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.

There is entirely too many lies circulating the internet about the tradition informally called Palo Mayombe. The traditions proper name is Nkisi Malongo, which translates to sacred medicine in distant lands. This traditional religion that many falsely claim to be of Cuban origin is native to Central Africa, specifically what we know to be the Kongo dia Ntotila or precolonial Kongo. The K in Kongo is significant, when this traditional religion was brought to Cuba via slave trade there was no Congo. It was one large Kongo kingdom. Congo is what became of the kingdom after the Kongo kingdom was ravaged and had its sons and daughters stolen. People that practice traditional religions that came from the region would have learned these traditional religions from peoples that would have had no concept of the modern day Congo. This is why there is a distinction between Kongo and Congo.

Speaking of distinctions, the traditional religion we know today as one singular tradition religion was once a mass collective of traditions practiced in the region by different tribes. These are Bantu tribes which can be traced back to this region as early as roughly 4,000-5,000 years ago when the Bantu migration was believed to have taken place. This Bantu migration and its relation to Palo Mayombe is the migration of people from Southern West Africa into what would be modern day Congo and surrounding areas. There is also another group of people that we would consider ancestral to our religious beliefs, the Bushmen or as people have ignorantly called them “Pygmies”. The Bushmen are a staple of Palo Mayombe but in an underhanded manner. The main groups of Bushmen or “Pygmies” have inhabited the region as far back as 150,000 years and possibly longer. They also practiced traditions that relayed back to become what is modern day Palo Mayombe.

The Mbuti (BaMbuti), Mbenga (BaMbenga) and Twa (BaTwa) are the three main groups of “Pygmies” that inhabited this region. These groups had subgroups, showing that these people were not just small tribes of people but a whole ethnic group. The Mbuti had smaller ethnic groups named Sua and Efe. The Mbenga also had its own smaller ethnic groups of Aka, Gyele and Bongo. The Twa were widely scattered and can only be understood if you breakdown the subgroups by regions. There were Great Lakes Twa, Lake Tumba Twa, Kasai Twa and Luvua Twa. These people did have shamanic practices that are known to the modern world. For example, BaMbuti had shamanism that was deeply rooted in the concept of the forest being more than just a home, but a loving father/mother that protected them. When someone would die, the funeral rites would include playing music to wake the forest because it has surely fallen asleep and allowed one of its children to be taken.

Enter Bantu migration. West Africa has their own traditional religions, this is not the focus of the article so I will not elaborate too deeply on this subject. The point of the statement is to make clear that Oricha traditions did originate from this region and so many people accredit Palo Mayombe to Oricha-based traditions, which is factually incorrect. These migrations were not simple trade routes, they were permanent departures. When Bantu people arrived in the Kongo region, there were already Bushmen or “Pygmy” people in the region. It is unclear how the Bushmen traditions became a staple for some of these Bantu people but there is modern day enslavement of these Bushmen by Bantu people and many theories have been made. What we do know is that the traditional practice of these Bantu people in this region moved towards Ancestral/Spirit based shamanism in such a way that there is no known Oricha-based traditions in or from the region. In other words, the Kongo had no need or belief of the Oricha at all, even though some people might have migrated from regions where Oricha traditions may have been practiced.

How exactly do we know that these “Pygmy” people have anything to do with Palo Mayombe? Well there is plenty of distinctions that actually link our religious beliefs to their ancestry. The main one being our belief in Chichiriku, which were hostile “Pygmy” people that when bothered would turn to Cannibalism in order to scare away any would be intruders. This was an observed and documented behavior of many of the Bushmen tribes. There are also too many similarities in what we know as funeral rites within Palo Mayombe and what the BaMbuti practice as funeral rites (Molimo). The final clue and smoking gun is our inter connectivity with another traditional religion that is also Kongo based, but is even more guarded than Palo Mayombe, Abakua. This traditional religion holds a very rough and strict moral code. Practitioners are limited by bloodline and so this tradition has historically never allowed anyone outside of Cubans. So how is this the smoking gun? The Twa people were commonly called BaTwa or AbaTwa. When you pronounce Abakua and AbaTwa correctly, you would understand.

Now that we have established that the tradition is its own entity with its own history and origins, extending back as far as 150,000 years ago, we can begin to draw the bigger picture. In modern days, our very ancestral people (Bushmen or “Pygmy” people) are widely enslaved, hunted and eaten as animals and are treated as lesser than by many of our other ancestral major Bantu groups that share regions with them. There is a lot of pain in the origins of Palo Mayombe, which some would have called Yimbula. In this original form, this shamanism was more about healing and helping the tribe and less about using spiritual traditions as weapons. Due to the long history of everyone in the world stepping on their necks, multiple rounds of slavery and being hunted like animals, when the enslaved people were brought to Cuba, they had enough. Their once peaceful traditional religions were evolved into a more militant geared weapon. The world will fear and respect them, by any means. There will be no regard for anything or anyone trespassing against their sovereign rights and their happiness.

Persecution was still a problem to be dealt with. We can make other tribes respect us, but how do we ensure the longevity and legacy of our traditional religion? This new world and their greed and lust for slavery has no end in sight. How does one combat something with no end? This is when several figureheads of different traditional religions entered into agreements to install all traditions on the enslaved, so that if even one slave survives, all of our traditional religions survive. This plan largely worked, the traditional religions not only survived slavery in the Americas, but they thrived. For the Kongo traditional religions, this victory came with a price that made it bittersweet. The other tribes would revert to trying to enslave and demonize our Kongo ancestry again. This is why you see people using such language as “Oricha traditions need to balance Kongo traditions”, “checks and balances”, “they’re the dark side of Santeria”, “In order to initiate into Lucumi you need Palo initiation first as a stepping stone”, and the notorious “Ifa says, you need to initiate into Palo”.

Oricha traditions have no say, have no authority, have no power, have no history, have no use and have no sovereign soil in the Kongo. They don’t get to check nothing, they don’t need to balance nothing and Ifa should never speak on a traditional religion that has nothing to do with it. Palo Mayombe or Nkisi Malongo is its own traditional religion, with its own checks and balances, with its own sovereign authorities and its own divination systems. Will you participate in this aggression and attempts to enslave us, or will you stand behind us?