Beyoncé’s mother of a performance

in the early scenes of her visual album and in her maternity photos.

This is a nod to the African water spirit Mami Wata, or Mother Water, who is often portrayed as half-human and half-fish with long, flowing hair, according to the Smithsonian magazine.

Joseph Caputo writes: “Mami Wata is known for her beauty. But she is as seductive as she is dangerous. Those who pay tribute to her know her as a ‘capitalist’ deity because she can bring good (or bad) fortune in the form of money. This relationship between currency and water makes sense. Her persona developed between the 15th and 20th centuries, as Africa became more present in global trade.

“The fact that the name Mami Wata is in pidgin English, the language used to facilitate this trade, shows the influence on foreign cultures on the spirit’s image and identity.”

Perhaps more obvious, though, is her embodiment of Oshun, a Yoruba water goddess of “female sensuality, love and fertility”, PBS reported when Lemonade first dropped last year.

Oshun, also spelled Osun, is the love goddess of the Yoruba people, who inhabit the south-western region of what is now modern-day Nigeria and the southern part of Benin, according to Ancient Origins, and is often depicted wearing yellow and surrounded by fresh water.

Oshun reigns over the waters of the Osun Sacred Grove in Nigeria, a Unesco World Heritage site nestled in a dense forest on the outskirts of the city of Osogbo.

Worshippers come to the grove with offerings and prayers.

“When you come here and tell Osun ‘I am looking for a baby,’ you get a baby. ‘I’m looking for a husband,’ you get a husband; ‘I am looking for money,’ you get money,” priestess Osafunke Iworo Oshun told CNN last year.

Beyoncé also appeared as Oshun in Hold Up, the second single on her album. In that video, she wears a flowing yellow dress and emerges from behind two large golden doors amid a wave of water.

Amy Yeboah, an associate professor of Africana studies at Howard University, revealed in Hold Up the visual storytelling is as important as the lyrics.

Beyoncé is, Yeboah said: “Reflecting the power of women spiritually. She takes it deeper into African spirituality.”

Artistic representations show Oshun draped in yellow and wearing a gold headpiece.

The gold headpiece Beyoncé wears with the bikini appeared during the live segments of her Grammy performance as well, and at one point her dancers draped the reappearing long silk cloth over the crown and extended the ends away from the singer’s body, a tribute to the many-armed Hindu goddess Kali, who is associated with death, sexuality and motherly love.

The flowers on stage loop in an essence of Venus, the Roman goddess of love, sex, beauty and fertility. Before Sunday, Beyonce’s maternity photos filled her personal website, interspersed with lines such as: “Mother has one foot in this world and one foot in the next, mother black Venus,” and “Venus has flooded me,” reports Pitchfork. Her Grammy performance was, in many ways, a blend of the African diaspora in Lemonade with her growing motherhood.

Even Adele couldn’t deny the mom vibes Beyoncé was exuding, proclaiming earnestly during her acceptance speech for Record of the Year: “I adore you, and I want you to be my mommy, all right.” – The Washington Post