a favourable outcome? The question becomes even more complicated when the messenger himself is understood as possessing agency within the cosmic order.

Èṣù’s importance is therefore not exhausted by whether he brings something we call “good” or “bad.” His deeper significance may lie in the disruption of certainty.

He stands at the crossroads because the crossroads is itself a philosophical condition. It is the point at which possibilities multiply, where one road becomes several, where choice acquires consequence and where certainty becomes impossible. The crossroads is therefore not merely a physical location; it is an epistemological metaphor. It represents the uncomfortable knowledge that human beings never possess complete control over the consequences of their decisions.

And perhaps this is why Èṣù has remained so difficult to categorise.

Consider the contrast with Ṣàngó, Ògún and Ọ̀bàtálá.

Ṣàngó is intelligible through the symbolism of kingship, thunder, authority and justice. Ògún occupies the worlds of iron, labour, warfare, technology, hunting and the opening of difficult paths. Ọ̀bàtálá is associated with creation, seniority, purity and the ordering of human existence. Their contradictions certainly exist; Yorùbá divinities are not Christian saints. Soyinka makes precisely this point when he describes the gods as encompassing the entire range of human experience rather than existing as morally sterilised figures. 

Yet Èṣù seems to occupy a peculiarly liminal position.

He does not merely operate within order; he appears at the point where order encounters disorder. He is not simply the guardian of the road; he is also the question of what happens when the road divides. He is not simply the bearer of communication; he is implicated in the possibility that communication may be misunderstood. He does not merely represent consequence; he dramatises the unpredictability through which consequence enters human life.

This is perhaps why some scholars associate Èṣù with indeterminacy, ambiguity, confusion and uncertainty rather than simply evil. 

And this, to me, is where the distinction between Èṣù and Satan becomes intellectually significant.

Satan, within orthodox Christian theology, occupies a fundamentally oppositional relationship to God. Èṣù, in Yorùbá cosmological formulations, is not simply an adversary of the Supreme Being. Some Yorùbá scholarship instead positions him as a functionary within the cosmic order, one who can inspect sacrifices, transmit messages and enforce or facilitate the proper functioning of divine relations. 

These are not trivial differences.

Yet similarity should not be denied merely because equivalence is rejected.

This is another point where I think contemporary discourse occasionally becomes unnecessarily defensive. Saying that Èṣù is not Satan does not mean that we must pretend there are no characteristics that can make the comparison understandable to an outsider. Trickery, mischief, disruption, temptation and ambiguity are not concepts entirely absent from descriptions of Èṣù. The scholarly responsibility is not to erase those characteristics but to situate them within the cosmology that gives them meaning.

That distinction is crucial.

The mistake of Christian missionaries was not simply that they noticed Èṣù’s darker or mischievous dimensions. The deeper error was the assumption that those dimensions necessarily made him equivalent to Satan.

And there is an irony here.

In trying to correct the missionary interpretation, we may commit a reverse form of reductionism if we strip Èṣù of precisely those uncomfortable characteristics that make him Èṣù.

The contemporary artist Brymo’s engagement with Èṣù is interesting in this regard. His artistic treatment of Yorùbá metaphysical themes demonstrates that Èṣù continues to function as a potent cultural symbol beyond the narrow theological categories inherited from Christianity. But art, like mythology itself, does not necessarily have to make Èṣù morally convenient. It can preserve his ambiguity, his danger, his eroticism, his mischief, his intelligence and his capacity to unsettle. That ambiguity is not a defect in the tradition; it may be one of its greatest philosophical resources.

Soyinka’s treatment of Yorùbá mythology similarly resists the sanitisation of the òrìṣà. His observation that the gods are “not saints” is particularly instructive.  The Yorùbá pantheon does not require the moral architecture of Christian sainthood to make its deities legitimate. Their divinity does not depend upon moral perfection.

Perhaps that is precisely what we should recover.

Èṣù does not need to become good before he can cease to be the Devil.

That sentence, for me, captures the entire problem.

We can reject the Christian mistranslation without inventing a new mythology in response to it. We can acknowledge that Èṣù has benevolent dimensions without pretending that his disruptive dimensions do not exist. We can recognise his role as messenger without reducing him to a courier of pleasant news. We can acknowledge his trickster character without translating trickery into Satanism. And we can recognise his capacity to facilitate human aspirations without turning him into a deity whose sole purpose is to grant them.

The Yorùbá intellectual tradition is sophisticated enough to accommodate contradiction.

Indeed, contradiction may be one of its most profound philosophical features.

The same Ògún who opens roads with iron is also a god of violence. The same Ṣàngó who represents authority and justice is capable of devastating destruction. The same divine world that gives humanity order also accommodates forces capable of producing disorder. Even the human being, in Yorùbá thought, is never simply reducible to one moral category.

Why, then, should Èṣù be?

Perhaps the more productive question is not “Is Èṣù good or evil?”

Perhaps it is: “What does Èṣù make possible within the Yorùbá conception of existence?”

He makes contradiction visible.

He makes uncertainty visible.

He makes consequence visible.

He makes communication visible.

He makes choice visible.

And, perhaps most importantly, he makes us uncomfortable with the human desire to divide existence neatly into what is good and what is evil.

This is why, as a Yorùbá person, I think we have a responsibility to be precise with the name Èṣù.

We should not allow Christianity to define him for us. But neither should our understandable desire to correct that historical misrepresentation compel us to manufacture a purified Èṣù who never existed in the first place.

Èṣù is not Satan. But Èṣù is also not a saint.

He is more difficult than both categories.

And perhaps that difficulty is precisely the point.

The crossroads does not ask which road is morally beautiful before presenting you with a choice. It simply confronts you with possibility. What follows depends upon the road you take, the sacrifice you make, the intention with which you travel, and the consequences you are prepared to encounter.

That, perhaps, is the Èṣù we need to recover—not the Devil Christianity made him, nor the benevolent deity contemporary romanticism sometimes wants him to become, but the profoundly ambiguous, disruptive, intermediary and intellectually unsettling figure that Yorùbá cosmology has preserved.

Èṣù should not be rescued from Satan only to be imprisoned inside goodness. He should be returned to his complexity.

©️ ABIOLA AKINTUNDE 

(The Evelz Story✍️)

- Nigeria