She is the Virgin Mary of the Yoruba pantheon in heterosexual relationship with the sky god Sango in the circumstances of her death and spiritual resurrection.
Thus, in the Fon language of the vodu (voodoo) culture of Dahomey, West Africa, “Yehweh” is a synonym for vodu and means “divine spirit.” In the Ewe language of southern Togo, also West Africa, “Yehweh” means “spirit”.Īmong the Yoruba of West Africa, Yewa is the chthonic goddess of death and the underworld. The divine name, YHWH, could have been derived in a way that combined the common Afro-Asian roots of the Hebrew words “hay” and “hawwah” a form commonly found in the African languages of Niger-Congo as a generic term for divine spirits. Similarly, the Afro-Asian root, “hwh”, of the Hebrew word “hawwah” (Eve) is found in words meaning “life”, “being” and woman in the Yoruba language.
In the Yoruba language of West Africa, for example, the root is found in words that mean “life,” “mother,” and earth. The common Afro-Asian root of the Hebrew word “hay” is ubiquitous in the Niger-Congo group of sub-Saharan African languages. It is widely recognized that the name of the Old Testament Hebrew God, YHWH, is not derived from the Hebrew language, although the word seems to share the common Afro-Asian etymological roots of the Hebrew words “hay” (“live / be”) and “hawwah” (derived from the Hebrew root of the verb “to be”).
DecemThe Hebrew God YHWH as a two-faced androgynous deity