12/17/2023 0 Comments Santa marta la dominadora espiritismoWe would love to know more about other women performers who thrilled audiences with their enticing repertoire of tantric dancing and snake charming under the Orientalist gaze of the culture industry. Nala Damajanti, captured her likeness in an image that is believed to be reproduced on the inset of a popular Bombay calendar from the 1950s. When I tried to trace the origins of the most widely distributed images of Mami Wata, I gained some remarkable insights into her representational diversity. In the West, artists in the late nineteenth century who were inspired by the exotic global circus performer Saint Martha the Dominator, beloved of Hoodoos and rootworkers She appears throughout the African and African-American references as a personality that inspirits physical places and human bodies, but typically, she is viewed as inextricably linked to the primal forces of water: the sea, rivers, and lakes. In other examples she strides, queen-like, bejeweled and adorned as a mysterious woman with a serpent, the supreme avatar of divination and mystical sight, wrapped around her body. There, she is often presented as a goddess of fertility and healing who takes the form of a large, fish-tailed mermaid, sometimes carrying, in classic style, a mirror or a comb to groom her thick hair. Der Schlangenbändiger (“The Snake Charmer”) as the “Hindu Princess” and her magnificent snakes, ca. In different contexts she is associated with other names yet her deep connection to her African sources is explicit. Gradually, recognition of her alluring energy spread, from Togo to Tobago. In some settings, she is simply Mami Wata – a concept originating among the Ibibio people in the southeast coast of Nigeria. It is as if by virtue of her fluidity as a being of the water, that she is able to shape-shift, yet somehow remain resonant with a consistent morphology. Mami Wata is fascinating, not only because she appears in so many different guises across different times and places, but because as an icon she inspires multiple meanings and spiritual purposes for her devotees, who keep her presence alive. I keep it in my office next to my Aunt Jemima figurine, having purchased it at a deep discount at a Philadelphia botanica that was rotating its inventory of saints. But what if we went on a journey down her visual pathways? Why not? I own a Mami Wata statuette. I say “mysteriously ubiquitous” because like many mythical forms in the African diaspora, tracking her provenance can be a special challenge. …which brings me to the topic for today, the emergence of one of the most mysteriously ubiquitous of magical beings, the female water-spirit, Mami Wata. Cabaret poster of Nala Damajanti, Hindu snake charmer, ca., 1890s Think of a well-stocked botanica as an informational resource that functions on multiple levels and realms of significance: commercial, magical, and artistic. But one might view these vital institutions of Hoodoo as more than just marketplaces consider the botanica as a museum of artifacts, a gallery of objects, a doctor’s office, and a not-so-liminal space where Interested and Curious folks can engage with experts and adherents of living cultural traditions. These shops proliferate in urban areas throughout the United States, and more recently, we see that in the suburbs as well as some affluent neighborhoods there are places where religious and magical material goods are sold in a shopping venue. 1955Įven though Hoodoo and Conjure supplies are disseminated broadly on the internet these days, it is just as likely that one can find an actual physical botanica or spiritual store where one can purchase the essential merchandise of magical practices. Popular image of Mami Wata as Maladamatjaute, from a Bombay calendar, ca.
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