Dan

Smoke climbs from a cooking fire in a compound near Abomey, bending as it goes. A root lifts the red earth beside the wall. After rain, a band of color stands over the palm trees. A Fon elder of the old kingdom of Dahomey would have given all three the same name. They are Dan.

Dan is the word for a snake in the Fon language, and that is where the idea starts, though it does not end there. The American anthropologist Melville Herskovits, who worked in Abomey in 1931 and set down what priests and elders told him, recorded the rule in a form that is hard to improve on: all snakes are Dan, but not all Dan are snakes. Dan is whatever is long, supple and in motion. The rainbow is Dan. So is smoke, and the roots of trees, and the nerves of the body, and the cord that ties a newborn child to its mother. Things that wind and flow and carry life from one place to another belong to it.

That makes Dan a strange kind of god. The great powers of the Fon are grouped in families, the sky gods under Mawu-Lisa, the earth gods under Sakpata, the thunder gods under Sogbo, each with its own temples and its own priests. Dan runs through all of them without sitting in any one. The elders put the difference in a single line. Mawu is thought, they said, and Dan is life. The creator plans. Dan is what moves.

The largest Dan of all is the rainbow serpent, Dan Ayido Hwedo, also called Aido-Hwedo. In the creation stories it was there before the earth was, and it carried the creator in its mouth from place to place while the world was being made. The earth curves and winds, with rivers and ridges, because a serpent’s body laid its course. When the work was done the weight of mountains, trees and animals was too great, so the serpent coiled itself beneath the earth to bear it. One account counts its coils, thirty-five hundred above the earth and as many below. It lies in the cool of the sea because it cannot stand heat, and when it shifts, the ground shakes.

Its droppings were said to be treasure. Where the great serpent rested, mountains rose from what it left behind, which is why riches lie hidden in the hills. On a smaller scale the old blue beads that turn up in the soil of the coast, heavy, glassy and cold in the palm, are called Dan’s excrement, and they were once worth their weight in gold. This is the root of Dan’s main business with ordinary people. Dan is wealth. Dan is luck in trade, a full granary, a child born alive.

A trader in the market has a run of good days. The cowries pile up faster than they should, and at night there are dreams of snakes. The family does not simply enjoy it. They go to a diviner, who tells them what they suspected, that a Dan has attached itself to the house and wants to be acknowledged. A small shrine goes up: a pot, an iron serpent that ripples upward like rising smoke, offerings set out before it. From then on that Dan is fed on its days, and the fortune is expected to stay.

Neglect it and the fortune goes. Dan is not cruel in the stories, but it is restless, and it does not wait. Money comes and money leaves. The oldest Dan in any family are those of ancestors who died so long ago that nobody remembers their names. These are gathered under one title, Dambada Hwedo, and honored together so that none of the forgotten dead is left out. That name crossed the Atlantic in the slave ships. In Haiti it became Danbala Wedo, the white serpent, with Ayida Wedo the rainbow beside him.

There is a second snake on this coast, and the two are often run together. At Ouidah, in the old Hueda kingdom, the royal python is Dangbe. European traders were writing about its temple by about 1700, and live pythons are still kept and honored there. Dahomey conquered Ouidah in 1727 and took the python cult in alongside its own. Dangbe is a particular sacred animal with a house and a priesthood. Dan is the principle that every serpent, that one included, stands for.

The royal palaces at Abomey carry the sign on their walls, a snake arched into a ring with its tail between its jaws. It is a picture of how Dan works. Its strength is continuity, the unbroken line of a body, a family, a harvest, a kingdom. It holds things together by going round.

The limit is in the same picture. In the story, the serpent under the earth is fed on iron bars by red monkeys who forge them in the sea. When the iron runs out it will be hungry, and it will begin to eat its own tail, and the earth with all its weight will slide into the water. Nothing about Dan is fixed. It cannot be owned, only kept content, and it cannot hold forever.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Dan in Fon mythology?

Dan is the serpent power of the Fon people of Dahomey, in what is now Benin. Dan is the force of life, movement and good fortune, shown in snakes, the rainbow and anything that winds or flows. The greatest form of Dan is the rainbow serpent Dan Ayido Hwedo.

What does the name Dan mean?

Dan is the Fon word for a snake. In Fon belief the word covers much more than the animal. All snakes are Dan, but so are the rainbow, smoke, tree roots, the nerves and the umbilical cord.

Is Dan the same as Aido-Hwedo?

Aido-Hwedo, the rainbow serpent, is the greatest of the Dan, but it is not the only one. Dan is the wider power, and every person and family is held to have a Dan of its own. Aido-Hwedo is the cosmic Dan that carried the creator Mawu-Lisa and now lies coiled beneath the earth.

What does Dan give to people?

Dan gives wealth, luck and the continuation of life. A family that grows rich is thought to have a Dan attached to it, and they set up a shrine and feed it so the fortune will stay. A Dan that is neglected takes its gifts away.

How is Dan connected to Damballa in Haitian Vodou?

Dan is the African source of the Haitian serpent spirit Danbala Wedo, also called Damballa. The Fon name Dambada Hwedo, given to the Dan of long-forgotten ancestors, was carried to Haiti by enslaved people from Dahomey. The rainbow serpent became Ayida Wedo, who stands beside him.

Related Entries

Aido-Hwedo, Mawu-Lisa, Agbe, Aziza, Damballa, Ouroboros, Rainbow Serpent