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Week 13: Aganju and Yemaja

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In the reading of African Mermaids and Other Water Spirits as well as Aganju and Yemaja, I found it extremely interesting how strong the belief in water spirits is. I noticed that there is a lot more emphasis placed on water spirits than land spirits. Though I am sure land spirits hold importance in African culture, it is repeated that water spirits are still worshipped a bit more than the land spirits are. In Aganju and Yemaja, it’s mentioned that “the worship of Aganju seems to have fallen to disuse, or to have become merged in that of his mother” (p.168). Granted it is mentioned that this story was collected from the 1800s, so this may not be relevant to today’s beliefs but at this time it seems that the belief in Aganju was not made as clear as the belief in Yemaja. Aganju is said to represent Land and his mother represents Earth, so it is understandable that the worship would be tied together, but the fact remains that the belief in Yemaja has expanded to many different countries and is still relatively prevalent. 

This story also makes me think about how in indigenous cultures the respect given to water and land was equal and how all aspects of nature were celebrated, not just the aspects that benefit the people. It reminds me of the discussion we had about the blue humanities and how indigenous people are not given consideration when we discuss the creation of the field. These stories about water spirits show a culture centered on respect and acknowledgment for the environment as a whole. There is both something to fear and to appreciate about the water spirits which represents a fear and admiration of the bodies of water that these water spirits represent or inhabit. 

Blogpost Week 13 – Aganju and Yemaja 

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The reading I wanted to write about this week was ‘Aganju and Yemaja’. I found it particularly interesting and quite frankly depressing. The first part that stood out to me was in the first line that, “[t]he name Aganju means uninhabited tract of country, wilderness, plain, or forest” (Penguin, 168). This reminds me of our class discussion around the definition of nature, but again it is something that we have made up and created through the use of literature. I think it is something important to recognize, but at the end of the day each and every part of the world has been inhabited by some person or animal at one point in time; everything has been habited. However, I do find a large amount of beauty in the name, it resembles a sense of purity and beauty in the natural world. The second part of the story that I found interesting was the fact that Orungan means, “[i]n the height of the sky” (168, Penguin), which typically resembles a higher power similar to the Christian/Catholic belief in God being in the sky, or Zeus the god of the sky being the most powerful as well. However, Orungan commits a serious and awful crime in sexually advancing on his own mother. This is quite contrary to what I would believe a god of the sky would be portrayed as, but might serve as a reflection of different perspectives that I have grown up and understood in the west. What I also found to be particularly disturbing is that after the fact, he unveiled some weird Oedipus complex towards his mom, which is rather weird from my perspective. However, this might have been a bit more ‘typical’ in historic times as the idea of an Oedipus complex is quite old and to my knowledge, not necessarily socially acceptable in today’s day and age. The next part that I found a bit confusing was how if she was running away from her son, she fell backwards. I have fallen a million times while running and never have I been able to fall backwards, your momentum typically drives you forward and hence the idea of ‘eating concrete’. My confusion lies around the fact as to whether she stopped and fell backwards, or perhaps as he reached out he pulled his mother backwards, but either way I am a bit confused and curious as to if that confusion might mean or symbol something as I have realized it typically does. Although maybe this is just a simple misunderstanding or perhaps something that got confused in translation.