Aido Hwedo

Aido Hwedo is the rainbow serpent of Fon religion in Benin, who carried the creator Mawu as the world was made and now lies coiled beneath the earth, holding it together.

The Story

In the creation stories of the Fon people of the old kingdom of Dahomey, in what is now Benin, the world was made by the creator Mawu (often paired with her twin Lisa as Mawu-Lisa). Mawu did not shape it alone. She traveled from place to place carried by a great serpent, Aido Hwedo, sometimes in its mouth. Wherever the serpent passed, its winding body carved out rivers and valleys, and where it rested at night, its droppings piled up into mountains.

When the work was finished, Mawu saw that the earth, crowded with mountains, trees, animals, and people, was too heavy and might sink into the sea. She asked Aido Hwedo to coil itself into a circle beneath the world, like a carrying pad, to keep everything together. Because the serpent dislikes heat, she made the ocean for it to lie in. When Aido Hwedo shifts to get comfortable, the earth shakes.

The anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits also recorded the belief that red monkeys forge bars of iron for the serpent to eat. If the iron ever runs out, the hungry serpent will begin to eat its own tail, and the world will fall into the sea.

Appearance and Powers

Aido Hwedo is a vast serpent, and the rainbow is one of its forms or signs. The Fon associate it with Dan (or Da), the serpent vodun of life force, movement, continuity, and wealth, and Aido Hwedo is often treated as one manifestation of Dan. It holds the world together rather than threatening it, and it is linked with water, the sea, and the arc of the rainbow across the sky.

Origins and Sources

Serpent religion along the coast of Dahomey was noted by European visitors as early as the 1700s, especially the python cult of Ouidah. The most important early record of Fon cosmology is the work of the American anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits, who did fieldwork in Abomey in 1931. His two-volume Dahomey (1938) and Dahomean Narrative (1958, with Frances S. Herskovits) describe Dan Ayido Hwedo and the rainbow serpent. Fon tradition varies from lineage to lineage, and published versions of the creation story differ in details.

Legacy

When enslaved Fon and their neighbors were carried to the Caribbean, their serpent deities went with them. In Haitian Vodou, Ayida-Weddo is the rainbow serpent and wife of the great serpent Damballa, a direct descendant of Dahomean belief. Aido Hwedo's coiled, tail-holding pose has also invited comparisons with the Ouroboros and the Norse World Serpent. For more on African serpent beings, see dragons of Africa and Oceania.

Related

• Ayida-Weddo: Ayida-Weddo is the rainbow serpent lwa (spirit) of Haitian Vodou, the wife of the white serpent Damballa, honored with him as a spirit of the rainbow, water, fertility, and the union of sky and earth.
• Damballa: Damballa is the great white serpent lwa (spirit) of Haitian Vodou, an ancient, gentle, and wise father figure linked with water, rain, purity, and fertility, and the husband of the rainbow serpent Ayida-Weddo.
• Rainbow Serpent: The Rainbow Serpent is a powerful creator being in the traditions of many Aboriginal peoples of Australia, a great snake linked to water, rain, and rainbows who shaped the land and punishes those who break its law.
• Ouroboros: The Ouroboros is a serpent or dragon eating its own tail, a symbol of eternity and endless cycles first found in ancient Egypt and later central to Greek alchemy and Western esoteric art.
• Jörmungandr: Jörmungandr is the Midgard Serpent of Norse mythology, a child of Loki so huge that it encircles the world under the ocean and bites its own tail, and Thor's destined enemy at Ragnarök.
• Dragons Across Cultures
• Ouroboros

Sources and Further Reading

• Melville J. Herskovits, Dahomey: An Ancient West African Kingdom, 2 vols. (J. J. Augustin, 1938)
• Melville J. Herskovits and Frances S. Herskovits, Dahomean Narrative: A Cross-Cultural Analysis (Northwestern University Press, 1958)
• Suzanne Preston Blier, African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power (University of Chicago Press, 1995)
• David Leeming with Margaret Leeming, A Dictionary of Creation Myths (Oxford University Press, 1994)

Cite this entry: “Aido Hwedo,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/aido-hwedo.