ALSO KNOWN AS:ĭamballah is a huge snake, so big his body forms seven thousand coils. He does not object to light floral odors, like rose or orange blossom water, and traditionally expresses a fondness for Pompeii Lotion, a cologne product found in botanicas and spiritual supply stores. He may object to cleaning products with strong odors, too, as well as air fresheners with strong aromas. If you smoke, then do so far from his altar space or anywhere associated with him. He doesn’t like strong, pervasive odors of any kind, but especially tobacco. He enjoys the company of Ezili Freda Dahomey.
Damballah is Moses’ staff that transformed into a snake. Damballah may hiss or make whistling noises but does not speak a human language.ĭamballah is syncretized to Saint Patrick and Moses, the law-giver. He is so old and primal that he is pre-articulate he emerges from a time before speech. He will engage in sacred marriages with women but also occasionally with men.ĭamballah appears in dreams. Despite his venerable age, he remains interested in people. He can be extremely generous, however, and so may be approached when one is genuinely desperate or really in trouble. He is incredibly old and powerful and is usually not bothered for trivial matters. Damballah and his true love, the rainbow serpent, maintain the balance of forces, which sustains all life on Earth (the equivalent of what East Asian cosmology would describe as yin-yang forces). He bestows wealth, prosperity, good health, and fertility to devotees and can expose the location of missing treasure. He may also survive in the New Orleans folk saint Blanc Dani.ĭamballah is among the most beloved and important lwa. That power is manifest in human beings in the form of white liquids: milk and semen.ĭamballah, the primordial snake lwa of life, wealth, and wisdom, is venerated in Dahomey as well as in Haitian Vodou. The intensive all-pervasive power of that love infiltrated the entire universe. The first rain began to fall, and Aïdo-Hwedo, in the guise of the first rainbow, appeared. Sacred waters were released, forming oceans, rivers, springs, and streams. His movements raised mountains and created valleys. Although he lay still for a long time, eventually he had to move. He lay beneath Earth, a great snake, cushioning and protecting it from falling into the watery abyss below.
His wife, Ayida Wede, also often manifest as a large snake, and is often referred to as the "Rainbow Serpent.Once upon a time, there was only Damballah. Damballah usually manifests as a large snake who speaks in barely-intelligible hissing.
As a result, many Haitian Voodoo practitioners invoke Damballah rather than Buluku, Mahu or Lusa when seeking assistance from their supreme creator. As the Vodu religion was bastardized into "vaudo" and "voodoo" by confusion with the French "vaudois" (a French Catholic heresy) and Santeria, Damballah achieved far greater prominence. Dam-Ayido reinvented his image to comport with Western culture, adopting the name "Damballah" and representing himself as the Vodu sky father to his worshipers. The Africans sought solace from their ancient gods while combining elements from Catholicism and the Holy Roman Church. In the 16th century, he followed his enslaved mortal worshipers across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean islands, particularly Haiti, and to the USA's southern rim. Dam-Ayido Wede was initially a relatively minor Vodu god (worshiped as nature-gods by the Fon and Yoruba in Africa).
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