Yemaya –The Mother of Compassion

 

 

Yemaya, Ocean Mother goddess of the Afro-Caribbean.  She began with enslaved Africans that were brought over in the 16^th century.  She is typically shown as a mermaid, the Great Mother Earth, the Life Giver and works with the phases of the moon.  Her main effect is on women.  Even today, she is turned to for fertility.  She is calm-headed but when her anger finally peaks, she is the floods, the tsunamis, the full roiling and boiling rivers.   

Her story is not a pretty story.  After a horrible event that she felt destroyed her femininity, she jumped from the tallest mountain cliff she could find and as she fell, seven Higher Beings came from her body.  Water was created on earth and those seven gushing waters became the seven seas.

Her lessons include learning to flow, to care for ourselves, each other and for Mother Earth.  She taught us great compassion and because of this she is known as the Mother of Mercy.  When the waters on Earth become angry, it is because we do not take care of ourselves, each other and Mother Earth.  We have to learn to be merciful. 

The siren’s song; a whisper you might hear when you are near water, a hush, the sweet sound of waves, these are her song.  Sometimes it is a warning.  Water sources are considered the womb of creation.

Water is foremost in most religions, as well.  We are mostly a body of water.  Very many of our ceremonies contain something with water.

Yemaya means, literally, the Mother of Fish.  And her nurturing, emotional soothing, her protective parts of this goddess are very commonplace events to do with water.   She is the soothing flow of soft rivers.  She is the lullaby of waves on the edge of a lake.  She is the laughing waters of waterfalls.  She is the joy in bouncing spring rains.  She is the water for the thirsty.  She is associated with all water colors from browns, whites, deep blues, and to crystal clear blues.  She is in the shells of the ocean sides, the number seven, waterlilies, white roses, watermelons, and pearls.

 She is the surrender to life’s tides of ebbs and flows.  She is the mists that are drawing water to the skies to fall again in the waters of the earth.  What goes will return.  Let things go so something made more of it can return. 

Go sit with her and listen to what she has to say.

©Carol Desjarlais 1.23.22