Mami Wata

Mami Wata is the powerful water spirit venerated across West and Central Africa and carried by the diaspora to the Caribbean and the Americas. Usually pictured as a stunningly beautiful woman, often with the lower body of a serpent or fish and a great snake coiled about her, she embodies the seductive and perilous nature of water itself. She is said to lure travelers to riverbanks and shorelines, and those she takes beneath the waves may return blessed with beauty, wealth, and fortune, or may never return at all. Devotees honor her with offerings of perfume, sweets, mirrors, and the colors red and white, seeking healing, prosperity, or fertility, for Mami Wata gives and withholds as she pleases. Her image absorbed influences from many sources over the centuries, from indigenous water deities to foreign prints of mermaids, making her a truly transatlantic figure. Both worshipped and feared, generous and jealous, Mami Wata reigns as a shimmering symbol of the beauty, danger, and unfathomable depth of the waters that give and take life.