AYIDA-WEDDO

Rainbow, fertility / Ayida Wedo

Ayida-Weddo is the lwa of the rainbow serpent in Haitian Vodou, wife and feminine double of Damballa Wedo. She descends from Aido Hwedo, the cosmic serpent of the Fon mythology of Dahomey, present-day Benin, who sustains the world with his coils and wears the colours of the rainbow. Honoured in the Rada rite, she is associated with fertility, rain and prosperity. When Damballa appears, the rainbow of Ayida-Weddo accompanies him: their inseparable couple embodies the union of sky and earth, and the balance of the masculine and the feminine in creation. She is sometimes represented as a serpent biting its own tail, an image of the continuity of life. Her colours are white and blue, and all those of the rainbow. She is offered white foods: eggs, rice, milk, white hens. She shares with Damballa the vèvè of the two intertwined serpents. Catholic imagery associated her with Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. Discreet, gentle and benevolent, she is invoked for the protection of the home and for abundance. Her figure recalls the cosmological depth of Haitian Vodou, a living religion that preserved across the Atlantic the memory of the great creator serpent of the Fon.