Mami Wata

Mami Wata is an African water spirit, who is revered in Western, Southern and Central Africa and the African Diaspora in the Caribbean. Mami Wata is usually represented in female, but occasionally also in the masculine form.

Origin and distribution

Before the first arrival of Europeans in Africa where water cults were widespread in much coaters, most feminine expression. Belief in Mami Wata spread probably from Nigeria in many countries in West Africa from. It is conjectured that the cult of the Cross River region of southeastern Nigeria comes. The anthropologist Barbara Paxson localized home mommy Watas contrast, in Latin America. The worship of the supposedly African Spirit is according to one of their theories a modification of the so-called Watur Mummy cult. This cult was practiced in the then Dutch colony of Surinam already in 1750 by African slaves. The ritual acts - possession dances and sacrificial rituals - led the deportees in that time something like this through, as did the Mami Wata trailer about 150 years later. After Paxson now reached the Watur Mummy faith, become by some modifications to Mami Wata - cult, Africa, as the Surinamese slaves emigrated to the homeland of their ancestors after their liberation in 1863. A similar interpretation represented the art historian Jill Salmons and Henry Drewal. The ethnologist Sabine Jell- Bahlsen, and the Nigerian writers Chinua Achebe, Christie Achebe and Flora Nwapa refer, however, to the local African origins of water deities who, because of their different African names for foreigners to Pidgin English as Mammywater, Mami Wata, Mammy Water, Mammmywota etc. However.

It is found almost everywhere representations between Senegal and Nigeria. Because of their predominantly fair-skinned and mermaids like form exists in science among others the assumption that the shape Mami Watas based on the African manatee. For further argument, that it is common in many parts of the region, to name these animals Mami Wata. Another hypothesis leads back her mermaids like and light-skinned appearance on the influence of the Europeans, because on the ships of the ( slave ) traders were at the bow often Mermaids incorporated as a figurehead and popular stories about these creatures among the sailors.

Overall, the ideas of the appearance and gender of the spirit of ethnicity are different to ethnicity. In many parts of West and Central Africa, particularly attractive women are called Mami Wata. The Liberian Kpelle Mami Wata contrast is even a male, sometimes a female shaped spirit.

Appearance

Most Mami- Wata worshipers imagine the mermaids like creatures as a woman with zurückgekämmtem, unnaturally long hair before and the hair color varies. In West Africa, Mami- Wata followers worship the hybrid creature with a human upper body and a fish's tail in a cult obsession. For the mind is similar to the element of Water an ambivalent character characteristic, which includes both healing and life-giving, but also destructive and harmful aspects. Similar to the sirens of Greek mythology Mami Wata is described in stories as extremely attractive woman seduces the chosen one with the siren calls and all kinds of precious gifts. However, it also has another face. Not the cause of various ailments, such as diseases, Mami Wata is widely feared.