The Ewe creator is Mawu, and in the fuller form Mawu-Lisa: two in one.
Volta Region shrines; the Ewe drumming and dance traditions of Anlo.
2 min readSource-backed story
Listening to Mawu-Lisa and the Vodun
Mawu-Lisa and the Vodun
Story 1 of 1
0:001:14
Read transcript
Mawu-Lisa and the Vodun
The Ewe creator is Mawu, and in the fuller form Mawu-Lisa: two in one. Mawu is the moon, the west, the night, coolness, gentleness, the female aspect. Lisa is the sun, the east, the day, heat, strength, the male. They are twins, or a single being with two faces, and between them they hold everything that can be paired — and the pairing itself is the doctrine. Nothing in the Ewe world is complete alone.
Below them are the trɔwo and the vodun: the spirits of thunder, of the sea, of iron, of smallpox, of the crossroads, of particular groves and particular families. Each has its priests, its drums, its dances, its foods and its prohibitions. They are approached; Mawu generally is not, in the same way that Nyame is not.
And the word travelled. Vodun went across the Atlantic from this coast and became Vodou in Haiti and Voodoo in Louisiana — the same root, transformed by the Middle Passage and then slandered for two centuries by people who had never seen it.
If you visit Ghana. Volta Region shrines; the Ewe drumming and dance traditions of Anlo.
The Ewe creator is Mawu, and in the fuller form Mawu-Lisa: two in one. Mawu is the moon, the west, the night, coolness, gentleness, the female aspect. Lisa is the sun, the east, the day, heat, strength, the male. They are twins, or a single being with two faces, and between them they hold everything that can be paired — and the pairing itself is the doctrine. Nothing in the Ewe world is complete alone.
Below them are the trɔwo and the vodun: the spirits of thunder, of the sea, of iron, of smallpox, of the crossroads, of particular groves and particular families. Each has its priests, its drums, its dances, its foods and its prohibitions. They are approached; Mawu generally is not, in the same way that Nyame is not.
And the word travelled. Vodun went across the Atlantic from this coast and became Vodou in Haiti and Voodoo in Louisiana — the same root, transformed by the Middle Passage and then slandered for two centuries by people who had never seen it.