Ayumpum
Achuar · deity · Achuar traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Ayumpum is the Jivaroan power presiding over life and death and, above all, over the passage between them. In myth Ayumpum is the source of new life won from the slain, and the figure stands behind the logic of the tsantsa, the shrunken head, whose ritual sought to capture and redirect the vital force of the killed enemy toward the fertility and continuity of the killer's own people. As a bringer of life and an appointer of death, Ayumpum joins the theft and renewal of vitality that runs through Jivaroan thought on warfare, souls and reproduction.
Domains
- life death
- war and renewal
Powers
- grants life and appoints death
Epithets
- Ayumpum, iwiaakratin — Ayumpum, giver of lifeSiro Pellizzaro, Ayumpum (Mundo Shuar, 1978) (secondary)
Sources
- Ayumpum is the Jivaroan power of life and death associated with the renewal of life and the rites of the shrunken head.: Siro Pellizzaro, Ayumpum: mito de la vida y de la muerte (Mundo Shuar, 1978) (secondary); Anne-Christine Taylor, 'The Soul's Body and Its States,' JRAI (1996) (secondary)