The Birth of the Dead Sea

The ocean feeds even the smallest pond before water returns home again.

Yemayá Mayelewó lived alone in the ocean at the place where the seven great, watery tides met and mixed. Alone at the center of the sea, she contemplated herself each day. One day as she was lost in thought, it happened that Elegguá was swimming in the ocean, and he saw Yemayá lost in self-reverie. He decided to play a trick on her to see what she would do. Elegguá swam silently just beneath the water where Yemayá could not see him; he reached his hand above the surface and knocked her crown off her head. He sent it flying into the distance, toward land. Before Yemayá could spot him he dove deep into the ocean, deeper than even Yemayá herself could go. Immediately, Yemayá began to swim in circles, trying to find her crown; she looked up, and saw it spiraling off into the distance, as if launched by some great force. She knew not that it was Elegguá who had done this to her. It is for this reason that whenever Yemayá comes down, she dances in a circle; even now, when she comes down, she is looking for that lost crown.

She followed the crown’s path; she swam as fast as she could, never taking her eyes off her lost treasure. Yemayá Mayelewó changed as she came closer to land; she turned into Yemayá Asesu, the orisha found behind the boulders near the shore. As she transformed, she lost sight of her crown but she knew it was somewhere on land. As she arose from the ocean, amphibious in form, she transformed again into Yemayá Ibú Ogúnté Ogúnasomí. This Yemayá walked the earth looking for her beloved crown. Soon, her seeking and searching took her miles and miles away from Nigeria; she was sad, for that crown was her most loved and coveted possession, and as depression overtook her she began to stab herself several times with her own knife. Her life’s blood poured out of her, but Yemayá was an orisha, immortal, and could not die. Soon she gave up and headed back to the sea. But her blood remained covering the land, and that is how the Dead Sea was born.