Kashiri, the moon, is a benevolent yet ambivalent deity. In the central Asháninka myth he comes to a girl kept in menstrual seclusion, introduces her people to cultivated manioc, and takes her as his wife; she conceives the sun but is burned to death in bearing him. Thereafter Kashiri is said to have carried off and eaten his young kinsmen, and when threatened he rose into the sky. Although he is the father of the sun and reckoned a god, the moon ranks below the solar deity because his appetites draw the people toward death: he is a devourer of the dead, and his phases are read against this hunger. He is honored in a Festival of the Moon.