Sua
Achuar · numen · Achuar traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Sua is the mythic origin of genipa (Genipa americana), the plant whose juice gives the deep blue-black dye the Achuar use to paint the face and body. In the paired myth of Sua and Ipiak two women are courted and, through a story of deceit and transformation, become the two great dye plants, Sua the black genipa and Ipiak the red annatto. The narrative accounts for the complementary body-paints that distinguish festive, ritual and warlike self-presentation, and joins the wider Jivaroan repertoire of tales in which humans pass into the plants and birds of the present world.
Domains
- body paint
Powers
- became the genipa that stains the body blue-black
Epithets
- Sua nua — the genipa-womanSiro Pellizzaro, Mitos shuar: Sua e Ipiaku (Mundo Shuar) (secondary)
Relations
- sibling: IpiakPaired companion of Ipiak; the two women become the black and red dye plants.Siro Pellizzaro, Mitos shuar: Sua e Ipiaku (Mundo Shuar) (secondary)
Sources
- Sua is the mythic woman who became the genipa plant that yields black body-dye, paired with Ipiak the annatto.: Siro Pellizzaro, Mitos shuar: Sua e Ipiaku (Mundo Shuar) (secondary); Elke Mader, Metamorfosis del poder (Abya-Yala, 1999) (secondary)