moraviha

The moraviha, the killer of enemies, occupies a singular place in the Araweté economy of death. Through homicide the warrior takes into himself the soul of the enemy he has slain, a fusion that alters his own destiny: where the ordinary dead must be devoured, resurrected, and married by the gods to attain immortality, the killer ascends already accompanied by his enemy-spirit and becomes a divinity without being eaten. Feared rather than consumed by the Maï, he enters the celestial world with a status the gods themselves respect. In a cosmology where to be divinized is normally to be prey, the warrior-slayer is the exception whose act of predation carries him directly into godhood, embodying the Araweté conviction that identity is achieved through incorporation of the enemy.

Domains

• warfare
• cannibalism

Powers

• becomes a divinity feared by the gods

Relations

• rival: MaïThe killer's fused enemy-soul makes him a being the gods themselves fear.Viveiros de Castro, From the Enemy's Point of View, 1992. (secondary)

Sources

• The condition of being a killer is the only one that makes cannibal trans-substantiation unnecessary: the killer, fused with the soul of the enemy he has slain and eaten, ascends with that spirit, is feared by the Maï, and becomes a divinity without passing through the gods' devouring.: Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, From the Enemy's Point of View, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. (secondary)