LOVE
here can, in many cultures and people, be a great haste to forget where we have come from – and more specifically – how dependent we have been, and continue to be. We push away reminders that it was love that made us strong. In West African Yoruba culture, Yemoja is helpfully on hand to evoke our continued dependence. This deity – widely represented in painting and sculpture – has large pendulous breasts that she holds out in front of her with both hands, offering ‘ounje omu’ (breast milk) to the world. She is typically depicted carrying a baby in a sling behind her, but it’s clear her milk is meant for more than simply newborns. Yemoja gifts her milk – and assistance – to the young, the old, the sick, the animals, the fish, the land, the stars. One might call on Yemoja’s help when starting a business, setting off on a journey or planting a new yam crop. Yemoja joins a long list of female deities – or more bathetically but accurately, ‘mummies’ – from around the world: Frigg in Norse Mythology, Danu in Celtic mythology, Isis in Ancient Egypt, Parvati in Hinduism, Guanyin in Chinese Buddhism, and the Virgin Mary in Christianity. We may cry out for these compassionate, nurturing, and protective figures at moments of crisis, when illness, bankruptcy or disgrace threaten, when we have ceased to be able to rely on our strengths and reason and are close to giving up. We do ourselves a disservice by too quickly cutting ourselves off from our ongoing need for imaginative protection from the kind of love that we all depended on in childhood. Even if we refuse to ‘believe’ in Yemoja’s powers, we can at least recognise the scale of our ache that such a figure might exist and be on hand to help us. We become properly adult when we can accept how much of us is – and will always be – profoundly a child.
This Article Is From The School of Life
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