The
Ewe Creation Story
According
to the Ewe God is neither male nor female but but both. He is a
timeless all powerful entity who isn’t bounded by the concepts of
time and gender. He is eternal, so they call him Mawu, which
literally means “without end”. God was ascribed the masculine
gender only after the introduction of Western Religion. There are
other spiritual entities that have gender ascribed to them and I will
mention them as they come up in this writing. God is also Mawu
Sogbo-Lisa a name that is believed to indicate his dual “gender”,
Sogbo being the female aspect and Lisa being the male
aspect. His various names will come up as we go on with this article.
It is because God is both male and female that Ewe names are gender neutral. Most Ewe names describe an attribute of God or his relationship with mankind. The part of God that lives inside us, that is always with us is "Se", the name Selorm means "God loves me" but it's more than that. It's God who is always with me, by me, in me, loves me.
It is because God is both male and female that Ewe names are gender neutral. Most Ewe names describe an attribute of God or his relationship with mankind. The part of God that lives inside us, that is always with us is "Se", the name Selorm means "God loves me" but it's more than that. It's God who is always with me, by me, in me, loves me.
The
Creation of the World:
I
can not particularly remember the order in which things were created
but at some point in time, God created the world. According to Ewe
beliefs, God created both the cosmic and physical world to interact
at all time. There is no spiritual world without the physical world
and there is no physical world with cosmic world.
Just
like the Judea-Christian God, Mawu spoke and everything was made.
However, there was no order to the things that were made so Mawu
asked the Royal Python, a spiritual entity of order to set things as
they were to be. The Royal Phython separated the land from the
waters, set the plants on the land, fish in the sea and basically
everything in the order that we know it today. The Royal Python also
separated the cosmic world from the physical world so that even
though they interact, their effect on each other is minimal. The
physical world was called Xexɛmɛ.
After
creation, the Royal wrapped itself around the Earth to preserve the
order of thing so that they may never go into disorder ever again.
The The rainbow is believed to be the python that holds everything
together.
I
remember as a child in Ho, someone once told me if you ever found the
end of the rainbow, there’s a head of a snake waiting to swallow
you.
God
is called Mawu Kiti-Kata because he’s the eternal one who
creates and destroys.
The
Creation of Man:
The
creation of man according to the Ewes is very similar to that of the
Christian creation. This might be due to the fact that the Ewes are
believed to have during migration, come though Ethiopia which has a
long history of “Christianity”.
Man
was created from clay. Unlike the Bible however, woman wasn’t
created from the ribs of man but also from clay, at the same time as
man.
According
to the Ewes, all souls reside somewhere in spiritual plane called
Bomɛ (sometimes called
Amɛdzɔƒɛ, which means the
origin of humans). Bomɛ is
a place of blissful ignorance and innocence ruled by a female deity
called Bomɛnɔ. When
Mawu was done creating man and woman from clay, he took two souls
from Bomɛnɔ and
placed them in the clay models and they became living beings.
It
believed that all knowledge and wisdom was created and put by God on
Earth. It is man’s duty to seek knowledge while on Earth. One can
not bring knowledge from the spiritual world to the physical world
and besides, there is no knowledge or wisdom in Bomɛ. A
fool is sometimes referred to as Bomɛtsila, which
means, one who is still stuck in Bomɛ.
Another
appellation given to God is “Mawu Adaŋutɔ wɔ asi kplɛ afɔ”,
this means, “God of wisdom creator of arms and legs”.
The
Afterlife:
The
concept of hell, a place of eternal damnation is foreign to the Ewe
beliefs. The Ewes believe in a place a bit like the Greek’s Hades,
it is called Tsiɛƒɛ a place of rest. When one dies, depending on
the kind of life they lived on Earth, the Kutsiami
may or may not give them a ride to Tsiɛƒɛ. Those who are not given
a ride will have their souls still wondering the Earth as ŋɔli
(Ghost) until certain
pacification rights are performed to put that soul at rest.
Conclusion:
most
of what I know about the Ewe creation story and cosmic world is based
on things I’ve heard over a long period of time. So I can not
remember and others I’m not too sure of. If there are any additions
or corrections please leave them in the comment section below and I
will look at them.
Pronunciations:
ɛ
– e sound in bed
ɔ
– o sound in bore
ŋ – this
is a nasal sounding "Ng" that differs depending on the word
it is in
ƒ
– there is really no English way to pronounce this, closest is “ph”
or “p”
Tsiɛƒɛ
– Chi-er-pheh
Xexɛmɛ
– Ewes pronounce X as H so
this is pronounce – Hey-her-mer
