Karõ
Apinajé · numen · Apinajé traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Karõ is the Apinayé shadow-soul, the part of a person that survives the death of the body. Departing at death, the karõ travels to the village of the dead, yet it may linger about the settlement and gardens, showing itself at night and threatening to draw the grieving after it; the collective dead are the mekarõ. Belief in the karõ underlies Apinayé mourning practice and the caution the living observe toward recently deceased kin. As a category-being it stands outside the genealogies of the culture-heroes, one of the enduring powers of the Apinayé cosmos rather than a personage of a single tale.
Domains
- afterlife souls
- spirits of dead
Powers
- survives the body as ghost
Sources
- The karõ is the Apinayé shadow-soul that survives death and joins the community of the dead, and may appear to and endanger the living.: Curt Nimuendajú, The Apinayé (1939), on the soul and the dead. (primary); Roberto DaMatta, A Divided World: Apinayé Social Structure (1982). (secondary)