The Well of Forgetfulness: Reclaiming What Was Stolen
- Unique Kween Alpha
- May 6
- 3 min read
Some places don't just hold history they hold memory. The kind that whispers to you in dreams, tugs at your chest, and says: come home.
What Is the Well of Forgetfulness?
Tucked away along the historic Slave Route in Ouidah, Benin, the Well of Forgetfulness is a sacred site with a painful past. During the transatlantic slave trade, this well became a tool of spiritual warfare.
Before boarding ships that would carry them across the ocean, enslaved Africans were brought to this well and made to drink its water, not for refreshment, but for ritual erasure. It was believed the water would cause them to forget who they were, where they came from, and the power they held.
This was not just about breaking bodies it was about breaking memory.
A Ritual of Severance
The Kingdom of Dahomey, now modern-day Benin, was one of the regions heavily involved in the slave trade. Captives taken from inland tribes were marched to the coast, along the Route des Esclaves (Slave Route) a haunting trail still preserved today.
At certain points along this route, rituals were performed:
At the Tree of Forgetfulness, captives were forced to circle it multiple times, symbolically casting off their identities.
At the Well of Forgetfulness, they were made to drink or were sprinkled with water that symbolized a spiritual rupture a forced disconnection from family, culture, and spirit.
It was a weaponized ritual. But even then, the soul resisted.
From “No Return” to Remembering
Beyond the well lies the infamous Door of No Return the gateway through which the enslaved boarded ships bound for the Americas. But in recent years, that name has been spiritually reversed. Many now call it the Door of Return a portal of reclamation and reconnection.
Pilgrims, especially those of African descent, now walk the Slave Route and visit these sites not to mourn only, but to remember. To pour libations. To pray. To awaken ancestral power.
Why This Still Matters
For many of us in the diaspora, not knowing our full origin is a wound that still bleeds. But memory is not only held in names or documents. It’s in your DNA. Your intuition. Your dreams. Your longings.
The Well of Forgetfulness is a reminder that even the deepest attempts to erase us did not succeed.
Now, we return not only physically, but spiritually, to remember what was stolen. And to say: We are still here.
Visiting the Well of Forgetfulness Today
You can visit the Well of Forgetfulness in Ouidah, Benin, as part of the UNESCO-recognized Slave Route.
Key stops include:
The Tree of Forgetfulness
The Well of Forgetfulness
The Door of No Return Monument at the beach
The Museum of History of Ouidah (located in the old Portuguese Fort)
Tour Info & Resources:
Closing Blessing:
To the ones who drank and forgot,We come now to sip and remember.We carry your names in our bones,And we are pouring them back into the Earth,One ritual, one truth, one heartbeat at a time.
Want to go deeper?
The Remembering Ritual and Ancestral Water Invocation guides are available exclusively to email subscribers. Sign up to receive these sacred tools directly.
A Note from the Author
This offering comes from a place of deep listening both within and beyond. It began as a quiet ringing in my ear, a whisper I couldn’t shake. A call I didn’t fully understand until I began to follow it.
What you read here is not presented as an absolute fact, but rather as a personal interpretation woven from threads of history, ancestral memory, oral tradition, spiritual intuition, and research. Some of it comes from books and sites. Some of it comes from dreams.
If it resonates, let it nourish you. If not, let it pass like water through the hands.
This is not a proclamation of truth, it’s a gesture of remembering.
Commentaires