LA SIRÈNE

Waters, seduction, wealth

La Sirène, Lasirenn in Creole, is the lwa of the sea represented as a woman with a fish's tail in Haitian Vodou. Wife of Agwe, the sovereign of the oceans, she reigns over music, seduction and the riches of the deep. Attached to the family of the Ezili, of whom she is sometimes considered the marine face, she has for double Labalenn, the whale, with whom she is sung in the ceremonies. Her attributes are the mirror and the comb, and she is said sometimes to hold a trumpet from which she draws the music of the waves. The mirror is a door between the visible world and the mystic waters: tradition tells that La Sirène draws certain chosen ones underwater, anba dlo, and that they return transformed, bearers of gifts of second sight and healing. She is invoked for luck, prosperity and beauty. Her colours are blue and white, and she is offered sweet wine, champagne, perfumes, mirrors and combs. Her figure converses with Mami Wata, the water spirit honoured on the coasts of West and Central Africa, and with the Yoruba marine deities such as Yemoja: so many faces of a single memory of the waters carried by the diaspora.