Mermaids

by Skye Alexander

  Lasirèn, the Vodou Mermaid

  “The mermaid, the whale,

  My hat falls into the sea.

  I caress the mermaid,

  My hat falls into the sea.

  I lie down with the mermaid,

  My hat falls into the sea.”

  —Haitian Vodou chant

  When African slaves came to the Caribbean islands, the mermaid Lasirèn swam across the ocean with them. Related to the African deities Mami Wata and Yemaya (see Chapter 8), this gorgeous sea creature is revered in the Vodou tradition of Haiti and New Orleans. Magical and mysterious, she’s a composite of dark and light, a symbol of the union of opposites—as such, she may appear either with light or dark skin, fair or black hair. Sometimes artists depict her as a beautiful mulatto woman with green eyes and straight black hair—an enchanting blend of the black and white races.

  Legend says that if you see Lasirèn, you’re about to receive a profound and sudden insight, one that might even change your life. That’s the meaning of the line “My hat falls into the sea” in the chant above, for the sea represents intuition and the unconscious. Like mermaids everywhere, Lasirèn carries a mirror and comb, but her mirror is more than an object of vanity. Symbolically, it represents a portal between the conscious and unconscious worlds, urging us to look within as well as without in order to “see” ourselves more clearly.

  Like other mermaids, Lasirèn likes to grab humans and take them to her underwater home—a luxurious palace decked out with treasure from sunken ships. But unlike most mermaids, she prefers to capture women. Some drown, but those who return have learned from Lasirèn how to heal and see into the future.

  THREE FACES OF THE FEMININE

  In Haitian mythology, Lasirèn had two sisters, Danto and Freda. Together the three represent three faces of the feminine: mother, lover, and goddess. Lasirèn’s sister Danto symbolized the mother, the cool, calm female who’s responsible and in control. Sister Freda signifies the lover—sexy, passionate, and temperamental. Lasirèn depicts the goddess, the mystical, spiritual aspect of a woman.

  Celebrating Lasirèn

  If you’re looking for prosperity, love, health, or good luck, you may want to petition the lovely Lasirèn, the mermaid-goddess of the Haitian people. To gain her favor, Vodou’s followers fill small boats with offerings to Lasirèn and set them afloat—she especially likes jewelry, flowers, wine, doves, perfume, combs, and mirrors. Some say Lasirèn’s spirit enters the bodies of women and brings them good fortune in all areas of life, especially in love.

  The Haitians also hold elaborate processions in Lasirèn’s honor. Male celebrants carry a seductive woman, who represents the mermaid, through the streets—for of course, she can’t walk with that glistening green tail instead of legs—while the adoring crowds sing, chant, and cheer to her. In addition to her mermaid garb, the lady wears sparkling baubles and beads to symbolize the riches she can bestow on those who believe in her. Naturally, she combs her luxurious long hair while gazing into her mirror. Sometimes she blows a trumpet—another of Lasirèn’s symbols—or a conch shell, like the Greek merman Triton. To keep this sea-goddess comfortable while she’s on land, her followers bathe her with water along the route.

  Exquisite banners, tapestries, and flags are a colorful part of Lasirèn ceremonies. Each handmade satin banner features the image of a saint or iwa, created from sequins and sparkling beads—as many as 10,000 on a single banner. Vodou’s followers carry the banners at the head of processions and hang the sacred flags from churches where the deities will be sure to see them.

  Summer Spectacle

  Festive, funky, and lots of fun, the Mermaid Parade on Coney Island is New York’s answer to Mardi Gras and Carnival. Begun in 1983 to “pay homage to Coney Island’s forgotten Mardi Gras,” the parade’s founders say it “celebrates the sand, the sea, the salt air and the beginning of summer, as well as the history and mythology of Coney Island.” It’s also the perfect opportunity to play mermaid for a day—or to ogle the throngs of scantily clad females decked out in shells, sequins, fishtails, and body paint.

  The wonderfully whacky celebration, billed by Coney Island as “the nation’s largest art parade and one of New York City’s greatest events,” welcomes in summer on the Saturday closest to the summer solstice. Marching bands, crazy floats, hot air balloons, and mermaids of every imaginable type parade down Surf Avenue in a vibrant display of creative self-expression. Each year two celebrities preside over the spectacle as Queen Mermaid and King Neptune. In the past, Queen Latifah, Lou Reed, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, and Harvey Keitel have filled the fishtails of the royal couple. The nonprofit event draws thousands of participants who vie for prizes and hundreds of thousands of onlookers each year.

  A zany ball follows the parade, where mermaids, mermen, and sea creatures mingle with mere mortals to eat, drink, and make merry. The party includes burlesque and circus acts featuring live “mermaids” cavorting with aquatic animals, along with music, dancing, and revelry to rival San Francisco’s Castro Street Fair. For photos and information visit www.coneyisland.com.

  Siren Sightings

  Oregon writer D. J. Conway is certain she saw a real mermaid. In Magickal Mermaids and Water Creatures she writes, “I have seen only one mermaid personally, and because I had binoculars there was no doubt what the being was. Clearly I saw the long pale flash of arms and head as the mermaid leaped and played in the waves. Each time she went beneath the water, her iridescent fish tail was very visible. In her last dive, she smacked the ocean with her tail as if laughing at my astonishment.”

  Making a Splash

  Las Vegas may seem like an odd place to find mermaids, considering the glitzy gambling capital is a long way from the ocean. But on the weekend of August 12–13, 2011, hundreds of mermaids and mermen showed up for the first Mermaid Convention and World Mermaid Awards or “MerCon” at the city’s Silverton Hotel and Casino. Glamorous mermaids of all ages from around the globe competed in a variety of categories, dressed in shell-bras and slinky, sparkly tails. Obviously mermaids can’t walk, so each contestant was carried onto the stage. Mermen and even merchildren participated for awards. Juliana Tucker, who performs at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, won the coveted title of Miss International Mermaid.

  A huge pool party followed, at which famous professional mermaid Hannah, a.k.a. “Hannah Mermaid” (who makes a living swimming with sharks and whales) performed her underwater acrobatics—diving, twirling, and doing all sorts of graceful mermaid moves. Sita Lange of the Maui Mermaids organized the wild and whacky charitable event to raise money for Purity of Water, a nonprofit organization dedicated to cleaning up and protecting the waters of the world.

  Guest judge Carolyn Turgeon, author of the novel Mermaid, deemed the weekend-long affair—complete with fire-spinning mermaids, hula girls, and belly dancers—“beautiful and ridiculous, which all the best things are, especially when you’re in Las Vegas.” To see footage of the event, visit the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s website at www.lvrj.com.

  “[H]e would come up with mermaid scales still sticking to him, and yet not be able to say for certain what had been happening. It was really rather irritating to children who had never seen a mermaid.”

  —J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

  A SHAWL FOR COLD MERMAIDS

  Do mermaids, nude to the waist and exposed to the elements, ever get chilly? If so, artist/author Kathleen Valentine has designed the perfect cover-up for these half-naked ladies: the “mermaid shawl.” A gorgeous, lacy wrap with a shell-like motif knitted in the soft hues of the sea, it wraps mermaids or human females in luxury, from their graceful shoulders down to their pretty round bottoms. Valentine’s popular book, The Mermaid Shawl & Other Beauties, provides patterns and instructions to help knitters create their own works of art.

  Under the Sea

  Disney had a thing for mermaids long before the hit animated film The Little Mermaid captured the hearts of moviegoers. In the summer of 1
959, Disneyland introduced an attraction called Submarine Voyage, which featured eight live mermaids doing a water ballet in the park’s lagoon. Visitors climbed into mini-submarines, designed to resemble World War II nuclear subs that held thirty-two people, and slowly navigated the lagoon. Through the submarines’ porthole windows they could watch the lovely waving mermaids swim past, accompanied by colorful fish.

  In 1965, the mermaids returned to celebrate Disneyland’s tenth anniversary. The aquatic beauties were such a hit with visitors that Submarine Voyage decided to invite them back the following summer. But in 1998, the ride made its last voyage and closed down.

  Now, mermaid fans can again visit a magical underwater kingdom and cavort with sea creatures at Disneyland’s new Little Mermaid ride, which opened in June 2011. The old submarines have been replaced with clamshell-shaped boats that take visitors to mermaid Ariel’s colorful grotto. Spectacular special effects, music, and familiar characters from the movie greet guests and tell Ariel’s story. When the teenage mermaid leaves her home at the bottom of the sea to begin her adventure on land, human visitors “ascend” with her—back to the real world. Finny fun for mermaids of all ages.

  QUALIFICATIONS FOR A MERMAID

  Aspiring mermaids for the original Disneyland Submarine Voyage had to stand between 5 feet 4 inches and 5 feet 7 inches tall, have long hair, and be able to swim well. It goes without saying that they had to be pretty, too. The mermaids swam, sunbathed, and waved to visitors for four hours a day. Except for the problem of getting green hair from the lagoon’s water, ex-mermaid Shannon Baughmann called it a fin-tastic “dream job.”

  “In the early 21st Century the mermaid has become a symbol of fun and fantasy, rather than an accepted part of cultural tradition. She is seen as a figure of eroticism mixed with the fear of the unknown, or the animal side nature . . . No matter how the mermaid is used, or what role she plays, she will always retain a mysterious and magical air appealing to both children and adults alike.”

  —BBC, “Mermaids,” www.bbc.co.uk

  AFTERWORD

  * * *

  THE Hidden Meanings OF Mermaids

  MERMAIDS HAVE FASCINATED and mystified us for millennia—so there must be something more to them than their pretty faces and figures. Symbols only endure if they touch upon a truth that resonates deep within us, a truth that is both personal and universal. Mythology and art frequently use symbols to convey meanings—especially in earlier times when most people couldn’t read or write—and the mermaid is a provocative symbol, today as well as in the past.

  What do mermaids have to say to us? You’ve learned a lot throughout this book, but let’s take a second look at some of the symbolism attached to mermaids and the hidden messages these lovely ladies are trying to send us. As we do, let’s also reflect back on the significance of mermaids through the ages and what we can learn from them today.

  A Return to the Sea

  “[Water] has always been a feminine symbol—it is natural that the water spirits should most often be symbolized as female.”

  —Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

  Science tells us that all life on Earth evolved from the ocean, the “womb of the world.” Not only is the sea home to the mermaid, it is our primordial home as well. When we see a mermaid riding happily on the waves, we’re reminded of our origins. When she beckons us to follow her into her underwater realm, we feel, perhaps, a twinge of longing to return to the soothing, weightlessness of the womb where we once floated comfortably in a salty sea of amniotic fluid.

  Our bodies—and especially our brains—contain a high percentage of water. So even though we can’t breathe underwater, like mermaids do, we sense an affinity with water—it’s as if we haven’t entirely left our past behind. As a hybrid being, the mermaid symbolizes our transformation from fish to Homo sapiens. We identify with her because, like the mermaid, we’re still partly creatures of the sea.

  Early people linked not only mermaids but also goddesses with the waters of the world. The oceans, rivers, and lakes provided nourishment—without them, human beings couldn’t survive. These potent goddesses held the power of life and death in their hands. Our ancestors honored the water deities, seeking to win their favor and their life-giving blessings. Over time, their majesty was transferred to mermaids. Like the sea itself, mermaids could bring good fortune or devastation. That mysterious power still entices us today.

  Sensual Sirens

  No one can deny the sexual allure of the mermaid. Even Disney’s cute cartoon character Ariel retains a not-so-subtle symbol of passion—her fiery red hair. Historically, hair has been associated with power, and a woman’s hair represented sexual power specifically. Supposedly, men found women’s hair so deliciously distracting that for centuries religions forbade females to display their tempting tresses publicly—and certainly not in church! In the prim and proper Victorian era, women bound up their hair, symbolically reining in their power and taming it, lest they drive men wild.

  Beautiful, bare-breasted mermaids have tempted seamen for centuries. Virtually all legends describe mermaids as exquisitely good-looking, with perfectly shaped full breasts, silky-smooth skin, and the slim torsos of lovely young women. Their unabashed willingness to display their luscious bodies added to their appeal—especially when human females were extolled to keep theirs covered up. During the days when sailing ships still navigated the seas, painters weren’t allowed to portray real women in the nude—but goddesses and mermaids could flaunt their naked glory with abandon.

  If mermaids evolved from the early fertility goddesses, as many researchers believe, it’s only natural for them to continue on as sex symbols. The Assyrian goddess Atargartis, who became our first mermaid, was an important fertility deity. So were the African goddesses Yemaja and Oshun, the Greeks’ Aphrodite, and the Romans’ Venus. To our ancestors, the female’s ability to bring forth life gave her a magical power that made her absolutely awesome.

  The Mermaid’s Tail

  What’s sexy about a fishtail? In The Republic of Love, Carol Shields describes it as “a sealed vessel enclosing either sexual temptation or sexual virtue, or some paradoxical and potent mixture of the two.” In fact, part of the mermaid’s appeal may be her sexual unattainability—we always want what we can’t have. She’s the ultimate tease. Here’s this gorgeous babe with the breasts of a Playboy bunny, the face of an angel, and the long, flowing hair of a supermodel—but a man can never consummate a relationship with her because her tail prevents access to her “lady parts.”

  The mermaid’s tail is one of her most obvious and intriguing symbols. But her tail didn’t always look the way it does now. She wasn’t always so restrained. As we discussed in Chapter 2, early depictions of mermaids often showed them with two tails or a tail split down the middle, suggesting that they could take on human lovers after all. Remember the first mermaid Starbucks used for its logo? That half-naked beauty was of the two-tailed variety and she provocatively parted her tails, holding them up on either side of her bare torso, enticing customers with her charms.

  The twin-tailed mermaid reminds us of the ancient Sheila-na-gig fertility goddesses of the pre-Christian Celts. This brazen and bawdy baubo deity squats to reveal her genitals as a symbol of feminine power. So it would seem that the early mermaid retained a close connection with the old fertility goddesses—and the creative power they possessed—which later versions attempted to diminish by cocooning her lower body in a single tail.

  Beauty and Vanity

  “Her mirror, later a symbol of her vanity, originally represented the planet Venus in astrological tradition. Her abundant, flowing hair, symbolizing an abundant love potential, was also an attribute of Venus in her role as fertility goddess.”

  —Scarlett deMason, “Shadows of the Goddess—The Mermaid”

  Always looking in the mirror and combing her hair, the mermaid certainly strikes us as one vain female. Then there’s her penchant for decking herself out in je
wels—which some legends say she scavenged from the treasure chests of sunken ships. Of course, she’s drop-dead gorgeous to begin with, as many a sailor will attest. But if her looks alone aren’t enough to garner attention from passing seafarers, the mermaid sings out in the most enchanting voice until no man can resist her.

  Vanity, as you recall, is one of the seven deadly sins, and early churches used the symbolism of the mermaid to remind the faithful of this fact. Comb-and-mirror-toting mermaids adorned many a sanctuary wall in medieval churches—frequently swimming among schools of fish, which symbolized Christianity. In a sixteenth-century Cornish church, a wooden pew features a carving of a mermaid holding her mirror and comb—a warning, perhaps, for legends say mermaids dragged many Cornwall men down to their deaths in the sea.

  But you can’t really blame mermaids for being such narcissists. Mythology says these fascinating females descended from the ancient goddesses of love and beauty: Aphrodite and Venus. These delectable deities governed art, music, poetry, love, and the finer things in life. It was their job not only to look good, but to enrich the world with beauty in all its many forms. And as we know too well, there’s enough ugliness in the world—maybe we need mermaids to add a touch of glamour and grace.

  THE MERMAID’S MAGIC MIRROR