Esu — Eshu, Elegba, Legba in the Fon-derived traditions — is the messenger between the orisha and human beings, the one who carries offerings to their destinations, the owner of the crossroads, and the divine trickster who tests people and exposes what they are. Nineteen-century missionary translators, needing a Yoruba word for Satan, used his name, and it is printed in Yoruba Bibles to this day. Practitioners have objected continuously and the objection has been made publicly by priests and by Yoruba scholars, on the ground that the identification is a category error: Esu is not evil, is not opposed to Olodumare, and is essential to every ritual — no offering reaches its recipient without him, so he is fed first. The wider point is that Yoruba cosmology has no principle of evil and no adversary of God at all. Misfortune has causes — broken taboos, offended people, hostile working, bad character, a difficult destiny — but there is nothing in the system whose nature is to be against.