How IYA AGBA was demonised by Western World
By Titilola Damilola
Awọn Iyami (often called Iyami Aje) are the primordial mothers, the original feminine force of creation, balance, and correction in Yoruba cosmology.
They are not “witches” in the colonial sense. That label was imposed because colonial and missionary frameworks did not understand feminine power that could not be controlled.
Colonial religion distorted the image of awọn Iyami because it could not tolerate autonomous feminine power, power that did not pass through male prophets, male priests, or male-controlled institutions.
Growing up, I watched a lot of Yoruba movies like Eran Iya Osogbo, Koto Aye and others like them. In those stories, awọn Iyami were almost always portrayed as witches, dark, wicked, something to fear.
As a child, I absorbed it quietly. But even then, a question lingered in my mind, were there no good Iyami at all?
I didn’t have the language for it then, but those films planted ideas in our heads unconsciously.
Early Yoruba films were deeply influenced by
missionary christianity, pentecostal theolog and colonial morality.
Filmmakers borrowed spiritual language from Yoruba cosmology, but interpreted it through a Christian good-vs-evil lens.
So instead of balance, they showed wickedness, instead of correction, they showed punishment
Instead of cosmic law, they showed revenge.
They took Iyami, a complex force of balance, and reduced them to villains because villains sell fear and fear sells movies.
They taught us to associate feminine spiritual power with evil, and elder women with danger. We watched these stories repeatedly, and over time, the images settled in us as “truth.”
As I’ve grown older and begun to understand Yoruba cosmology more deeply, I realise how incomplete that picture was.
In our tradition, Iyami are not villains. They are the primordial mothers, custodians of balance, correction, and order. The same force that nurtures life also has the authority to discipline it. That doesn’t make it evil. It makes it lawful.
Those films rarely showed Iyami as protectors, as guardians of lineage, or as enforcers of justice.
They showed fear, but removed context. And fear without understanding easily becomes prejudice.
It makes me reflect on how much of what we think we know about our culture has been filtered through lenses that were never ours to begin with.
Maybe the work now is to unlearn gently, to ask better questions, and to tell fuller stories especially about our mothers.
When you understand balance, you stop fearing power and when you understand power, you stop demonising women.
