Mawu-Lisa is, in the Fon tradition, the creative power at the origin of the world and of the other vodun: Mawu, the feminine, the moon and the night; Lisa, the masculine, the sun and the day. Standing above ordinary worship, the name Mawu has also become, in the languages of Benin, the name of the Christian God.
At the temple of Sakété, a power of a different nature
Direct observationWêtê Agbonon, vodun priest and bokonon of the Fâ, at the temple of Sakété
When I am asked who Mawu-Lisa is, I start with something simple: Mawu-Lisa is unlike the other vodun. In the Fon tradition, Mawu-Lisa refers to the creative power at the origin of the world and of the other vodun. But the way people speak of it varies with families, regions and transmissions, so I do not want to present a single version as if it were the word of every vodunsi in Benin[1].
In Sakété, I prefer to be precise about what I can say publicly. I would not present Mawu-Lisa as if our temple necessarily had an altar identical to that of a vodun such as Legba, Sakpata or Dan, with a comparable daily cultic life. Mawu-Lisa stands above the ordinary organisation of vodun cults: one can greet it, thank it, address a prayer or a word to it, without necessarily looking for a material altar. A religious presence is not always measured by the presence of an object. For me, Mawu is a power to which one gives thanks, rather than a divinity whose intervention one seeks every day, as with the vodun who act in the world[1].
Key points
- Mawu-Lisa represents the creative power.
- The vodun are the powers with which people have closer, more concrete religious relationships.
- The Fâ, in my tradition, makes it possible to question the invisible order and guide our actions.
This architecture must be understood before reducing vodun to a mere list of “gods”[1].
A creative power with two aspects
The Fon stories collected in the 1930s by the anthropologists Melville and Frances Herskovits present Mawu and Lisa as twins: Mawu, the daughter, rules the night and the moon; Lisa, the son, the day and the sun. The sky pantheon, at their head, dominates the other families of vodun, led by their children[2]. The anthropologist Emmanuelle Kadya Tall likewise describes Mawu-Lisa as the androgynous divinity at the origin of the world, who governs all the sky divinities[3].
I would say neither simply “they are two gods”, nor simply “it is one person”. Mawu and Lisa form a creative duality. In the best-known Fon tradition, Mawu is associated with the feminine, the moon, the night, coolness, motherhood and fertility; Lisa with the masculine, the sun, the day, heat, strength and action. Behind this duality lies a deeper idea: creation is not thought of as working on a single isolated principle. There is day and night, heat and coolness, masculine and feminine, the visible and what belongs more to the invisible. Depending on the story, Mawu and Lisa may be presented as twins, as a complementary couple, or as two inseparable aspects of the same power; the sources are not perfectly uniform. It is a cosmology, far more than a simple man-and-woman couple[1].
Mawu’s withdrawal has its story too: offended, Mawu withdrew higher, far from people, and entrusted Legba with carrying her will. See Legba.
Nana Buluku, before Mawu and Lisa
In the stories collected by the Herskovitses, the world was created by an androgynous being, Nana Buluku, who gave birth to Mawu and Lisa and divided the universe between them; her temple stood in the village of Dume, north-west of Abomey[2]. The name of Nana Buluku exists in Fon traditions and in other traditions of the Gulf of Benin. But not every house in Benin tells exactly the same story: in my way of speaking of our tradition, Nana Buluku is an ancient figure of the cosmology, whose cult does not necessarily hold the same place in every house[1].
Hwanjile and the royal cult of Mawu-Lisa
The cult of Mawu-Lisa has a history. In the eighteenth century, under King Tegbesu, the kpojito Hwanjile, the queen mother, reorganised the pantheon of the kingdom of Abomey and installed Mawu and Lisa as the supreme couple of the vodun, tying the cult more closely to that of the king. That is the analysis of the historian Edna Bay, who also notes that Mawu and Lisa, brought from a region west of the kingdom, were originally linked to the Yoruba-speaking cultures to the east[4].
This cult had its temples and initiates, like Sakpata and Hèviosso. But by the 1930s the followers of Sakpata outnumbered those of Mawu-Lisa, and in 1995 Emmanuelle Kadya Tall found its followers to have become rare, the most active temples being those of Hèviosso[3].
Mawu and the Fâ
The link between Mawu and the Fâ is very important in some transmissions. In his reference study of the Fâ, the administrator and ethnologist Bernard Maupoil reports that, for his most learned informants, the Fâ is not the messenger of Mawu, but her very message: each Fâ would be the word of Mawu[5].
It is a powerful way of understanding the Fâ. But I want to avoid one error: the bokonon cannot ask any question and automatically receive a direct answer from the Creator. The Fâ is a divinatory tradition, with its signs, words, stories, prescriptions and interpretation by the bokonon. The bokonon does not replace Mawu; he works with the Fâ and the transmission he has received to understand what a consultation reveals. That is why I always say that the Fâ sheds light on a situation and guides conduct, far from any machine for predicting the future. See What is the Fâ?[1].
Why Christians say “Mawu”
When a Fon Christian says “Mawu”, they may simply mean “God”. This is no surprise: the word already existed in the languages and traditions of the country, and it was used to name the Christian God. For me, this does not mean that vodun and Christianity have become one religion; it means that one language can use the same word to speak of the supreme God[1].
The story actually began with the other name. In 1658, the Spanish priest José de Nájera translated a catechism into the language then spoken in Allada, the Doctrina Christiana[6]. In 1929, the ethnologists Henri Labouret and Paul Rivet devoted a chapter of their study to the name Lissa and the language of this catechism: the first missionaries named God after Lisa, before Mawu prevailed[7]. Today, the Bible in Fon, launched in 2014 by the Bible Society of Benin after thirty years of work, is titled Mawuxówéma;[8] the Eternal is named Mawu Mavɔmavɔ in it, and the word vodún designates foreign gods[9]. The word is shared; the way of understanding the divine may differ.
Does vodun have a supreme God?
I would simply answer that the statement “vodun has no supreme God” is too hasty. In many Fon traditions, Mawu-Lisa holds precisely the place of supreme creative power. What sometimes misleads people is that they see many vodun, Legba, Dan, Sakpata, Hèviosso, Gou and others, and ask: “If you have so many divinities, where is your one God?” The answer is that their roles differ: Mawu-Lisa is associated with creation and the order of the world, while the vodun have particular functions and domains of action. The existence of many vodun does not mean there is no Creator. This is one of the things outsiders misunderstand when they look at vodun through the categories of another religion[1].
What researchers say
Mawu-Lisa has been studied by historians, ethnologists and linguists. The main works, in chronological order:
- 1929Henri Labouret and Paul Rivet study the catechism of 1658 and the name Lissa given to God[7].
- 1933Melville and Frances Herskovits describe Fon cosmology: Nana Buluku, Mawu, Lisa and their children[2].
- 1943Bernard Maupoil reports that the Fâ is held to be the very word of Mawu[5].
- 1995Emmanuelle Kadya Tall notes the rarity of Mawu-Lisa’s followers, compared with Sakpata and Hèviosso[3].
- 1998Edna Bay credits the queen mother Hwanjile with placing Mawu and Lisa at the top of the royal pantheon[4].
What we know, and how we know it
What comes from oral tradition
The stories of Nana Buluku, of the twins Mawu and Lisa and of Mawu’s withdrawal are passed down orally, in versions that vary[2][1].
What comes from direct observation
Mawu-Lisa’s place above ordinary worship, and the absence of a necessary altar, come from my practice[1].
What is documented
The royal cult established by Hwanjile, the catechism of 1658, the Bible in Fon and Maupoil’s account of the Fâ are established by historians and sources[4][7][8][5].
What is interpretation
Seeing Mawu-Lisa as a creative power with two aspects, rather than two gods or one person, is a reading I defend[1].
Common misconceptions about Mawu-Lisa
- “Vodun has no supreme God.” In many Fon traditions, Mawu-Lisa holds the place of supreme creative power[1].
- “Mawu-Lisa is a vodun like the others.” It stands above the ordinary organisation of vodun cults[1].
- “When Christians say Mawu, they speak of the vodun.” The word is shared; the understanding of the divine differs[1][8].
- “The Fâ gives direct answers from the Creator.” It is a divinatory tradition, interpreted by the bokonon[1][5].
Frequently asked questions
Who is Mawu-Lisa?
In the Fon tradition, the creative power at the origin of the world and the vodun: Mawu, feminine, the moon and night; Lisa, masculine, the sun and day.
Are Mawu and Lisa a man and a woman?
In the best-known Fon tradition they are associated with the feminine and the masculine, but they form a cosmology more than a simple couple.
Who is Nana Buluku?
In the stories collected by the Herskovitses, the androgynous being who gave birth to Mawu and Lisa and divided the universe between them.
Why do Christians in Benin call God Mawu?
The word already existed in the languages of the country and was used to name the Christian God; the Bible in Fon calls the Eternal Mawu Mavɔmavɔ.
Does Mawu-Lisa have altars?
It stands above ordinary worship: one greets and thanks it without necessarily having an altar, unlike the other vodun.
What is the link between Mawu and the Fâ?
According to Bernard Maupoil’s informants, the Fâ is the very word of Mawu, interpreted by the bokonon.
Glossary
- Kpojito: the queen mother of the kingdom of Dahomey.
- Lisa: the masculine aspect, the sun and the day.
- Mawu: the feminine aspect, the moon and the night; also the Fon name of the Christian God.
- Nana Buluku: the primordial being who gave birth to Mawu and Lisa.
Notes and references
[1] Direct observation and oral transmission, Wêtê Agbonon, bokonon, temple of Sakété.
[2] HERSKOVITS Melville J. and Frances S., An Outline of Dahomean Religious Belief, Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, no. 41, 1933.
[3] TALL Emmanuelle Kadya, « Dynamique des cultes voduns et du Christianisme céleste au Sud-Bénin », Cahiers des sciences humaines, vol. 31, no. 4, 1995.
[4] BAY Edna G., Wives of the Leopard: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the Kingdom of Dahomey, Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 1998.
[5] MAUPOIL Bernard, La Géomancie à l’ancienne Côte des Esclaves, Paris, Institut d’ethnologie, 1943.
[6] Ideophone, « The mysteries of Christian doctrine, or, How an African language was mistaken for an Amazonian one », on the Doctrina Christiana of 1658.
[7] LABOURET Henri and RIVET Paul, Le royaume d’Arda et son évangélisation au XVIIe siècle, Paris, Institut d’ethnologie, 1929.
[8] Vatican Radio, « Bénin : une Bible en langue fon », 10 February 2014.
[9] The Bible in Fongbe, Deuteronomy 32, verses 3, 12 and 17.
Sources
- HERSKOVITS Melville J. and Frances S., An Outline of Dahomean Religious Belief, 1933.
- BAY Edna G., Wives of the Leopard, 1998.
- MAUPOIL Bernard, La Géomancie à l’ancienne Côte des Esclaves, 1943.
- Direct observation and oral transmission, temple of Sakété, 1994–2026
Cite this entry
Wêtê Agbonon, « Mawu-Lisa », dans Vodun Bénin, l’encyclopédie du vodun béninois, entry no. 008, updated on 28 October 2026. Online: https://vodunbenin.org/en/mawu-lisa/ (accessed on 1 November 2026). Licence CC BY 4.0.
- Last checked : 7 October 2026
- Reuse : free, with attribution, under the licence CC BY 4.0
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