Nana Buluku

The Vodoun religion of the Fon people has four overlapping elements: public gods, personal or private gods, ancestral spirits, and magic or charms.[5] In this traditional religion of West Africa, creation starts with a female supreme being called Nana Buluku, who gave birth to Mawu and Lisa and created the universe.[5] After giving birth, the mother supreme retired and left everything to Mawu-Lisa (Moon-Sun, female-male), deities, spirits, and inert universe. Mawu-Lisa created numerous minor imperfect deities. In Fon belief, the feminine deity Mawu had to work with the trickster Legba and the snake Aido Hwedo to create living beings, a method of creation that imbued the good, the bad, and a destiny for every creature including human beings. Only by appeasing lesser deities and Legba, in Fon theology, can one change that destiny. This appeasing requires rituals and offerings to the lesser gods and ancestral spirits, who are believed to have the ability to do favors for human beings.[5][7][8]

As millions of West Africans were captured and enslaved during the colonial era, then shipped across the Atlantic to work on sugarcane, cotton, and tobacco plantations, they brought with them their religious ideas, including those about Nana Buluku. She is celebrated as Nanã in Candomblé Jejé and Tambor de Mina and as Nana Burukú in Candomblé Ketu, where she is pictured as a very old woman, older than creation itself. She is found in French, Dutch, and British West Indies in particular, such as among the African heritage communities of French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana, Brazil, Trinidad, Martinique, Haiti, and other Caribbean islands.[9][10]