Nana Buluku 'Blessed' Gold Necklace

Nana Buluku, ancient and revered, is the supreme creator deity of the Fon and Ewe peoples of Benin and Togo, honoured as the source from which all of Vodun descends. Before the sun, before the moon, before the pantheon that would descend from her, there was only Nana Buluku — the old mother, the first mother, the one who set creation in motion and then withdrew, leaving the world in the hands of those she made.

Her name is thought to carry the sense of depth or origin, a foundational word for a foundational being — the root from which every branch of West African cosmology grows. Having given birth to the twins Mawu, spirit of the moon, and Lisa, spirit of the sun, she stepped back from direct rule, entrusting them with the ongoing work of the world. It is a rare kind of power: the strength to create, and then the wisdom to release.

Carried across the Atlantic by the millions taken during the transatlantic slave trade, her worship did not end at the water's edge. She endures as Nanã in Brazilian Candomblé, pictured as a woman older than creation itself, keeper of swamps, mangroves, and wet earth. She is honoured across Haiti, Suriname, and the wider Caribbean, and named among the Yoruba as the great-grandmother of all the orishas — present in every deity descended from her, even where she is not directly called upon.

In every telling, she remains the same: the old mother, the first mother, present at the root of every lineage that follows. To wear her name is to carry a blessing that predates memory — one set in motion generations before you, quietly making its way to you.