Ancestry of Nanã

There is an idea that runs through many traditions of African origin: nothing begins from nothing. Everything comes from somewhere. Everything is continuity. That is what we call ancestry. Not only the memory of those who came before, but the awareness that we are part of a chain that crosses time.

Nanã is one of the figures that best embodies this dimension. Associated with ancestry, with still waters, with swamps and mud, she occupies a place linked both to the origin and to the end of existence. It is precisely from mud—a material that brings together water and earth—that the possibility of life is born.

An itan tells that Olorum entrusted Oxalá with creating the human being. Oxalá tried different materials. He made man from air, but he faded away. He tried wood, stone, and fire, but none of them worked. He also experimented with oil, water, and palm wine, without managing to find a material capable of sustaining the human form.

It was then that Nanã came to his aid. She pointed her ibiri to the bottom of the lagoon and from there drew out a portion of mud. She handed it to Oxalá, who finally found in it the material capable of modeling the human being. Then, with Olorum’s breath, the creature received life and, with the help of the orishas, came to populate the Earth.

But the itan does not end with creation.

There is a second part, even more important for understanding Nanã’s relationship with ancestry. The material used to create the human being belongs to her.

Therefore, when death arrives, the body must return to the earth, to the mud, to Nanã’s nature. What was offered in the beginning returns to its origin.

Nanã gives the material at the beginning and receives it again at the end.

That is where this narrative ceases to be merely a story about the origin of humanity and comes to speak also about ancestry. Nanã reminds us that we are made of the same material as the earth. That what we call the beginning already carries within itself the possibility of the end. And that the end, in this cycle, does not need to be understood as the opposite of the beginning, but as part of its continuity.

Mud occupies precisely this place of passage. It is neither only earth nor only water. It is material in transformation. It is that which is not yet completely defined and, at the same time, that from which a new form can arise.

Nanã holds a comprehension of time that does not depend on haste. There are things that need to mature, return, transform themselves, and, at some moment, begin again.

The writer Cléo Martins, in her book dedicated to Nanã, also presents her in this relationship between life and death, highlighting a divinity who welcomes and, at the same time, establishes limits. It is an image that matches the very structure of the myth: Nanã offers, but also gathers back; she generates continuity, but does not allow what belongs to the earth to remain separated from it forever.

When we say “I am of Nanã,” therefore, we can understand this statement also as the recognition of a place within a chain. There is something that precedes us and something that will continue after us. Ancestry is not only behind. It crosses through the present.

The mud that formed us is the same material to which we will return.