Yemaya

Yemaya

Yemaya is the Orisha of the sea, where life on Earth began—Yemaya, Mother of all Life, the Great Mother. Like human mothers, she has many different styles of mothering, different modes of being. Like the sea, she can be calm and peaceful or rough and stormy; she may harbour deep and dangerous undercurrents, be unpredictable, lash out, or suddenly lie low.

There are therefore many different roads of Yemaya, each one expressing a different part of her nature. The first Yemaya I encountered on my journey in Santería-Lucumí was Yemaya Asesu, Yemaya of the frothy shores and still waters. Her children are generally loving, caring, and soothing, but sometimes hard to reach—seemingly absent or a little hard of hearing, engrossed in their own worlds.

My road of Yemaya is Yemaya Ogunte, the fierce warrior path allied with Ogun, who clears the way with his machete. Ogunte also wields a machete, and when roused, the bloodshed she unleashes colours the seas around her red.

Ogunte is the patron of tough love. She is the mother who teaches her children how to fight to survive. She will go to any lengths to help them move forward in life, if that is what is necessary. Ogunte teaches us the gut-wrenching challenges of tough love—when it is no longer a mother’s job to carry her children on her waves, to save and nourish them, but to leave them to fend for themselves amid the storm, so they may come out stronger on the other side.

Yemaya Ogunte helps us understand the ultimate sacrifice a mother may sometimes have to make, and gives mothers in need the strength to stand firm.