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Yemaya of Africa

© Catherine Harris

They call her the Mother of the Waters, The Great Mother, Mother of the Fish, and the Goddess of Surrender. Yemaya is the African/Caribbean goddess of the ocean. She is called on through various names. Known as Ymoja to those in West Africa on the Yoruban River and called Iamanja in Brazil. Yemaya is sometimes called Yey Omo Eja, meaning, “Mother Whose Children are Fish.”

Yamaya is often depicted as a beautiful mermaid. She has associations with the ocean, the moon, stars, conch shells, and the female mysteries. Legend has it that Yamaya’s first gift to man was a shell in which her voice could be heard. We still give credit to the legend when we hold a conch shell to our ear in an effort to hear her voice, the ocean.

Diane Stein describes the Yemaya myth in The Woman’s Spirituality Book. Yemaya son violated her in a brutal rape. During the violent and incestuous rape, Yemaya cursed her son to death. She chose to end her own life upon a mountain peak. As she died, she delivered the fourteen Yoruban Gods and Goddesses. Yemaya’s breaking uterine waters caused a flood that created the oceans of the world. From her bones the first mortals were created. She is the Mother of All Creation.

Yemaya is sometimes associated with the Egyptian goddess, Isis. In fact, it’s thought that Yemaya is Isis renamed. The Egyptians who traveled to Africa took with them a deep respect and reverence for the Goddess of the Nile. Is it a coincidence that most of the African goddesses are water related?

Yemaya traveled the vary seas that were said to house her spirit on her way to the New World. As Africans were forced to migrate to the New World via the slave ships, they brought with them their culture and religious beliefs. It was natural for Yemaya to become a goddess at the forefront when the Africans were forced to travel the ocean. Yemaya was a source of comfort to those people enduring the passage aboard the slave ships, and once in the New World she was worshipped because of her protection during the journey.

Yemaya is worshipped in the act of sacred dance, much like Isis. Those involved in the ritual will wear blue, the color of Yemaya, and a necklace of blue and clear beads. Many people will wear the seven layers to represent the seven seas of Yemaya. The altar of Yemaya is always in a circle and the dance is performed in a circle around that altar. The circle is representative of the cycle of life, eternal.

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