Sun

The Sun is the supreme male power of Baruya cosmology and, with the Moon, one of the two great celestial luminaries who preside over the world. In the beginning the Sun lay joined to the Earth, indistinguishable from her; when he rose into the sky and the Moon rose after him, the first age of the universe ended and the cosmic order took its present form. The Sun fathered men and continues to intervene in every human conception. When the first man and woman still had sealed, unusable genitals and anus, the Sun took pity on them and threw a flintstone into a fire, and the bursting stone pierced their bodies, making sexuality, birth, and death possible. His heat governs the ripening of crops: should he draw too near the earth, all growing things are scorched, and the balance between him and the cold, wet Moon regulates the seasons.

Children

• Djivaamakwe

Domains

• celestial order
• paternity of humankind
• solar heat and growth

Powers

• pierce the orifices of the first humans
• disengage from the earth and set the cosmic order
• father the first men

Epithets

• Father Sun

Relations

• spouse: Moon
• sibling: Moon
• companion: Earth
• parent: Djivaamakwe

Sources

• Godelier, Maurice. The Making of Great Men: Male Domination and Power among the New Guinea Baruya. Cambridge University Press, 1986.
• Godelier, Maurice. The Metamorphoses of Kinship. Verso, 2011.
• Godelier, Maurice. 'Bodies, kinship and power(s) in the Baruya culture.' HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 1(1), 2011.