Ehugna

Ehugna, also rendered Ewña, is the women's spirit-shrine of the Jola, the boekine that governs fertility and childbirth. It is served principally by women who have themselves borne children, and its cult is bound up with the Karahay, a grand fertility initiation held about once a generation in which new mothers are admitted to the shrine's ritual community and dance in thanksgiving. Like Hupila and the other ukine, Ehugna is understood as an accessible power descended from the creator Emitai, mediating the high god's gift of life to women and, by extension, to the rice fields and the wider community. The shrine's officiant, who acts as intermediary between the spirit and its supplicants, also bears the name of the shrine.

Parentage

• parent: EmitaiRobert M. Baum, Shrines of the Slave Trade (Oxford University Press, 1999): the ukine are the first offspring of Emitai (secondary)

Domains

• womens fertility
• childbirth

Powers

• grants conception and safe childbirth to women
• presides over the women's initiation cycle

Relations

• parent: EmitaiRobert M. Baum, Shrines of the Slave Trade (Oxford University Press, 1999): the ukine are the first offspring of Emitai (secondary)
• sibling: HupilaRobert M. Baum, Shrines of the Slave Trade (Oxford University Press, 1999): the ukine collectively are the offspring of Emitai (secondary)

Sources

• Ehugna (Ewña) is a named women's boekine governing fertility and childbirth, served especially by women who have given birth and honoured in the Karahay initiation.: Robert M. Baum, Shrines of the Slave Trade (Oxford University Press, 1999) (secondary); Kumakonda, 'Karahay, initiation of the Diola women of Casamance' (secondary)