The Yoruba and Nago people's orisha, or spiritual manifestation, of iron, war, labour, and technology (eg railways). In Dahomey he is known as GU. In Yoruba myth he is a son of OBATALA and ODUDUWA, a great warrior but also a great agricultural worker and blacksmith, clearing the wilderness with a mighty machete and forging the tools needed to work the land. He is patron war god of the Fon people of Benin, Nigeria and Togo, where his attributes are thunder and lightning, his metal is iron, and he is again the protector of blacksmiths and farmers. His shrines tend to be in forges. He has mastery of growing things, of fire, and of creation and destruction. Slaves carried him into the Caribbean, where he became an important figure in Voudun, a soldier, blacksmith and politician, the patron of metalworkers, farmers, blacksmith, truck drivers, hunters and surgeons. His Christian 'disguises' include those of St Peter, St George, St Anthony of Padua, James the Greater and John the Baptist
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