Gbadu

Also Known As: Fon; in the same tellings also called Fa, the name of the divination system and of the palm she sits on
Region/Culture: West Africa
Mythos: Dahomey/Fon/Ewe Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Gbadu has sixteen eyes that see what is coming, and each night they close so firmly that she cannot open them again by herself.
Role in Mythos: She is the child of Mawu who holds the keys to the future, and through her children the Fa system of reading destiny reached people.
Relation to Humans: People never deal with her face to face, because everything she knows comes down through palm kernels cast by a trained diviner. The tellings say she asked for this gift to be sent out of pity, after seeing people fight because they could not understand their makers.

Every morning, in the story the diviners of Abomey told, somebody has to climb a palm tree. The climber is Legba, youngest and sharpest of the sky gods, and the trunk is rough under his hands the whole way up. At the top sits a figure with sixteen eyes, every one of them shut. She cannot open them. She presses palm kernels into his palm, cool and hard as river pebbles, and from the count he knows which eyes she wants to see with that day.

That figure is Gbadu, and nearly everything recorded about her comes from one place. Melville and Frances Herskovits collected it in Abomey in 1931, from men who practised the divination called Fa, and published it twice: in Dahomey: An Ancient West African Kingdom in 1938, and again in Dahomean Narrative in 1958. Later writers who mention Gbadu are, almost without exception, retelling those pages. So this is a report of what a handful of specialists said in one city in one year, and it should be read at that size.

They said that Mawu, the creator, bore Gbadu after the twins Agbe and Naete, who were given the sea. Gbadu was something else. She was female and male at once, and she had sixteen eyes set around her head. Mawu put her at the top of a palm in the sky and told her to keep watch over three realms: the sea, the earth and the heavens. The watching has a flaw built into it. At night her eyes close like anyone’s, and at dawn they stay closed until Legba arrives. A being who sees everything needs a doorman.

The kernels are how she speaks to him. The tellings give a small odd code for it, in which one kernel in his hand asks for two eyes to be opened and two kernels ask for one. Anyone who has watched a Fa diviner toss palm nuts from hand to hand and mark the tray will know that rule, because it is the rule of the casting itself. The myth explains the method by placing it in the goddess’s own fingers.

Gbadu had children, two daughters and six sons. The elder daughter was Minona, and the sons are listed as Aovi, Abi, Duwo, Kiti, Agbanukwe and Zose. One day she told Legba she was troubled. From her palm she could see that the realms below were sliding toward war, and that people on earth were acting blindly because they no longer understood the speech of Mawu. Legba carried this up. Mawu answered by giving Gbadu the keys to the future, which is pictured as a house with sixteen doors, one for each of her eyes. Then Duwo, Kiti and Zose were sent down to teach people how to ask which door stood open for them. Zose stayed, and the diviners counted him as the first of their own kind.

So when a man sat before a diviner in Abomey, with the dry click of kernels passing between two hands and white powder dusted over the wooden tray, the claim behind the scene was a large one. An eye was being opened, far overhead, on his account.

Her strength is plain enough. She sees ahead, across all three realms, and the whole craft of Fa is described as borrowed from that sight. Her limits are just as plain, and the tellings are frank about them. She can do nothing with her own eyes until Legba chooses to come. She speaks to him only in kernels. And every message has to pass through the one god famous for bending messages. Legba does not behave well in this story. He slept with Gbadu, and then with her daughter Minona, and when Mawu found out she fixed a punishment on his body that he has carried ever since: a hunger that is never satisfied.

Much is missing. No account says what Gbadu looks like below the eyes, what she wears, or whether she ever comes down. No shrine, feast or priesthood under her name appears in these pages. The same diviners sometimes used Gbadu and Fa as two names for one being, and sometimes treated Fa as the name of the tree. The record does not settle it, and nobody was pressed to.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Gbadu in Fon mythology?

Gbadu is a deity of fate in the Fon tradition of Dahomey, in what is now Benin. She is a child of the creator Mawu, has sixteen eyes, and sits at the top of a palm tree in the sky watching the sea, the earth and the heavens. The Fa system of divination is said to come from her.

Why does Gbadu have sixteen eyes?

Gbadu’s sixteen eyes are how she sees the future, and they match the sixteen doors of the house of the future whose keys Mawu gave her. The number also matches the sixteen palm kernels a Fa diviner casts. In the story, each consultation opens one of those doors for the person asking.

What is the link between Gbadu and Legba?

Legba is the only one who can open Gbadu’s eyes. Each morning he climbs her palm tree, and she puts palm kernels in his hand to show how many eyes she wants opened. Legba also carried her worries about the world to Mawu, and he was later punished by Mawu for sleeping with Gbadu and her daughter Minona.

Who are the children of Gbadu?

Gbadu had two daughters and six sons. The elder daughter is Minona, and the sons are Aovi, Abi, Duwo, Kiti, Agbanukwe and Zose. Duwo, Kiti and Zose were sent to earth to teach people Fa divination, and Zose is remembered as the first diviner.

Where does the story of Gbadu come from?

Almost everything known about Gbadu was recorded by Melville and Frances Herskovits in Abomey in 1931, from men who practised Fa divination. They published it in 1938 and again in 1958. Later accounts of Gbadu mostly retell that material.