Yemayá Orisha 7 Day Glass Candle

She Is the Ocean. She Is the Mother. She Holds Everything That Has Ever Been Lost at Sea.

Her name comes from the Yoruba: Yeyé omo eja Mother whose children are like fish. Countless. Uncountable. Filling the waters of the world. She is the mother of most of the Orishas. She is the mother of the ocean. She is the mother of the tradition itself the vast, deep, ancient force from which everything else emerges and to which everything eventually returns.

The ocean gives life. The ocean takes life. It feeds the world and it swallows ships whole. It is the most beautiful thing on earth and the most dangerous. It holds more mystery in its depths than anything on the surface of the planet has ever revealed. Yemayá is all of that the nurturing surface and the crushing depth, the gentle tide and the hurricane wave, the mother who holds her children with infinite tenderness and the force of nature that answers to nothing and no one.

She holds something else too. The ocean was the road of the Middle Passage, the crossing that brought millions of enslaved Africans to the Americas, the water that swallowed those who did not survive the journey. Yemayá holds the memory of that crossing. She holds the ancestors who were lost in it. She is the mother who received them when they went into the water, and she is the mother who carried the tradition in the hearts of those who survived. The Lucumí tradition exists because people carried it across her waters. She is not separate from that history. She is its witness and its keeper.

Her Catholic face is Our Lady of Regla the Black Madonna of the port town of Regla, across the bay from Havana, one of the most beloved Marian devotions in the Afro-Cuban world. Her number is seven. Her colors are blue and white, the colors of the sea and the foam. Her day is Saturday. Her offerings are watermelon, molasses, duck, and everything blue — blue flowers, blue cloth, the blue of the deep water that is her home.

The Yemayá Orisha 7 Day Glass Candle carries her vast, maternal, ocean-deep power through seven full days of burning.

Yemayá’s Domains

• The ocean and all salt water — petitioned for all matters connected to the sea and those who live near or work on the water
• Motherhood and children — the great mother; petitioned for the protection of children, for mothers, and for the mother-child bond
• Fertility and birth — the waters of the womb come from her; petitioned for fertility and safe delivery
• Protection — fierce, absolute, oceanic; petitioned when the protection of the great mother is what is needed
• The unconscious and dreams — the deep ocean as the deep mind; petitioned for clarity in dreams and revelation of what is hidden
• Women and feminine power — the great mother of the tradition; petitioned for the strength and dignity of women
• Healing of the mind and emotions — the deep waters of the psyche; petitioned for emotional healing and mental restoration
• The ancestors and the Middle Passage — she holds those who were lost in the crossing; petitioned for ancestral connection and healing of ancestral trauma

How to Work This Candle

Come to Yemayá as you would come to the ocean with respect for her power and openness to her depth. She is the great mother and she responds to those who approach her with the vulnerability of a child who needs their mother. Write your petition naming what you need her vast, maternal power to hold, protect, heal, or bring forth: the child you are trying to conceive, the children you need protected, the mother you have lost, the emotional healing that the depths of you need, the ancestors you want to honor. Place it beneath the candle. Dress the top of the glass with Yemayá oil or a deep, oceanic oil sea salt, blue lotus, or a cool water blend that carries the smell of the open sea. Her colors are blue and white dress her altar in those colors with watermelon and blue flowers as her offerings. Her number is seven; seven of anything placed on her altar honors her. Light the candle on a Saturday, her day, ideally near water if possible even a bowl of salted water placed beside the candle honors her presence. Greet her: Omi O! Yemayá Assésu! Omi O! Hail the waters. Hail the mother. She is older than everything. She will hold what you bring her.

Each candle is approximately 8 inches tall and burns for up to 7 days.  Sold as a curio only.