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.
| Also known as | Ayida Wedo, Aida Wedo, Ayida-Wèdo, Aïda-Wédo, Ayida |
|---|---|
| Type | serpent |
| Tradition | Haitian Vodou (with Fon roots in Benin) |
| Category | Religion |
| Associated with | Haiti |
| Earliest source | François Denys Légitime, La vérité sur le vaudoux (names "Aida Oueddo" as the wife of "Dambala Ouedo"); described in detail in Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen (1953), 1892 |
| Wings | No |
| Breathes fire | No |
| Guards treasure | No |
| Nature | Benevolent |
Who Ayida-Weddo Is
Ayida-Weddo (also written Ayida Wedo or Aida Wedo) is a lwa, a spirit served in Haitian Vodou. She is the rainbow, imagined as a serpent, and she is the wife of Damballa, the great white serpent. The two belong to the Rada family of lwa, whose traditions trace back to Dahomey in West Africa, and they are usually honored together as a pair.
Vodou is a living religion, and Ayida-Weddo is a spirit people serve today. Practices and understandings vary from one temple and family to another, so what follows is an outline drawn from published ethnography, not a statement of how every community honors her.
Nature and Symbolism
As the rainbow, Ayida-Weddo arches between sky and earth, and she is linked with rain, water, and fertility. Together with Damballa she is often described as forming a great serpent pair that encircles and supports the world, his white joined with her many colors. Ethnographers such as Maya Deren wrote of the couple as a picture of balance and of the male and female forces that together sustain life.
In ceremony she is usually saluted alongside Damballa, and their sacred designs, or vèvè, often show two serpents facing each other. Offerings to the pair are typically white or pale and simple. Like other lwa, Ayida-Weddo has been linked in popular imagery with Catholic figures; the associations vary, and they are less settled for her than the well-known link between Damballa and Saint Patrick.
Origins
Ayida-Weddo's roots lie among the Fon of Dahomey, in present-day Benin. In Fon religion the serpent Dan, sometimes called Dan Ayido Hwedo, is linked with the rainbow, with movement, and with the coils that hold the world together. In one well-known Fon creation account, the rainbow serpent Aido-Hwedo carried the creator Mawu as she made the world, and now lies coiled beneath the earth holding it up. Enslaved Fon and other West Africans brought these traditions to Saint-Domingue, where they took new forms in Haitian Vodou. Many scholars connect the name Wedo with Hweda, the old name for the region of Ouidah on the coast of Benin.
Sources
Vodou has no written scripture. Ayida-Weddo is known from the practice of Vodou communities and from ethnographers who studied it, especially Maya Deren in Divine Horsemen (1953) and Alfred Métraux in Voodoo in Haiti (1959). Earlier colonial accounts mention serpent devotion in Saint-Domingue without naming her. One of the earliest printed mentions of her by name is in the Haitian writer François Denys Légitime's La vérité sur le vaudoux (1892), which names "Aida Oueddo" as the wife of "Dambala Ouedo."
Is Ayida-Weddo a Dragon?
She is a sacred spirit, not a monster. She belongs in a survey of dragons because the rainbow serpent is one of the world's oldest and most widespread images of a cosmic serpent, found from West Africa to Australia.
Related
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Dragons Across Cultures
Sources and Further Reading
- Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (Vanguard Press, 1953)
- Alfred Métraux, Voodoo in Haiti, trans. Hugo Charteris (Oxford University Press, 1959)
- Leslie G. Desmangles, The Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti (University of North Carolina Press, 1992)
- Melville J. Herskovits and Frances S. Herskovits, Dahomean Narrative: A Cross-Cultural Analysis (Northwestern University Press, 1958)
- François Denys Légitime, La vérité sur le vaudoux (Port-au-Prince, 1892)
Cite this entry: “Ayida-Weddo,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/ayida-weddo.