Yoruba

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Yoruba

Yemoja

The Mother of Waters

Domain: Oceans & Motherhood
Alignment: Lawful Good
Element: Water
Relics of Power: Silver Abebe of Tides

Speak with Yemoja

The full Codex

5 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

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The People

People

Yoruba people

Region

West Africa & the diaspora

Period

c. 1000 AD – present

The orixás are worshipped by the Yoruba people of present-day Nigeria and Benin, with Ile-Ife as their spiritual center. Through the slave trade, their faith crossed the Atlantic and flourished in the Americas as Candomblé, Santería, and Vodou. It is today one of the most living and widespread African religious traditions in the world.

The Osun festival in Osogbo, Nigeria, draws thousands to the sacred grove of the Osun river, a UNESCO heritage site. The Ifá oracle guides decisions through the odus, and in Brazil the Candomblé terreiros honor each orixá with their own drums, dances, colors, and foods.

At a glance

Yemọja (Iemanjá in Brazil, Yemayá in Cuba) is an orisha of waters and motherhood. In nineteenth-century records of Yoruba country she appears as a deity of brooks and fresh-water streams, linked to ordeals by water; in Brazil she is worshipped chiefly as Queen of the Sea. The oldest and most detailed open source on her myths is A. B. Ellis, who in 1894 noted down in English an oral narrative: Yemaja, daughter of Obatala and Oduduwa, is assaulted by her own son, falls, and from her body come the orishas and the sun and moon. That account is a late colonial record, which its author himself calls recent and not universal. This study presents it as a source, without taking it as the rule of every terreiro.

The ancient sources on this deity are scarce. This study gathers only what is on record.

10 min read · Reviewed on October 14, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

Blue and white, the starfish, the abebé (mirrored fan) and seashells

Family

Parents

Obatala (in the version recorded by A. B. Ellis)Oduduwa

Siblings

Aganju

Yemoja

Unions

Aganju

Children

Orungan (in Ellis's version)Sango Olokun Oshun

Genealogy according to A. B. Ellis, The Yoruba-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa (1894), cap. II, §4; genealogia de um registro histórico específico, não regra de todas as tradições.

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

A. B. Ellis, The Yoruba-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa, chapter II. read
A. B. Ellis, The Yoruba-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa, chapter III. read
A. B. Ellis, The Yoruba-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa (texto completo, Internet Archive). read

Studies

Fowler Museum at UCLA / African Arts, The House Was Too Small: Yorùbá Sacred Arts from Africa and Beyond. 2024. open
Toyin Falola, Global Yorùbá: Regional and Diasporic Networks, chapter 8: Òrìṣà. Indiana University Press. open
Leila Maria Blass, Dois de fevereiro, Dia de Iemanjá, Dia de Festa no Mar. open
Secretaria de Turismo do Estado da Bahia, Fé e tradição marcam a Festa de Iemanjá em Salvador. 2026. open

Name and epithets

Ellis explains the name Yemaja as 'mother of fish', from Yoruba ìyá, mother, and eja, fish. The modern spelling Yemọja follows Yoruba orthography with diacritics; Iemanjá is the Portuguese form and Yemayá the Cuban one.…

In the ancient sources

The Yoruba-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa, 1894. Colonial ethnographic record of an oral narrative, with the genealogy, the flight and the birth of the orishas; not an ancient source.

The myths

Yemaja's flight and the birth of the orishas. According to Ellis, Odudua bore to Obatala a boy and a girl, Aganju and Yemaja. Yemaja married her brother and bore Orungan.

Worship and archaeology

Ellis says, in 1894, that the worship of Aganju seemed to have fallen into disuse or merged into that of his mother, and that in front of the king's residence at Oyo there was an open space called Oju-Aganju, 'front of…

How the god was depicted

Ellis described a yellow female figure, with blue beads and a white cloth, in his 1894 record. The later Brazilian imagery is different: Blass mentions, in the courtyard of Iemanjá's house at Rio Vermelho, a sculpture b…

What scholars debate

River, sea and variable genealogies. The academic catalogue of the exhibition The House Was Too Small distinguishes the fresh-water Yemọja of the Yoruba region from her frequent association with the ocean in the diaspor…

After antiquity

The Bahian festival made the sea Iemanjá public and widely visible. The government of Bahia documents the February 2 celebration at Rio Vermelho, with flowers, songs, gifts and the participation of fishermen and people…

Did you know?

Ellis records a variation even in the order in which the orishas leave Yemaja's body, and his own note prevents treating the list as an unchangeable sequence.

Codex relic

Silver Abebe of Tides. A mirrored fan that controls sea currents and purifies the spirit.

The rest of this scroll is sealed

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