Invocation Libation African Goddess
In the name of the Great Mother Divine who comes as the Goddess within in all forms I call your names:
IyaMiAjeOshoronga, Mother Creator
IyaNla, the great mother
Nut, Maat, Auset, Sekhert, Hethert of Kemet
Sati, Shekmet, Anuke Shu of Nubia
Nana Baruku, primordial Mother of the Fon
MamiWata
NaneEsi, Nana Soonkwa, Mami Sika, Abenasika, AsaseYa of the AkanAbrewa, Primordial Mother of the Akan
Onile, IyaAgba, Iwa, Oduduwa, Oshun, Yemoja, Olokun, Oya, Oba, Yemaya of the Yoruba
Ani and Usameri of the Igbo
Minona, Mawu, Gbadu of the Dahomey
Dviza of the Shona
PombaGira of South America
Mella of Zimbabwe
Nowa of the Mende
The 9 daughters… and sometimes 10 of Kikuyu
MbabaMwanaWaresa, Inkosazana of the Zulu
The Shekinah, Holy Spirit, Mary the Mother, Mary the Tower of the Hebrew
Kali, Deva, Durga, Ama, Lakshmi of Indus Kush
In the spirit of our Ancestral Grandmothers, we call your names:
Nzinga, Queen Mother of Angola
YaaAsantewaa, Queen warrior of the Ashanti Nation
Nefert-tari of Kemet
Nandi, mother of Shaka
Makeda, Queen of Sheba
Het Shepsu-t of Kemet
Tiye and Kandace of Nubia
Mam Fatou Sec
Amazon Warrior Queens of the Dahomey
Amazon Warrior Queens of Berber Libya
To the rain queens:
The Kandace Queens of Nubia
To the Gelede … Yoruba Ancestral Mothers
Black Dove Oracles of Greece … Iyami
Pythias of MamiWata
Come forth mothers from the Americas:
Harriet Tubman
Sojourner Truth
Madam C J Walker
Mary McCloud Bethune
Zora Neale Hurston
Rosa Parks
Harriet Jacobs
Phyllis Wheatley
Ida B Wells
We call the Big Mamas, the Madias, the Nanas, the Amas, the Iyas, of our mothers, and our mothers’ mothers, Dem sistas that plowed the fields, nursed the children, the midwives, the kitchen alchemists who made the worst food taste damn good…
We call the ones who scrubbed the floors, who took the lashes, who lost the babies, who drowned themselves rather than be a slave…
We call on you today, borrowing your wisdom, your knowledge, courage, your power, your beauty, your truth, and your light.
Your daughters of the new land are crying. Your daughters on the continent are dying.
Let the mothers, the grandmothers return. … We need you. Mama, we need you to help us fight this fight of the destruction of our communities. We need you to stand on our brothers that they may do right by us and our children. We need your light cuz we are getting tired of holding up the race and carrying this heavy burden. Our sistas need you great mamas to help us stay strong and hold on to our power. We need your healing mother for our wombs are sick, our breasts are stagnant, and our hearts are heavy.
On this day we, as a collective of women, invoke your power. We are seeds of your seeds. Our wombs are from your wombs. We nurture from your breast of life. We bath in your loving grace. We sing in your voices, we pray with your faith, we mother our children as you have mothered us. Ase, speak to us. Guide us, forge the path for us. Defend our backs when others come to abuse or destroy us. Open our eyes to have eyes to see. Open our ears to have ears to hear. Open our hearts for true love of ourselves and others.
We give thanks, Mama. We give thanks for your DNA. We give thanks for your births, your creations and your earth where we stand. We honor you in our dreams and waking state. You, the mothers of all creation, the queen of queens, the warrior Goddess, the portals of death and rebirth, the crossroad guardians, the love weavers, the creatrix, the Matrix, Matter (Mata-Mother).
(End of the essay. Read Part 2.)
[Editor’s Note: This essay is included in She Rises Volume 2, How Goddess Feminism, Activism, and Spirituality?]
See (Meet Mago Contributor) Ayele Kumari, Ph.D