They call her the goddess Yemaya, Ymoga (Mother of the Fishes), Iamanga, and Balianne. She traveled with them from Yoruba to distant lands, comforting them in the holds of the slave ships that took them far away from their homeland in Africa. Today she is also celebrated under many other names, including the virgin Mary (Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception), Stella Maris (Star of the Sea), and Our Lady of Regla...to name but a few.
Originally Yemaya was a river goddess of the Yoruba in Nigeria, far from the ocean. She was a nature spirit, an orisha, a powerful guardian spirit that reflects an important aspect of the God of the Ife religion. An orisha manifests itself as a force of nature. When her people were hoarded onto the slave ships, Yemaya went with them, thus becoming the Goddess of the Ocean.
Actually Yemaya shares responsibility for the ocean with another orisha. Okolun rules the dark and turbulent depths of the ocean. Her domain is the upper level, the part of the sea that the light strikes, where water evaporates to be carried to land by her daughter Oya (the wind) to make rain for the crops. Yemaya's gentle waves rock the watery cradle of the abundant life forms of the sea.
Yemaya is a mother goddess, the goddess of home, fertility, love and family. Like water she represents both change and constancy--bringing forth life, protecting it, and changing it as is necessary.
Originally Yemaya was a river goddess of the Yoruba in Nigeria, far from the ocean. She was a nature spirit, an orisha, a powerful guardian spirit that reflects an important aspect of the God of the Ife religion. An orisha manifests itself as a force of nature. When her people were hoarded onto the slave ships, Yemaya went with them, thus becoming the Goddess of the Ocean.
Actually Yemaya shares responsibility for the ocean with another orisha. Okolun rules the dark and turbulent depths of the ocean. Her domain is the upper level, the part of the sea that the light strikes, where water evaporates to be carried to land by her daughter Oya (the wind) to make rain for the crops. Yemaya's gentle waves rock the watery cradle of the abundant life forms of the sea.
Yemaya is a mother goddess, the goddess of home, fertility, love and family. Like water she represents both change and constancy--bringing forth life, protecting it, and changing it as is necessary.
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