From an Nkisi Malongo perspective, just about everything people think they know about Sirens is wrong. The general public opinion is that Sirens are wildly seductive, promiscuous women that lure men to the “abyss” aka into love, destruction or both. There is no other context as to how or why they came to this conclusion. So I started digging and it turns out that the origin of such concept really derives from Greek Mythology in a famous story about how a pair of Sirens attempted to lure Odysseus and his men to their destruction with their seductive calls. In order to save his men, he had them place wax in their ears to drown out the magical calling. This story would then be spread around the world and people would then adapt it accordingly until it evolved into what is now the current belief.

The truth: Sirens and Mermaids are water spirits or normal people that are sons and daughters of water spirits or have some sort of water influence within their spirituality. Just as any other group of normal people, there are some who are seductive and have intentions that aren’t good but not all of them. This generalization is the problem because it shows the fundamental lack of understanding of an entire group of people and then classifying the whole group as having less than desirable qualities and evil intentions. For example; people that have ancestral water spirits are not all even remotely the same. A Scandinavian with a long ancestry of fishermen and viking men and women in their family could have ancestrally bonded with a specific body of water and its guardian spirit. At the same time a Malawian woman can have a deep ancestral bond to the large lake in the country. Both are technically Sirens; sons and daughters of water spirits, with an affinity for those waters. Yet they can be very different.

Promiscuity in and of itself is a subjective concept that is seemingly forcefully defined when reinforcing the understanding of Sirens. See what I believe to be promiscuous might not fit to what you believe to be promiscuous. My definition of promiscuous might even offend you and yours might offend me. So how do you go about defining the promiscuity of a Siren? Its really more of an accusation based in fear and misunderstanding than fact. Even in the Greek stories, there was no mention of how many people the Sirens may have been sexually active with. It was more of a they seduced us, so they are obviously oversexualized beings with a lust for several partners, chaos and destruction.

The seduction in and of itself is also not necessarily true. Some people that may have water energy can absolutely feel the need to be seductive, this much is true. Yet some people who have nothing to do with water energy can also feel the same need. The seductiveness of Sirens is something that is widely and wildly a false presumption. Even in traditional practices there are water spirits that have no interest in seducing anyone and are more interested in being left alone, resorting to violence to ensure they are left alone. In this statement, I can reference Haitian Vodou, Palo Mayombe, Lucumi, Isese… etc. There are some water spirits that are seductive, and there are others that will be left alone or else.

So then if “Sirens” are just children of the waters and water spirits, then why do most people not know of their connection? Well because to understand this simple fact you have to understand that everything publicly known of “Sirens” has been wrong for a long time. To understand more correctly what I mean by children of the waters, I mean that water energies will show up everywhere for them spiritually. They can live all the way inland and still have a very spiritual connection to a body of water. This connection will be instinctual and strong. A person with this instinctual bond to the body of water can be in a full panic attack and go to the body of water; the whole panic attack will lift off them and a sudden soothing wave of energy will blanket them. This instinct can even call them to move closer to that body of water.

So then what exactly are Sirens and Mermaids? They are beings that inhabit bodies of waters and have roles as the guardians of those bodies of water. Their traits and personalities can vary from one to the other. They are not physically present in life like us living humans. They are spirits or energies. They can choose to inhabit any creature in that body of water and be that creature but that creature is not them. Actually, it is common for them to take some of these creatures as guards or messengers themselves. These beings can interact spiritually with people and over the course of several generations they become ancestral to the lineages of people. When these spirits interact with people and bond with them emotionally and spiritually, they bless that person and acknowledge them as a child of their own. This is a child of the water spirits. This is what spiritual people who call themselves “Sirens” are referring to, except they don’t fully comprehend the severity of the words they are using. This blessing also means their spirituality is driven, powered and influenced by these water spirits and this body of water. It has nothing to do with negative vs positive or sexual vs conservative or anything like that.

People have even gone out of their way to define a Mermaid as a generally harmless and friendly being while the Siren is the evil seductive destroyer. While there are some of these water spirits that are hostile when bothered, there is no water spirit that seeks out humanity to destroy it. This is a fallacy based on old tales that were never even proven. In most cases, when you find humans clashing with Sirens it is humans that are trespassing on Siren territory (the sea) and almost never stories about Sirens coming onto land to seduce and destroy humans. In fact, the ones that are understood as harmless (Mermaids) are almost always the ones that come on land, and even then they are portrayed as being friendly. This leads to the conclusion that people incorrectly characterizing Sirens as evil because they are hostile but humans can be hostile too if someone invades their property uninvited and starts acting like they own the place.

As a bonus section, we would like to further touch on history of the belief in mermaids and sirens. Due to recent events and the push back that was seen with a mermaid of darker skin complexion, this bonus was necessary. The widely understood concept of pale skinned Mermaids originated from Greek Mythology and Religion, which was practiced between 900 BC and 301 AD. There are several African Traditional Religions that have a concept of a Mermaid, Ifa being one and our very own Nkisi Malongo or Palo Mayombe being another, to name a few. Ifa as it currently stands can be dated back to at least 2,500 years ago and some contest that it can go as far back as 8,000+ years old. The Ifa traditional religion has many water spirits to name and could be understood as Mermaids but mainly Olokun, Yemoja and Osun. The traditional shamanistic religions that would merge to become Palo Mayombe have existed for thousands of years as the Bushmen of the region who believed in them have been dated to be native the region since roughly 100,000 to 150,000 years ago and the religion does feature Kalunga and Chola. Kalunga is sometimes even understood to be masculine, just like the Greek believed in Poseidon. Kalunga can sometimes also be understood to be feminine, like Calypso, a Greek sea nymph (Mermaid or Siren). All this to say that darker skinned Mermaids have existed for thousands of years in African Traditional Religions and the lighter skinned Mermaids along with the religion they come from were a more recent addition in world history. This historical evidence is not even remotely represented correctly today, seeing as how when you search for Mermaids or Sirens, your results will almost entirely be of either lighter skinned fish-women or some sort of sea monster that appears to be humanoid.