Heroine of lake stories and urban legends, Mami Wata is often represented in painting where she appears in the guise of a mermaid or a beautiful young woman holding snakes.
Mamiwata is a "pidgin" water spirit, Mamy-Water ... Maa UATI or Mama UATI (Mami UATA), mermaid, woman-fish, half-aquatic, half terrestrial, or female snake with long black hair.
Mami Wata is also the spirit of the sea that appears on the beaches or in the heart of major cities at night.
She is a water spirit feared by fishermen in Nigeria and Ghana, being as well nurturing sea or destructive ocean.
Mami Wata is primarily an Ewe water goddess, her religion is very present on the Atlantic coast, where it symbolizes the supreme power, Togo, Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo - Brazzaville.
Mami Wata is now part of the pantheon of vodun gods, with many followers in the cult of Dan's royal python, performed by Mina, Adja, Ewe, Fon, Yoruba and Ibo. Her Diviners and healers followers use religious figurines, candles, lights and incense sticks.
According to voodoo belief, who found one of her hair on the beach will have wealth, provided he remains faithful.
In her entourage are often Hindu deities (Rama Mami, Mami Vishnu, etc ...)
Her cult was so widespread in West Africa, Central and South America, on the Atlantic coast of the Gulf of Guinea and the African Diaspora, the Caribbean, and parts of North and South.
According to legend, Mami Wata is a new goddess came from the world of waters, seas, oceans, with the first Portuguese ships, then Deutch, English and French ....
The first Europeans to approach the coast of Guinea seemed to emerge from the sea with their boats. Their bodies were like those of the drowned, their strange tools could only be created by some eccentric water spirits.
This is when the encounter between white settlers and black Africans that Mami Warta has become the favorite goddess of "free women" of post-colonial cities of Africa and became the object of rituals, black magic and sorcery.
Mamiwata is spirit (andjimba) attached to the water, a female spirit who possesses women and makes them seductive, women possessed by this spirit are irresistible and have long hair, to deliver them, one cut their hair ...
A male variant of Mamiwata is tatiwata ...
Mami Wata is often portrayed with a complexion of a young girl, snakes around her breasts, snakes represent a supernatural power.
Benign, it can provide beauty, wealth, family and a long life to those who honor her, but she also has a dangerous side and capsized the boat, makes the soil sterile and drowns his unfortunate victims.
Beautiful, fascinating, she chooses women and men to whom she provides luxury and wealth in exchange for their love, but Mami Wata is a jealousy that is devastating when one does not respect her laws ...
Mamy Wata can take the men she enriches into sexual slavery, exchanging her blesses for a family member or even his manhood.
At other times she is venerated as embodying the spirit of a drowned or as "Ruler of the water and drowned".
She may appear in dreams and visions of those who are dedicated as a beautiful mermaid, or, in the streets of cities in modern Africa, disguised as a beautiful woman.
In Congolese folklore, Mamiwata is prostitute, preferring to visit the markets and visit the bars in the guise of a beautiful woman, man-eater who leads men into madness or the guise of a ghost, as the patron saint of prostitutes in Kinshasa.
Symbol of free women, her image becomes in Congo-Zaire, Mobutu and then with the rise of AIDS, one of the dominant themes of the Congolese popular art.
Mami Wata loves modernity; three of her favorite offerings are some sweet imported perfumes, expensive sunglasses or glasses of Coca-Cola. The Mami Wata colors are red and white.
At the center of the rites of the water, Mamy Wata is the object of worship, black magic and sorcery, but is also a source of hope.
Mami Wata is a wholly African. alien creature, like a siren, spirit that lives in water, but also a former divinity, strange divinity, strange to men and strange to nature. She is a supernatural creature, which embodies the intersection of three worlds: animal, human and spiritual. This hybridity gives her all her powers.
On the eve of the Second World War, fairground displays are found in abundance in the markets of Africa under the title "The Snake Charmer". The reason, the decorations and the face shape to evoke India.
In the 1940s and 1950s, its distribution in West Africa was greatly accelerated by the proliferation of reproductions.
Her picture soon decorates walls of many houses which gathered the followers of Mami Wata. Diviners and healers began to use representations of plastic, wood or cement as figures of worship or advertising.
And here is how Mami Wata was promoted to the rank of divinity. A cult has developed very complex mixing Indian, Buddhist, African, European traditions and even astrology.
Mami Wata ....Feel her spirit at:
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Estings/168/137/5
Here is one of many tales about her:
MAMI WATA AND THE MONSTER
Inspired by "Mamy Wata and the monster" Veronique Tadjo (Benin)
Mamy Wata Queen water lived alone in her kingdom. She was very generous ....
Animals could drink in all water points, men could fish wherever they wanted in her kingdom.
Her loved companions were the sinners, large fishes and other animals in good faith.
Mamy Wata spent her days diving into the sea, playing in the waterfalls and swimming in the rivers.
One day she was notified of the presence of an ugly monster. This one was terrorizing the habitants of coastal villages.
It was an aquatic carnivore monster: he had swallowed two fishers and several children.
The monster retreated overnight in a grotto. The Queen of the Water decided to sat near him. Mamy Wata heard his groans in his sleep, and then realized that the monster was unhappy.
The monster tells her his misadventure. "I was once a young man and a witch changed me into a monster because I refused to marry one of her daughters."
Mamy Wata was very sensitive to the monster complaints; she comforted him and made the monster happy.
Taking compassion, the queen of water decided to give it back his human form.
So the monster is transformed into a young man. He freed the fishermen and the swallowed children. He chose to live with Mamy Wata forever.
Contes du Baobab (Baobab Stories), March 23, 2010
Research provided by Artemisia Mathy
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Nu fattar jag varför jag skrämde ungarna när jag badade i Afrika-får berätta den historien senare.
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