In a well-known Lukumí patakí, Oshun seduced Yewá into breaking her sacred vow of chastity, leading to Yewá's exile to the cemetery. The enmity between them represents the tension between sensual pleasure and ascetic withdrawal.
Yewá tends the physical remains from which the Egungun (ancestral spirits) have departed. She cares for the bodies in the grave while the Egungun return to visit the living through masquerade.
Iku severs the thread of life and Yewá tends what remains. While Iku is death as an event, Yewá is death as an ongoing state — the silent caretaker of bodies after Iku has claimed them.
Nana-Buruku and Yewá are both ancient female deities of the earth and death. Nana-Buruku governs the primordial clay from which bodies were made; Yewá tends the graves where those bodies return to earth.
Obaluaye governs the diseases that bring death, while Yewa receives the bodies that result. They occupy consecutive stages in the process of dying — Obaluaye's plague delivers victims to Yewa's grave.
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