Avíreri

Avíreri, also called Nabiréri, is the great transformer of the mythic age. By his power he turned the first beings into the animals, plants, hills, and watercourses of the world, and he is credited with instituting the dry and rainy seasons and the succession of day and night; many named features of the landscape are said once to have been people whom he transformed. In the central narrative he wreaks havoc, changing his own young kinsmen into rocks, monkeys, and insects, until he is tricked into falling into a hole and carried off to the place called the river's end, where a strangler vine wraps him fast; there, immobilized, he is said to remain. Sources differ on whether Avíreri is to be identified with the moon: his role as a lunar transformer is widely noted, but Weiss treats him as a figure distinct from Kashiri.

Domains

• transformation
• time seasons

Powers

• transforms beings into animals, plants and landforms
• establishes the seasons and the alternation of day and night

Epithets

• Avíreri — the TransformerWeiss, Gerald. 1975. Campa Cosmology. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 52(5). (primary)

Sources

• Avíreri is the transformer-hero who changed people into animals, plants, mountains and rivers and set the seasons and the alternation of day and night.: Weiss, Gerald. 1975. Campa Cosmology. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 52(5). (primary); Instituto Socioambiental. 'Ashaninka.' Povos Indígenas no Brasil. pib.socioambiental.org. (secondary)
• Lured into falling into a hole at the river's end, Avíreri was held fast by a strangler vine, where he remains, unable to move, to the present day.: Weiss, Gerald. 1975. Campa Cosmology. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 52(5). (primary)