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Eshu, a MythSource painting
African

Eshu

01Identity

Eshu in African tradition

Eshu shows two friends opposite sides of the same hat and lets the mismatch turn them to blows, then takes the sacrifice that ends a fight he started himself. He also keeps a shrine along the road that works as a bank as much as an altar: when Orunmila, the orisha of Ifa divination, leaves a sacrifice there against a dream of his own death, Eshu is holding exactly the rat, the bird and the bush-meat that Death's servant Agbigbo will soon ask for as the price of leaving Orunmila alone. Both stories turn on the same habit. Eshu sets an event running from the roadside, then supplies or demands whatever sacrifice settles it. The two friends only make their peace once they have paid him. Death's own servant only turns back once Eshu has paid him first.

  • Sets people against each other by trickery on the road, then accepts a sacrifice to settle the harm he caused. (African Myths of Origin)
  • Bargains on behalf of another god, trading a sacrifice left in his keeping to turn a threat away. (African Myths of Origin)
Top questions

The quick answers

  • Who is Eshu?

    Eshu is an African deity.
    Source

    Source

    • African Myths of Origin
02The myths

The myths of Eshu

2 myths, with sources recorded for each.

Eshu Parts Two Friends

Eshu doubled back along the same road, and this time his trick ran the other way. The man who had seen white on the first pass now saw red, and the man who had seen red now saw white. Each man went at once to make peace with the other, sure that a plain word would settle so small a disagreement. But when the first man said the hat had been red, the second heard only mockery in it, since he had watched the same hat with his own eyes and it had shown him white. Neither would give way, and the argument ended, a second time, in blows. It took both their families, out from the compounds, to pull the two men apart and walk them home.

Once tempers had cooled, the families sat the two men down and reminded them how close they had always been, and asked what could drive friends like these to fight twice over the colour of a hat. Sure now that something beyond themselves was at work, the two friends went back and consulted Ifa a second time. Belcher's telling has the diviners name the cause plainly: Eshu had set the two men against each other. Told what Ifa now prescribed, the friends did what they had failed to do before and made the sacrifice owed to Eshu. He took it and let the quarrel go. From that day on, the two men stayed friends.

Eshu Parts Two Friends, a MythSource painting of the scene

1 source· checked 2026-09-02

  1. 1African Myths of OriginT1

Eshu, Orunmila and the Servant of Death

Agbigbo served Death. His task was to carry off in a coffin every person Death had killed. One night Orunmila, the orisha of Ifa divination, dreamed of his own death. He rose the next day, consulted the Ifa oracle, and was told what offerings to prepare. Orunmila gathered the materials for the sacrifice and carried them to the shrine of Eshu, leaving them there for him. Death then sent Agbigbo out with a coffin, bound for Orunmila's own house.

Agbigbo's road passed Eshu's shrine, and Eshu sat outside it. Eshu asked what he was doing with the coffin, and Agbigbo answered that it was meant for Orunmila. Eshu then asked what it would take to make Agbigbo leave Orunmila alone, and Agbigbo named his price: a rat, a bird and some bush-meat. Eshu had exactly these things at hand, for Orunmila had already left them at the shrine among the rest of the sacrifice. Belcher's telling gives Eshu the last word on the trade: he handed over the rat, the bird and the meat, and Agbigbo put the coffin on his head and went on his way, Orunmila's own sacrifice having bought his life back.

Eshu, Orunmila and the Servant of Death, a MythSource painting of the scene

1 source· checked 2026-09-02

  1. 1African Myths of OriginT1

The wider mythology

Works that draw on more of the mythology than any single story: full retellings of the saga, and worlds built out of the material.

Abby

Film

Eshu's identity as a Yoruba trickster and guardian of crossroads tied to chaos carries into an invented possession plot built around a cursed puzzle box; the possessing spirit is revealed as an impostor Eshu himself had imprisoned, not the god.

Everworld

Book

Eshu keeps his role as a trickster who demands sacrifice as toll for safe passage and punishes refusal with illusion, reworked into an original antagonist role for one volume of the series rather than any of his catalogued stories.

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft

Television

Keeps Eshu/Papa Legba's standing as the trickster Orisha and mediator of crossroads between life and death, reworked into an original season-long plot about hidden masks and a lost city rather than any of his catalogued stories.