NANA BULUKU

Primordial ancestress, creator / Nana Baluku

Nana Buluku is the original supreme being in the Vodun religion of the Fon of Benin and the Ewe of Togo. The traditions collected in Dahomey tell that she creates the world, gives birth to the twins Mawu and Lisa, the moon and the sun, then withdraws, leaving the government of the universe to this dyad. She thus belongs to the figures of the withdrawn creator, honoured yet little solicited in daily worship. Her memory reaches far beyond Fon country: the Yoruba know her as Nana Bukuu and certain Igbo traditions as Olisabuluwa. A figure of great antiquity, she is represented as a woman of immense age, prior to all things. Deported with the captives of the Atlantic slave trade, she remains venerated in the Americas: in Brazil, Candomblé honours her as Nanã or Nanã Buruku, a very old mother associated with the primordial mud and the still waters, held to be the mother of Obaluaiê, the counterpart of the vodun Sakpata. In Haitian Vodou, where Bondyé holds the place of the distant creator, her memory has faded; but from the Gulf of Benin to the Americas she remains the silent root from which the Afro-diasporic pantheons proceed.