Tia Dalma

"Tia Dalma! Out and about eh? You add an agreeable sense of the macabre to any delirium."

- Jack Sparrow to Tia Dalma

Tia Dalma was a practitioner of voodoo and was known as a mystic and witch doctor. She resided in a shack on the Pantano River in Cuba.

Personal traits
Tia Dalma's personality is flirty and playful (according to the legend, Calypso was something of a seductress), and she likes talking in riddles. She speaks with a thick West Indian accent, and all her "th"'s come out as "d"'s. Her language is Jamaican Patois, so she often uses grammatically strange phrases, such as "him carve out him heart".

Early life
"No worries, mates! Tia Dalma and I go way back. Thick as thieves. Nigh inseparable we are. Were. Have been. Before&hellip;"

- Jack Sparrow



Tia Dalma was originally the goddess Calypso. During this time, Davy Jones fell in love with her. Calypso gave him the task of guiding the spirits of the dead lost at sea and Jones accepted the task out of love for her. However, she scorned him when he returned to see her ten years later.

Feeling jilted, Davy Jones made a secret agreement with the Pirate Lords. He showed them how to bind her to human form using Pieces of Eight; and thus, at the first Brethren Court, the pirates "captured the Sea Goddess, and bound her in her bones." Her binding tamed the seas and satisfied Jones's desire for vengeance. This entrapment could only be reversed if the Brethren Court reassembled, resubmitted the original nine Pieces of Eight they used to bind her, and burned them.

During her human sojourn she was commonly called Tia Dalma. She was unaware of the crucial role that her former inamorato, Jones, had played in her imprisonment.

Little of Tia Dalma's past is known from this point on, save for an association with pirates like James Sterling and Jack Sparrow. By Jack's sixteenth year, Tia Dalma was already established on the Pantano River, and was considered to be the greatest mystic in the Caribbean. She returned to Jack the eye of Stone-Eyed Sam along with two beads that allowed him to summon the spirit of Montecuhzoma to defeat the phantom Hernán Cortés. Later, during a meeting with the crew of the Barnacle, Dalma professed to have divined something of Sparrow's future, and seemed to be aware that the Chest of Cortés would play a part in his later life. It was during this time that Dalma provided Jack with catnip; the means to return Constance Magliore to her human form, after Dalma herself transformed the girl into a cat.

It was thought that Tia and Jack became lovers at some point during the latter's adult life &mdash;Jack confessed to having "known" her at a time when they had been "inseparable"&mdash;and Dalma provided him with his compass; a mysterious device that pointed to that which its user truly wanted.



Jack's return
"You&hellip; you have a touch of destiny about you&hellip; William Turner"

Many years after she and Jack last parted ways, Sparrow returned to Tia Dalma in need of her assistance. Pursued across the Caribbean by the dreaded Kraken, Jack planned to find the Dead Man's Chest, and in doing so taking control of Davy Jones's heart, resting within, and ensuring his control over Jones and his Kraken. Although Tia seemed pleased to see Jack upon his arrival at her shack, she appeared more interested in his companion, Will Turner, to whose boyish good looks Tia was instantly attracted. Jack, with more than a touch of jealousy, got straight to business.

A series of trades took place, leaving Jack with the location of the Flying Dutchman—divined by Tia through the "reading" of crab claws—and a jar of dirt to protect him from Jones, while Dalma now found herself in the possession of an undead monkey belonging to the late Captain Barbossa. Sparrow departed with his crew to track down Davy Jones, leaving Dalma alone in her shack—or so they believed.

World's End
"Would you do it? What would you? What would any of you be willing to do? Would you sail to the end's of the earth and beyond to fetch back witty Jack and him precious Pearl?"

- Tia Dalma to Jack Sparrow's crew

Jack's crew would soon return to Tia Dalma's shack, but this time without their Captain. Jack had fallen to the Kraken, going down with his ship as the beast dragged the Black Pearl down to Davy Jones' Locker. Tia had apparently foreseen this eventuality, and informed the mourning crew that there was a chance to save Jack. Their journey would take them to World's End, but, though Tia would be joining them on their quest, they would need the leadership of a Captain who knew the waters of World's End. With that, she introduced the resurrected Barbossa to the stunned crew.



It appeared that Tia had been responsible, either partly or perhaps completely, for Barbossa's return to the world of the living after Jack shot him in the heart on Isla de Muerta a year earlier. Tia, seemingly more powerful than any of the crew could have guessed, seemed set to lend her mystical aid to the return of Captain Jack Sparrow at World's End.

Tia Dalma sailed with the rest of the crew to Singapore and took part in the fight against Lord Cutler Beckett's men. She went with the group as they sailed to Davy Jones' Locker. Her power let her command the crabs there to drag the Black Pearl back to the sea.

At Shipwreck Island, the Brethren Court decided not to release Calypso from her human form. However, having his crewman steal the Pieces of Eight, Barbossa decided to do so anyway. He burned the pieces of eight, and Ragetti spoke the incantation, "Calypso, I release you from your human bonds" as a lover would. The ritual was successful. But before she could change into another shape, Will Turner revealed to her that Davy Jones was her betrayer.

Enraged by this information, Calypso began to change. She grew and became several stories tall in a matter of moments; once she stopped enlarging, she looked down at the pirates. Barbossa approached and knelt before her. She listened to Barbossa's supplication, then cried out incomprehensibly in a deep voice, "Malfaiteur en tombeau, crochir l'esplanade, dans l'fond d'l'eau!". Because she could not be understood, the pirates were confused and frightened.

Then Calypso appeared to crumble. She dissolved into the form of thousands of small crabs. The crabs fell to the deck of the ship, overflowed into the sea, and were gone.

Calypso showed her wrath by summoning a maelstrom and striking the sea with lightning and rain. She also gave "favorable winds" to both the pirates and the Armada, thus enticing both sides to do battle. After Davy Jones was defeated the maelstrom vanished and the weather was calm again.

Behind the scenes

 * Tia Dalma was portrayed by Naomie Harris.
 * Tia Dalma's name is an anagram of Dalmatia, a region whose coast was a haven for pirates when it was known as the Roman province of Illyricum, and prior to that, the pirate kingdom of Illyria, ruled at one time by the pirate Queen Teuta.
 * In Pirates of the Caribbean Online Tia Dalma can be found on Cuba.
 * "Malfaiteur en Tombeau, Crochir l'Esplanade, Dans l'Fond d'l'eau!", the phrase Calypso yells out when she is freed from her bonds, roughly translates to "Across all the seas, find the path to he who wrongfully entombed me!"

Appearances

 * Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow: The Coming Storm
 * Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow: The Siren Song
 * Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow: The Sword of Cortés
 * Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow: City of Gold
 * Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow: Dance of the Hours
 * Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned
 * Pirates of the Caribbean: Legends of the Brethren Court: The Caribbean
 * Pirates of the Caribbean Online
 * Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
 * Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
 * Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (video game)
 * The Eye of Dispair!