Deities

Sogbo

Fon Deities

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Sogbo." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/deities/sogbo.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Sogbo. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/deities/sogbo

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-sogbo,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Sogbo},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-divinity.interactiveatlas.org/deities/sogbo},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Sogbo is the Fon deity of thunder, lightning and storms, another of Mawu-Lisa's children in Fon cosmology, ruling the sky and the violent weather that crosses it. Worshippers historically held that a person killed by lightning had been struck for wrongdoing, and Sogbo's priests performed rites over the body and the site of the strike before burial could proceed.

Facts

Cult

Attributes and Iconography

Sogbo, like the wider family of West African thunder deities, is associated with thunderstones, the polished stone axe heads found in the ground after a lightning strike and kept as relics of where he touched down. His priests historically retrieved these stones from the site of a strike as evidence of his passage. 1

Function

Domain / Function

Storm and thunder 1

Attributions

Mythic Association

In the Dahomean division of the world myth, Mawu is said to have granted Sogbo, also called Xevioso, dominion over the sky and its thunder when she apportioned the realms among her children, the same account used to explain why his brother Sakpata was left the earth below. 1

Belief

Theology

Henotheistic: a supreme being above served lesser divinities 1

A child of the creator pair Mawu-Lisa in Fon cosmology, matching the henotheistic reading already carried by Mawu-Lisa, Gu and Loko.

Attestation

Historicity

Not a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Vodun (West African)

Source Dahomey: An Ancient West African KingdomMelville J. Herskovits

Related To

Shango

Sources

1. Dahomey: An Ancient West African Kingdom

Melville J. Herskovits, J. J. Augustin (New York), 1938View the Source

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