Embracing death, with love and a deeper understanding.

With the death of my lovely father at the door,

I am reconnecting with Yewá;

Goddess/Orisha of purity, virginity, innocence, and death.

In a previous post years ago, I wrote a bit about Yewá (you can READ THAT POST here). Yewá is not the most popular of the Orishas; her ways and paths are probably the less understood and studied; her ways of Craft are a beautiful mystery just approached by a few; her rituals and dances are rich in secrets, color, and representation, anyway. She is still one of the more mysterious Orishas in the pantheon, and our relationship with her as practitioners is like the relation of every human being with death; we are not sitting down to wait for her, but we understand she is there and is imminent.

Family Recent History
My dad has been dealing with heart struggles for a couple of years. According to his doctors, after his last heart attack, just ¼ part of his heart is working; the approved medical term for this is “actively dying.” this could be the 4th time the doctors have said that to us, and we are actively ready for any news to arrive at any moment.

This kind of news can always feel bitter independently of your religious background, not so much emotionally, but physically. It is a logical and neurological series of reactions. Is your brain accommodating the folders of memories to accept that there will be more new archives soon and that the folder will be archived at any moment? This news arrived just two weeks after receiving that one of my cats was pregnant, so there has been a ton of ‘life and death’ energy and talk going around the house these past few days.

Dad has always been fascinated with mythology, science, and wild animals. He has a personal connection with Oggun, which is heavenly reflected in his character and profession.

And now, in these times, while the government of Venezuela finds me “person non grata” for their reasons, and just like when my grandma and my nephew died years ago, they did not let me enter the country, again, I am not able to visit my dad in his final days, and this just leads me in another direction: reconnecting with him through the understanding of his believers. And that includes his practices and experiences.


Understanding Yewá and the Folk of Initiations.
Yewá is the Orisha mythologically associated with death and mystery but also with chastity, innocence, and purity, the reason why he is considered some kind of protector of the virgins - independently of their sexual identification and sexual preferences.

She lives and rests inside the graveyard and rules the cemetery with her older sister, Oya. The mission of Yewá is to make sure to keep ‘the veil’ as thick as possible and thought that just reveals the secrets of death to those who are dead; she is the one prohibiting the dead from revealing certain secrets, visions, and experiences, is the one who drags the soul and conscience of the no-more-living out of the graveyard when they wake up there after days of dying.

For those who don't understand and don't know deeper Santeria, Lucumi, and Yoruba religions from the inside, when you are initiated, is a “pack” of Orishas (yes, a pack, we are going to call them that way because my limited English don't let me think in a better term right now) which you received with you during your initiation.

These Orishas are not something you choose; this “selection” of Orishas depends entirely on the folklore and the stories related to them, and when you are Initiated in certain traditions, you receive more than just one Orisha to follow as priest/es/x.

Yewá is still one of the few Orishas practically nobody receives. Most people run to receive other equally valuable supportive spiritual entities. Still, for different reasons, not everybody is interested in working with the Orisha of the graveyard, who dress in pink and collect jewels, mysteries, and treasures inside coffins and tombs.

Disclaimer on Yewá’s Cult
In the old myths, Yewá had an unborn son who dried up inside her womb, and because of the sadness she felt, she chose never to get pregnant again. In the old times, she was revered as a goddess protector of female virtue. In modern times, she is also revered as an equal deity to protect male/trans chastity.

Anyway, the idea of purity in her cult is, even for me as a follower of her paths and myths, the virginity in perspective and historical background is not entirely related to the sexual act per se but more to the idea of sacred purity and a form of protection of the sacred feminine energy, the reason why also she dresses in pink and hides in the tombs, to protect herself from talking or repeating the mysteries of the death and the mysteries of her sacred womb (symbol of life, initiation, renewal).

Her Sacred Rites in My Present
These past weeks have been a moment to reflect and reconnect with my priorities and personal goals. Yewá in my Altar/Pantheon is a beautiful reminder of her secret rites and the fact that Initiations in whatever Traditions we follow are not something “we use” just to spread hate and repeat over and over “if you are not initiated, you are not a witch” (which is pure, honest bullshit).

Our initiations are “human made-up” paths to establish restrictions and limits to protect our mysteries, their secrecy, and the sacredness of our paths; being a gatekeeper is a reason for pride, not a sense of ego. Ego doesn't have space in initiatory paths, well, except in shitty traditions just made to feed your ego and constantly repeat to the nonsense cult-fans, “I am more witch than you,” because we live in a world where people do and say all kind of things like that just to hide their flaws and pretend they don't care about your validation. At the same time, they fight loudly to feel validated by you.

Yewá’s rites are made to enhance beauty, but not a boring idealized superficial idea of beauty, but more the concept of preservation of the beauty that happens between life and death, from the beautiful acts of a babe just getting into the physical world, to the funerary rites, their flowers, the music, the poems, the people sitting down to cry together and tell their most beautiful and funny, even heroic histories about the person they are missing.

Yewá in her sites.
Yewá sites are not tombs and graveyards. Yewa sites are the places between life and death, where the ghosts who don’t go to be part of her sister’s court of spirits (Oya) choose to stay to learn and move forward to their next steps in their cosmic cycle of spiritual evolution.

Connecting with her is more than how many flowers to put for her and how many pink stones to put on her altar. It is about something other than how you pronounce her chants in Yoruba word by word. It is more about understanding her divine and beautiful connection with life and death, how she embraces us at every stage of our lives while waiting patiently to embrace our souls when we go to the other side.

In these moments of life, we also gain a deeper and more intimate insight into the other side and all those incredible ancestors waiting for us there.

Read Too

• Orishas of the Graveyard 
• The Amazon's Traditional Dream Interpreter.
• BIPOC/Black & Brown Voices in Witchcraft.
•  Appropriation & Culture in Witchcraft.
• Gatekeepers in Witchcraft.
• 8 Easy-to-do Spells for Abundance.
• 6 Folk Magic Spells from Venezuela.
• Eleggua's Coconut for Protection & Healing.
• Yara / Queen Maria Lionza.

For more context or to dive deeper into the topic, read These are the questions I get most often about Dream Witchery and The Dream Interpreter: A Bridge Between Worlds in the Amazon.

Also, to explore more into the topic, grab a copy of my 400-pages book "Dream witchery" Here