Yemọja is the great mother of the Yoruba pantheon, the spirit of the ocean and of all waters. Her name means Mother Whose Children Are Like Fish: countless, boundless, ever-present. She rules the depths from which all life comes and to which every river returns.
Yemọja is both fierce and tender, for she is the ocean, and the ocean moves without asking. She guards fishermen and sailors, blesses women who long for children, and keeps the spirits of those lost at sea.
In the diaspora she became Yemanjá in Brazil, where her February festival fills the beaches of Salvador da Bahia. In Cuba she is Yemayá, one of the central Orishas of Lucumí (Santería) practice.
Her colours are blue and clear white, the deep sea and its foam. Her sacred number is seven. She is not approached with anything red, the colour of violence and disruption that has no place at the water’s edge.
